The Dangers of Hillaryland

One of the many less than honest answers Hillary gave at Wednesday’s debate, was her assertion that she would seek out contrary views from a wide range of sources. The only problem with this rather banal promise is that there is no indication that Hillary has ever approached politics this way. In fact, she is famous for only surrounding herself with loyal staff who rarely question her judgment or decisions.

The idea that Hillary would seek out contrary views and listen to those who disagree with her is laughable given her history. The very term Hillaryland – used to describe her close friends and staff – expresses the idea of a close knit group of people who support and defend Hillary; whose loyalty is clear and unequivocal. In his recent largely favorable bio of Hillary, A Woman In charge, Carl Bernstein describes Hillaryland as “a full-blown culture in which Hillary surrounded herself with people who were loyal to her cause and would do her bidding.”

Bernstein also quotes one time Clinton legal adviser Mark Fabiani on Hillary’s protective bubble:

But the kind of people that were around here were yes people. She had never surrounded herself with people who could stand up to her, who were of a different mind . . . I always thought that was a real tragedy in that if she had had different people around her [who would challenge her] earlier, that maybe some of the things that happened might not have happened.

Hillary the disciplined campaigner knows what platitudes to mouth and what kind of promises to make. But her history fails to match the rhetoric or the professed ideals.

For Hillary No Press Is Good Press

I have been noting that Hillary hates the press more that President Bush and that she avoids talking to them as much as is possible. Her calls for openness and transparency notwithstanding, Hillary’s natural instinct is secrecy and silence.

ABC News has another story on how this is playing out on the campaign trail:

For the small band of reporters who regularly cover Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the dirty little secret is this: They rarely — if ever — get to speak to the candidate herself.

Clinton, D-N.Y., is running perhaps the most media-controlled — and media-obsessed — campaign in presidential history. Her aides carefully screen access to the candidate, generally avoid news conferences on the campaign trail and have been known to throw around the Clintons’ considerable weight to block negative stories and influence coverage of the candidate they’re protecting and promoting.

They even bring in Ari Fleischer to compare her to Bush:

“Hillary is no Bill when it comes to discipline — she has some,” Fleischer said. “But it’s more than just discipline.” During his 2000 run, “George Bush did press [availabilities] just about every day, and he was always disciplined.

“Hillary is also disciplined,” Fleischer continued, “but she keeps her distance from the press probably because she doesn’t like them.” “She sees all downside in access. As a front-runner with a 20-point margin, the press can hurt her more than help her.”

Clinton’s relationship with the press is less than cordial these days:

But Clinton stands alone in following a tight script that limits her exposure to tough questions or embarrassing scrutiny. From the moment she announced her candidacy — with a Web video filmed in her home, rolled out on a Saturday to take maximum advantage of the news cycles — her advisers have sought to make sure that her “conversation” with the American people goes according to plan.

Reporters say requests for interviews with Clinton are often ignored. The press office often berates reporters and editors for stories it considers unfair or incomplete. In the Senate and on the campaign trail, her Secret Service contingent sometimes serves as an informal shield to protect her from off-the-cuff exchanges with reporters.

The big question in all of this, of course, is whether this tactic will work. Will the press grow tired of the lack of access? Does the public care that Hillary is determined to control every aspect of her public perception; will it come of as cold and calculating?

I think this is a bigger issue than just how Hillary relates to the press, however, as it reflect her overall temperament. Do Americans really want a secretive, manipulative, and antagonistic president? We know what happened the last time the Clinton’s were in the White House why do we think the next time will be different?

Queen Hillary

It seems that Andrew Sullivan is no fan of Hillary. Jumping off of a David Brooks column on the impact of the NetRoots Sullivan lets loose quite a rant. He starts with doubting Hillary’s true plan for Iraq:

If Clinton is that comfortable with a permanent occupation of Iraq at this point in the election cycle, how comfortable do you think she’s going to be next year? You think a politician so obsessed with gaining and wielding power is happy to relinquish any in the Middle East?

But he is just getting warmed up:

The conservative Washington Establishment is swooning for Hillary for a reason. The reason is an accommodation with what they see as the next source of power (surprise!); and the desire to see George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq legitimated and extended by a Democratic president (genuine surprise). Hillary is Bush’s ticket to posterity. On Iraq, she will be his legacy. They are not that dissimilar after all: both come from royal families, who have divvied up the White House for the past couple of decades. They may oppose one another; but they respect each other as equals in the neo-monarchy that is the current presidency. And so elite conservatives are falling over themselves to embrace a new Queen Hillary, with an empire reaching across Mesopotamia, a recently deposed court just waiting to return to the salons of DC, a consort happy to be co-president for another four years, and a back-channel to the other royal family. She’ll even have more powers than Clinton I, because Cheney has given her back various royal prerogatives: arrests without charges, torture, wire-tapping, and spy-ware on your Expedia account. Only the coronation awaits.

