Why Hillary Wouldn't Be Welcome Back at the White House

Hillary Clinton seeks the nomination of the Democratic Party to the candidacy for President. She is the least likely to succeed in that office, having alienated many in her previous occupation of the White House as First Lady. Not only did she play an equal role as her husband in the many scandals that enveloped them, she evinced a truly frightening lack of interest in constitutional niceties as well as a callous disregard for the careers of the many who toiled in security or service positions in the White House or support functions. Will any of them welcome her back to Washington with open arms? That is doubtful.

It would be nice if I could support her as a smart and politically savvy woman candidate, but her flaws run so deep that they threaten to crack her façade into a hundred pieces. Even her most vociferous defenders from way back have fallen away and are now critics. The LA Weekly recently called her "a ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt." And Nora Ephron, once a dyed-in-the-wool Hillary apologist, now writes in the Huffington Post blog that Hillary "will do anything to win, who...doesn't really take a position unless it's completely safe" and that her own husband "can't stand her position on the war (and doesn't) trust her as far as you can spit."

A recent issue of The Nation says this in an article on the New York senator: 'Opting for Edwards or Obama--who are often perceived as more liberal--becomes an attractive proposition for feminists who believe "gender is not the only thing, not even the most important thing in feminism," as Center For New Words program director Jaclyn Friedman puts it. "Hillary's not my friend. She's not actually progressive. The fact that she's a woman is an unfortunate red herring." Feminist principles may be better served, she claims, by electing a truly liberal candidate who will move us further toward a more progressive and therefore more equitable future--an imperative that feels all the more urgent after eight years of Bush. "Things are so bad in this country, and the person we elect is going to be so important," she says. "The whole put-a-woman-in-the-White House seems too abstract and theoretical, a middle-class luxury." '

The Secret Service would likely not only not welcome her back, but would also begin wearing helmets on duty. She is said to have a good arm, and is in the habit of throwing objects. Not only at Bill, who probably deserves being used for target practice, but also at Secret Service and others. Would this behavior be tolerated by any other government official? Hardly.

Not only would Secret Service be unwilling to get caught in any throwing or shouting match, they would hardly be expected to put their lives on the line with the same dedication as any other incumbent. In the Clintons first term, they explored the possibility of hiring private protection. The Secret Service, in spite of the obvious professionalism in defending President Reagan during the assassination attempt, was treated like servants by the Clintons. Hillary had them carry luggage, a risky distraction for agents who are supposed to scan crowds and have their hands free to react instantly. Hillary is known to have thrown a book at an agent for "driving too slow" and once threw a briefing book at her husband which hit an agent instead. It is mystifying to read in multiple sources of their openly cursing at the Service agents, who are sworn to protect them. Does it evince a deep disrespect for law enforcement? Members of the Secret Service were once proud of a tradition of lifelong confidentiality, but the abuse from the Clintons cracked the veneer of silence.

The Clintons even explored the possibility of replacing the Secret Service with private guards or the FBI. The Clintons' director of White House security, Craig Livingstone, wrote a four-page memo in which he said he "recommended that the Secret Service be dumped in favor of the FBI." The Service went ballistic and the plan was dumped.

The Clintons' paranoia extended to White House staff. The travel bureau and even cooks and gardeners were asked to fill out 33-question surveys about their political affiliations. The travel bureau scandal was totally unnecessary. The incumbents have the right to release any employee of the travel bureau at any time, but the manufactured character assassination was completely unneeded and borders on whimsical cruelty.

Workers in the White House correspondence office were summarily fired on the pretext that it was to achieve a 25% reduction in staff. These nonpartisan civil employees were replaced by patronage employees, who allowed the mail to pile to the ceiling and reportedly threw out bushels of letters.

While I am on the subject of firing government employees, what about the recent brouhaha over President Bush firing a handful of US attorneys. On the surface, it is a minor affair, only a handful when all 93 are routinely let go with each new administration. But that was not always the rule -- it only began with, you guessed it, Bill Clinton. Past presidents had not made blanket dismissals, in order to avoid disrupting their ongoing cases. Why would Bill and Hillary risk crippling the prosecution of hundreds of complicated cases? Just because they could?

The one president that would-be candidate Hillary most resembles is ironically Richard Nixon, on whose impeachment committee she labored as a young attorney. She joined the team of forty-some lawyers at the invitation of John Doar, where she joined the inside group that drafted a gag order preventing the Judiciary Committee from cross-examining witnesses or drafting their own articles of impeachment. Hillary was surprisingly good at ignoring how the Constitution works, with its legal safeguards and balances. She also drafted language aimed at broadening the scope of impeachable offenses so that they were not limited to criminal offenses. This effort boomeranged on her like instant karma when she had to rescue her husband from a similar effort.

Ultimately the biggest she took away from Watergate was that compromise with a criminal investigation is fatal. Nixon stonewalled and then yielded piece by piece. Hillary learned never to yield, but instead to attack the accuser like a junkyard dog while hiding or destroying evidence. Her own Whitewater papers turned up in the White House after two years of subpoenas. Should we turn a blind eye to that kind of duplicity and fall for her characterizing it all as "a vast right-wing conspiracy"?

There remains The Bill Problem. While Hillary reaped boatloads of sympathy as the wronged wife, she will not reap a similar benefit as a wronged Chief Executive. Merely by switching places with him in a new Clinton incumbency does not lessen the damage suffered by a President when a spouse strays. In fact the opposite would happen, as it would be far worse for her stature in the world. She would suffer in world opinion and damage our negotiating ability when the inevitable "bimbo eruption" surfaces yet again.

Regrettably it seems that Hillary Clinton is better suited to toiling in the Senate than inflicting the terrible damage to the White House and the Constitution that only she can enact. Her flagrant abuse of the laws of this country, and the fact that she was never forced to own up to her law-breaking and law-bending make her a poor choice for any national office.