JAMES TARANTO: HILLARY CLINTON RUNNING ON HALF EMPTY- A CAMPAIGN OF STEROTYPES
http://online.wsj.com/articles/running-on-half-empty-1417727817
Remember when she was inevitable? Ladbroke’s still rates Hillary Clinton a heavy favorite in 2016, paying 4 to 9 on a bet that she’ll take the Democratic nomination and 11 to 8—slightly more than even money—that she’ll be elected president. But if it were our intention to place a bet on Mrs. Clinton, we’d wait a while. Our suspicion is that the odds are about to lengthen.
“There’s plenty of bad news for [Mrs.] Clinton in last month’s Quinnipiac poll, the first national survey conducted since the November election,” observes the Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone. “Clinton runs 1 point behind Mitt Romney, 1 point ahead of Chris Christie, 4 points ahead of Paul Ryan and 5 points ahead of Jeb Bush, Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee. None of this can be blamed on low off-year turnout; the poll is of registered voters.” For what it’s worth, the Ladbroke’s Mrs. Clinton is having difficulties with retailing as well. Yesterday she spoke at Georgetown University, her husband’s alma mater. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank notes that when she “spoke in the same place a year ago, the room was reportedly packed”—so packed, apparently, that Milbank couldn’t get in. She was there again in October, and the hall “again ‘was filled to capacity,’ the campus newspaper reported; some students lined up overnight and others were turned away.” (How Georgetown can afford all these pricey speeches we’ll never know.)
Yesterday, according to Milbank, “half of the 700 seats in the place were empty.” An optimist would say they were half-full, but we live in pessimistic times. “Roughly half a dozen people rose to applaud, and for a terrifying moment it appeared they might be the only ones standing. But slowly, lazily, most of the others struggled to their feet.” Really, “terrifying”? Ambassador Chris Stevens could not be reached for comment.
“Those who bothered to listen,” Milbank writes, “could have heard the rationale for Clinton’s candidacy.” OK, let’s listen as Milbank quotes her: “We know when women contribute in making and keeping peace, entire societies enjoy better outcomes,” she said. “Women leaders, it has been found, are good at building coalitions across ethnic and sectarian lines and speaking up for other marginalized groups. . . . They act more as mediators to help foster compromise and to try to organize, to create the changes they seek.” So the rationale for Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy is that she’s a woman and women are wonderful.
To be sure, this was in keeping with the theme of the occasion (a conference called “Smart Power: Security Through Inclusive Leadership” sponsored by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security). But there’s further evidence that the central theme of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign—if a campaign it is—is sex stereotypes. Stand With Hillary, a super PAC supporting Mrs. Clinton, is out with a new 3½-minute ad featuring a country song likewise titled “Stand With Hillary.”
National Journal has the full cringe-inducing lyrics (with value added in the form of sarcastic commentary from NJ’s Emma Roller):
I’ve been thinkin’ about one great lady like the women in my life [“Women” ≠ “one great lady”]
She’s a mother, a daughter, and through it all, she’s a lovin’ wife [Are these really the first credentials you want to cite for supporting someone running for president?]
Oh, there is something about her, this great lady, caring, hard-working, once a First Lady [expertly rhymes “lady” with “lady”]
She fights for country and my family, now it’s time for us to stand up
We’d say Roller’s first complaint is overly pedantic, but the other two are on target, and the second makes the important substantive point. To which we would add that, while by all appearances Mrs. Clinton is indeed “a lovin’ wife,” she is also a long-sufferin’ one, and the Clinton marriage would be great material for an actual country song, if not a whole album.
The song does not mention that Mrs. Clinton served in the U.S. Senate or the State Department—though it alludes to the latter by dropping the title of her Foggy Bottom memoir (“And there’s some hard choices that need to be made”). It does assert that she’s “got vision,” but says little about what it is she sees.
In case great lady, mother, daughter, lovin’ wife and former first lady don’t get the point across, the lyrics exhort: “Guys put your boots on, and let’s smash this ceiling!” If you’ve ever wondered what an actual glass ceiling looks like, this video won’t satisfy your curiosity: It shows someone smashing a car windshield (which has already been vandalized with spray paint).
“This is a smart way for [Mrs.] Clinton to position herself,” Milbank asserts. “Last time, she largely avoided campaigning on her potential to be the first female president.” But she lost to a man who largely avoided campaigning on his potential to be the first black president. Other countries have had female leaders, but can anyone imagine Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher or Angela Merkel asking her countrymen to vote for her on the ground that “women . . . are good at building coalitions across ethnic and sectarian lines and speaking up for other marginalized groups”?
Mrs. Clinton is starting to remind us of President Obama’s other secretary of state, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat. Around this time 12 years ago, we started to notice John Kerry’s compulsion to bring up his service in Vietnam. It soon became clear that he had very little to say apart from that.
None of which necessarily means that Mrs. Clinton won’t be the 45th president of the United States. Kerry, after all, wound up easily taking his party’s nomination and probably would have been elected if voters had soured on George W. Bush in 2004 instead of 2005. As for Mrs. Clinton, Milbank notes: “The bad news is she’s now tied to Obama’s foreign policy at a time when the world seems to be falling apart.“ But she’s a great lady—and, through it all, a lovin’ wife.
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