Not surprisingly, I think AS is a little over the top here (Sullivan over the top? Shocking, I know.) but the point is well taken if with a grain of salt.

Hillary wants to win the favor of the liberal base and yet keep the reputation of a “Grown Up” to the Washington establishment. She wants to bash Bush whenever she can, but also keep her strategic options open. Conservative should not be fooled by her attempts to act the centrist or moderate or grown up or whatever. She will do and say what she thinks will help her win and accrue power. Principles are not involved here.

Liberals should likewise wake up to the bargain they are potentially making in nominating Hillary. She may be a liberal in her heart but she will drop those policies and ideas the moment they become unpopular or a barrier to her getting what she wants. That is the basic problem with Hillary, can you really trust her? I know you want someone tough after Kerry, but are you willing to trade your ideals for a ruthless campaigner that doesn’t really respect you?

Those who are really looking for change in 2008 would be foolish to vote for someone as entrenched and yet as slippery as Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Quote of the day

That same Politico article noted below, contains a great quote on Hillary. The author of the spiked article wrote an article in 2006 for the Atlantic Monthly which contained this dead on description of Senator Clinton:

“Today Clinton offers no big ideas, no crusading causes — by her own tacit admission, no evidence of bravery in the service of a larger ideal. Instead, her Senate record is an assemblage of many, many small gains. Her real accomplishment in the Senate has been to rehabilitate the image and political career of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Impressive though that has been in its particulars, it makes for a rather thin claim on the presidency. Senator Clinton has plenty to talk about, but she doesn’t have much to say,” he wrote.

Couldn’t have said it better, myself.

Hillary Campaign Kills GQ Article

I wonder when the media and the general public is going to wake up to the fact that Hillary has all of the traits that so many ascribe to President Bush: a penchant for secrecy, a antagonistic relationship with, and fundamental distrust of, the press, a willingness to suppress anyone or anything that shows her in a bad light, etc. The Politico has yet another example:

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for president learned that the men’s magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

So Clinton’s aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton.

Despite internal protests, GQ editor Jim Nelson met the Clinton campaign’s demands, which had been delivered by Bill Clinton’s spokesman, Jay Carson, several sources familiar with the conversations said. GQ writer George Saunders traveled with Clinton to Africa in July, and Clinton is slated to appear on the cover of GQ’s December issue, in which it traditionally names a “Man of the Year,” according magazine industry sources.

If President Bush was the subject rather than Hillary the media would be filled with cries of censorship and sad bemoaning of Bush’s heavy handed relationship with the press. Those who think Hillary will bring “change” to Washington are only kidding themselves. The only change she is seeking is a change in who controls the power.

More fishy donors for Hillary

The fundraising issue just wont go away for Hillary. The Wall Street Journal has found more questionable donors and bundlers:

When Hillary Rodham Clinton held an intimate fund-raising event at her Washington home in late March, Pamela Layton donated $4,600, the maximum allowed by law, to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

But the 37-year-old Ms. Layton says she and her husband were reimbursed by her husband’s boss for the donations. “It wasn’t personal money. It was all corporate money,” Mrs. Layton said outside her home here. “I don’t even like Hillary. I’m a Republican.”

The boss is William Danielczyk, founder of a Washington-area private-equity firm and a major fund-raising “bundler” for Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Layton’s gift was one of more than a dozen donations that night from people with Republican ties or no history of political giving. Mr. Danielczyk and his family, employees and friends donated a total of $120,000 to Mrs. Clinton in the days around the fund-raiser.

ABC’s The Note points out that the fundraising scandals – or potential scandals – just keep coming:

Another Hsu could drop today — this from a press release this morning from the US attorney for the Southern District of New York: “A press conference will be held today to announce the unsealing of a criminal complaint charging an individual with perpetrating a $60 million ‘Ponzi’ fraud scheme. The complaint also alleges that the defendant committed related federal campaign finance crimes.”

In addition, Clinton is still refusing to say whether she’ll return money from Oscar Wyatt, who is on trial for fraud, conspiracy, and other charges related to Saddam Hussein’s abuse of the UN’s oil-for-food program. Wyatt appears to have had a close relationship with President Bill Clinton during the 1990s, according to testimony that’s emerged at federal trials, per ABC News.

And The Washington Post’s John Solomon and Matthew Mosk examine Clinton’s top fund-raisers and find “several figures who were involved in the 1990s Democratic Party fundraising scandal that tarnished her husband’s record.”

