A trove of documents collected by Hillary Clinton's friend Diane Blair has been released to the public 14 years after Blair's passing, and it's generally not flattering stuff for the aspiring 2016 presidential candidate, although her supporters are already trying to spin it away. Alana Goodman at the Washington Free Beacon has an extensive review of the documents, which she says "paint a complex portrait of Hillary Clinton, revealing her to be a loyal friend, devoted mother, and a cutthroat strategist who relished revenge against her adversaries and complained in private that nobody in the White House was 'tough and mean enough.'"
A great deal of Hillary's toughness and meanness was directed at the women who might have shredded her political meal ticket by bringing Bill Clinton down with their stories of adultery, including Monica Lewinsky:
When Clinton finally admitted to the relationship after repeated denials, Hillary Clinton defended her husband in a phone call with Blair. She said her husband had made a mistake by fooling around with the ???narcissistic loony toon??? Lewinsky, but was driven to it in part by his political adversaries, the loneliness of the presidency, and her own failures as a wife.
She told Blair that the affair did not include sex ???within any real meaning??? of the term and noted President Clinton ???tried to manage??? Monica after they broke up but things spiraled ???beyond control.???
Blair described the contents of the Sept. 9, 1998, phone call in a journal entry.
???[Hillary] is not trying to excuse [Bill Clinton]; it was a huge personal lapse. And she is not taking responsibility for it,??? Blair wrote.
But she was willing to offer some extensive rationalizations for her husband's infidelity:
???But, she does say this to put his actions in context. Ever since he took office they???ve been going thru personal tragedy ([the death of] Vince [Foster], her dad, his mom) and immediately all the ugly forces started making up hateful things about them, pounding on them.???
???They adopted strategy, public strategy, of acting as tho it didn???t bother them; had to. [Hillary] didn???t realize toll it was taking on him,??? Blair continued. ???She thinks she was not smart enough, not sensitive enough, not free enough of her own concerns and struggles to realize the price he was paying.???
Hillary Clinton told Blair she had received ???a letter from a psychologist who does family therapy and sexual infidelity problems,??? who told the Yale Law School graduate, ???most men with fidelity problems [were] raised by two women and felt conflicted between them."
Here's a thought: maybe it's a good idea to avoid electing national leaders who require extensive psychoanalysis to explain why they treat sacred vows as suggestions. The Left's absolute whitewash of the Clinton years has involved making the American people forget how they thundered that "character doesn't matter," over and over again, to keep their man's poll numbers up. The message was received by the public, along with messages about how the rule of law doesn't really apply to powerful members of the aristocracy - rest assured you will not get a pass for committing or suborning perjury, and you will not find a supportive network of "feminists" eager to write a Get Out Of Sexual Harassment Free Card if you begin a tawdry affair with one your young female employees.
There always have been, and always will be, things "wrong" with American politics, but much of what's wrong today can be traced fairly directly to Bill Clinton's behavior, and his party's subsequent warping of our public discourse to protect him. This is the same avalanche of bitter politics that led to Clinton questioning the meaning of the word "is," and his Party mindlessly applauding, as though he'd just solved a vexing quantum-physics problem. Hillary Clinton personally embodies the sheer will to power that transformed America, as the public was explicitly told to suspect both its moral judgment and the law in exchange for lollipops and pats on the head from the Ruling Class. You don't want to interfere with the swelling of the dot-com bubble by impeaching the President and causing turmoil, do you? You don't want to give uptight right-wingers a victory over a President who has been so very good for a "woman's right to choose." Now that we've assassinated the characters of Clinton's accusers, you don't want to give them CPR by validating their charges, right? Do you realize how the Europeans are laughing at us? They're so much more sophisticated when it comes to their politicians' extramarital affairs!
Clinton's "politics of personal destruction" was all about using concentrated media power to smear his adversaries so thoroughly that everyone forgot both their basic moral judgment, and the law itself. It wasn't a new tactic, but it was more refined, more weaponized, and Madame Hillary would stroll into the Oval Office with a target list of enemies clutched in one hand. Clinton politics is bitter, and that's not something Americans should relish after years of the vicious efforts to slander every critic of Barack Obama as a racist Neanderthal, not to mention all that stuff about how his 2012 election opponent was a misogynist brute who gave a guy's wife cancer just by looking at her.