The question remains, however, if any of this is going to have an effect on the primary. So far Hillary seems to have extended her poll leads as the Hsu scandals emerged. Is America really ready for another cycle of Clinton scandals? Can her opponents make a compelling case that these scandals, and those of the past, disqualify her for the presidency? Stay Tuned. We will keep making the case and raising the questions, but it is up to the voters to deliver the verdict.

Greenspan on Hillary

Alan Greenspan has some interesting things to say about Hillary Clinton in an interview with Newsweek the other day. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve – retained by Bill BTW – acknowledged her talents but pointed out important faults:

How about the next president? Hillary Clinton seems to be the front runner on the Democratic side. What’s your view on the junior senator from New York?
Very smart. She is probably everything that everybody says about her. She wouldn’t be a bad president, but she won’t attack the issues which really require coming to grips with during the campaign. The absolute blindness of candidates to the obvious issue of Medicare’s problems is just truly discouraging to me.

And this is the problem with so much of her policies: any pragmatic tendencies she might have too often get pushed aside by politics and her liberal idealism. Her unwillingness and inability to take on the leftist base of her own party prevents her from taking on the challenge of entitlements and other pressing issues. Her health care plan will exacerbate these problems and push the government toward control of a massive chunk of the economy.

If push comes to shove does anyone really think Hillary would choose spending reductions over taxes? Choose to let the market work versus government regulations? The political winds are blowing to the left and that is where Hillary will move. Unlike her husband, she is unlikely to have a GOP Congress to contain her – making her that much more dangerous.

Greenspan also had some interesting to say about Bill Clinton:

Reading your opinions of the various presidents you’ve worked with, it was surprising that you ranked Clinton near the top, given your personal political views, as well as Nixon, given his reputation.
Both were tops in IQ, not in character. Nixon, as I point out, I really misjudged. He was a Jekyll and Hyde. With Clinton, there’s a moral looseness about him. When I heard the rumors about Monica Lewinsky I thought, it’s not possible. I don’t care how corrupt the president of the United States is, they just don’t do that to themselves. The person who had true character was Gerald R. Ford. I felt more comfortable with him, and I trusted him more than anybody.

Think about that for awhile. Do we really want Bill Clinton, and his moral looseness, back in the White House? Remember that the Clinton’s are a package deal – always have been.

Taking coordination too far?

Greg Pollowitz over at NRO’s media blog (I seem like an NRO flack today) notes that Hillary is now coordinating her clothes with the podium:

Isn’t that taking things a bit far?

Picture via Reuters

Hillary’s Smear Standard

Liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen makes a good point about Hillary’s double standard when it comes to smears:

It is an odd standard Clinton has when it comes to smears. When the entertainment mogul David Geffen, once a Clinton supporter, called both Bill and Hillary liars, Hillary not only decried the remark as a particularly vivid example of the “politics of personal destruction,” but she also demanded that Barack Obama do the same — and return a $2,300 donation from Geffen. Yet when Clinton herself was asked to repudiate the abuse of Petraeus, she either saw no reason to do so or, much more likely, was afraid to alienate an important constituency, the 3.3 million members of MoveOn.org, who stand symbolically at the frontiers of New Hampshire and Iowa. She would, it seems, rather be president than be right.

Hillary is taking a calculated risk right now. She is trying to appear as a centrist without having to disavow the leftist base of her own party. She wants to win the primary first and then lay on the heavy centrist rhetoric to appeal to the middle. The question is whether her opponents can force her to take a principled stand and force her hand.

Is Hillary hiding from the press?

Michael Goodwin at the NY Daily News wonders why Hillary won’t face the press on a regular basis:

To say the cat’s got Hillary’s tongue doesn’t begin to address the mystery of why someone who wants to be President can’t speak spontaneously more often. When the goin’ gets tough, Clinton sends out a messenger or a carefully crafted printed statement. Would the imperial candidate be an imperial President? Is the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain?

Wolfson – naturally, he spoke for her when I called – argues that she talks with reporters often. Granted, she has chats with reporters in primary states about local issues and she has an occasional sitdown with her favorite friendlies at The New York Times. Sometimes reporters on the campaign trail can get close enough to shout out a question – if they can fight through the autograph seekers, schoolchildren and Secret Service agents.

But Clinton hasn’t had a full-scale press conference since last January, of the kind where she takes questions on virtually any subject from any reporter. It’s the sort of thing that Bush now does about once a month and Clinton’s hidey act seems to be unique among the major candidates.

Those who know Hillary’s history know that she has not had a good relationship with the press and if scandals continue to be an issue this relationship could get ugly again. President Bush has been criticized for hating the press and for secretive and paranoid tendencies, but ironically Hillary has all the same tendencies of this caricature developed by Bush haters. Her obvious dislike of the press, her unwillingness to be open and upfront, and her penchant for secrecy may come back to haunt her yet in this campaign.