What will it do to the national psyche if Democrats persuade voters to install a President - the first female President, no less - who is not a victim of adultery, but an active co-conspirator who moved mountains to protect her wayward husband because she wanted the power he conferred upon her? Squaring that with the Democrats' "War on Women" efforts to target single female voters is going to give us a national migraine. The exchanges of principle for power chronicled by these documents are chilling, for anyone who takes the principles seriously:
Hillary Clinton???s blunt assessments were not confined to Monica Lewinsky. In a Dec. 3, 1993, diary entry, Blair recounted a conversation with the first lady about ???Packwood??????a reference to then-Sen. Bob Packwood, an influential Republican on health care embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal.
???HC tired of all those whiney women, and she needs him on health care,??? wrote Blair. ???I told her I???d been bonding w. creeps; she said that was the story of her whole past year. Fabio incident???sweeping her up, sending her roses.???
Privately, the Clinton White House was acutely sensitive to public perceptions of President Clinton???s treatment of women.
Supreme Court nominations were not immune from such considerations. In a three-page May 11, 1994, memo, Blair recounted her phone conversation with President Clinton about reservations he had about his preferred nominee to the high Court, the late Arkansas Judge Richard Arnold.
Noting Clinton allies had ???really been trying to keep the women???s groups in line since Paula Jones filing,??? Bill Clinton, according to Blair???s account, was concerned feminist groups ???might blow sky high??? if he appointed Arnold to the Supreme Court. Arnold had ruled that the Jaycees club could bar women from full membership???a decision later overturned by the highest court in the land.
But of course, the Left presumes its loyal voters are always willing to trade principles for power, in part because they don't think their principles amount to much without the power to enforce them upon the rest of the country. Power first, power at all costs, and defeat for the people we hate; then we'll trust our demigod leaders to use that power correctly. The sins committed on the road to political triumph are forgivable. (Along those lines, the quotes related by the Free Beacon include some amusing passages in which Hillary dismisses the power of grassroots groups, believing only those with Beltway muscle are worthy of her attention.)
Also, the modern liberal is comfortable - indeed, takes comfort from - the notion that his rulers are a cut above, the best of the best, an aristocracy entitled to wealth and special privileges by virtue of their credentialed intellect and political wisdom. Who are average liberals to pass judgment upon people as far above them as the Clintons? The majesty of their lifestyles, including Bill's special dispensation to ignore his marital vows, reinforces the notion that they are better than the rest of us, and therefore deserve to rule us.
In addition to political pragmatism, this is one reason why liberals spin on a dime and vigorously enforce those disdained standards against their opponents. Leaders of the unenlightened Right and insufficiently cooperative Middle are not demigods who deserve to be in power, so they receive none of the indulgences reserved for the rightful masters of Olympus. Try reading the entire article at the Washington Free Beacon and imagine how the Left would react if these were candid discussions about a female Republican.
If America is willing to embrace the Left's vision of a completely politicized command economy - in which every thought, every word, and every principle are weighed for political content before a shred of meaning is assigned - Hillary is the leader who can take them the rest of the way. The axis of cronyism is already beginning to realign toward her, including people like DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg who threw her to the curb in 2008 because they decided Barack Obama was a better bet, but now wish to curry favor with the likely successor to his regime. The SXSW technology and film festival got its tongue firmly planted on Hillary's shoes by inviting her completely unqualified daughter to deliver a keynote address, a fairly naked concession that political credentials and connections with the Ruling Class matter more than just about anything else in America today.
Perhaps history will record that Barack Obama set the stage for Hillary Clinton, transforming America to a place where resistance to the Ruling Class is more muted, and a submissive people learn to admire the ruthless will to power above other virtues, at least when it's exercised by people with the right political credentials. If we have become convinced that only strong dictatorial leaders can Do the Right Thing on countless issues, which can no longer be left to the discretion of free individuals who conduct themselves according to high standards of personal and family honor, then why not Hillary?
Her media friends will beat dissenters into submission almost as energetically as they served Obama. No one will be allowed to disagree with her in good faith. People inconvenient to her regime will be targeted and destroyed, in a process perfected by the previous Clinton to occupy the White House. You can bet she won't spend much time dithering, or worrying about whether she has the authority to pursue her agenda, and nobody in the media is going to pester her with such trifling complaints. Why should a genuine fan of the past five years consider any other candidate?
