State of The Nation

When I see an idiot in high station I will add such terrors to his elevation as I can. I will put as many thorns in his crown as the leisure that I can snatch from the pressure of other pleasures will permit me to weave in. And neither the deprecation of his friends nor his own retaliatory lies shall stop the good work. - Ambrose Bierce

It’s no secret that I’m an avid reader and fan of The Nation magazine. Mrs. JP got me one of the best Xmas presents I ever got in a subscription to that wonderful old liberal rag last year and I fully intend on renewing my subscription.

A necessary antidote to the toxic hateful stupidity of parakeet liners such as the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic and the National Review, The Nation covers political, social and cultural items of great interest generally snooted over by the corrupt, lazy and increasingly rightwing corporate boardroom-controlled media. And they hire and commission on spec some of the best and brightest liberal journalists in America such as the recently-departed David Corn, Jeremy Scahill, Naomi Klein, Max Blumenthal and others to author well-researched articles that ought to be of interest to all Americans.

However, I have to take exception to Ellen Chesler’s paean to Hillary Clinton in the 11/26/07 edition. The cover story, “A Time to Choose”, offers profiles of the eight Democratic presidential contenders written by eight different people, among them Gore Vidal (on Dennis Kucinich, offering in the process a good partial explanation why Kucinich was back in 1993 unfairly named one of the Cleveland’s five worst mayors) and Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson (on Bill Richardson).

Since I’ve studied all eight candidates in depth, I’m in a position to say there’s not much to disagree with since many of the profiles (not all of which are outright endorsements. John Nichols, for example, who’d written Joe Biden’s profile, echoed my political sentiments when he wrote that he’d rather see Sen. Russ Feingold throw his hat in the ring. Amen, brother) are well-written and, for the most part, well-vetted.

Ellen Chesler’s contribution on Hillary Clinton begins with feminism, continues groping in blindness and ends with unabashed feminist partisanship. Actually, the angry feminism begins in the third paragraph when she writes, “She stumbled momentarily in the seventh round under withering personal attack by six angry men.”

There are so many very egregious lapses in factual remembrance packed into those 15 words that I’m virtually paralyzed with indecision as to where to start.

Firstly, Hillary was not “attacked” in a spate of misogynistic ad hominems. She was called on her equivocations and for opting for the non-committal scripted line over taking a stand. Secondly, Chesler all but claims that poor Hillary “stumbled” (there’s that word again) only after being victimized by this televised political gang-banging. As I’ve just said, criticisms aimed at her were partly about her fence-straddling rather than being the cause for it. Hillary clearly wasn’t prepared to take a stand on anything but abstract talking points and bland, well-worn criticisms of the Bush administration.

Thirdly, Chesler is guiltiest of hyperbole in saying that it was “six angry men” who’d attacked her. There were six men on stage that night but they weren’t angry as much as exasperated by Clinton’s pitch-pipe politics and finger to wind positioning. Dennis Kucinich wouldn’t pile on since he was, typically, gagged and marginalized and Bill Richardson wouldn’t have any of it and played a tubby Don Quixote to Hillary’s Dulcinea (in fact, the few men who’d bothered criticizing her, it ought to be noted, immediately came to heel after Richardson’s admonishment. Read the transcript, if you don’t believe me.).

Now, if we were to accept Chesler’s creative chronology of events of the debate a fortnight ago, it would go like this:

Hillary gets criticized. Hillary crumbles.

My question: In the immensely pressurized world of presidential politics, in which political injury is often much more serious than being needled by your party’s peers for certain campaign contributions from anti-progressive, self-dealing industries and for disingenuousness, is Hillary Clinton really the person you want in the hub of that high stakes, incalculably dangerous world? (Indeed, Chesler’s high dungeon at Hillary’s imagined rogering seems to run counter to the principles of true feminism, which would encourage battle with the male elite in order to prove equal to them, not to be indignant about such confrontations because of the so-called inequality of gender.)

Fortunately, we’ll never have to actually ask ourselves that question because Hillary Clinton is tougher than stale beef jerky and would make for a surprisingly strong president. So Hillary wouldn’t cave under criticism or pressures from Democratic has-beens and also-rans or Third World tyrants.

She would however, cave in to Republican tyrants like Bush and Cheney and Senate Republicans. She did it and not for the first time last September when she cast yet another disastrous vote to add her voice to the growing chorus condemning Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization (something Chesler conveniently sidesteps.).

And since we’re talking about pirouetting in the pasture, I had to bark out a laugh when I read about how tough Hillary was on Michael Mukasey (even though she’s not on the Judiciary Committee).

Funny, that, because I don’t seem to recall hearing any “impassioned opposition” to Mukasey during crunch time. That may have something to do with the fact that Hillary wasn’t there for the up-and-down confirmation vote (neither, for that matter, were the other three Democrats vying for the Oval Office. McCain played hooky, too.)

Did she withhold her vote to once again keep from solidifying her position on Mukasey’s fitness to be AG because she didn’t want to be perceived as soft on terror, which has proved time and again a still-formidable boogeyman to use against Democrats? And is Mukasey already so synonymous with torture that opposing him, someone who was himself as evasive and non-committal as Hillary, would be construed as being weak on terrorism?

Clinton’s, Biden’s, Obama’s and Dodd’s no-shows didn’t affect the 53-40 outcome. But their cowardly refusal to make their verbal opposition known and official regardless of how they’d predicted the outcome isn’t exactly a profile in courage nor is anything close to the kind of leadership that we already desperately need now let alone from 2009 on. Not a single Republican voted against Mukasey and only three withheld their votes. Hillary and her rivals actually succeeded in once again making the government-loathing Republican party look more committed to their core principles, as rancid as they are, and to the Democratic process than even the Democrats themselves.

Elsewhere, Chesler claims that health care is Hillary’s “signature issue.” Uh huh. Well, let’s just conveniently forget that Iran really is, in light of her recent vote and her own saber-rattling of late.

Let’s explore, instead, Chesler herself conveniently forgetting that Clinton had studiously avoided talking substantively about universal health care for the first 6-7 months of her campaign. Just as she forgot that Hillary didn’t unveil her own “health care plan” until long after Obama, Edwards, Richardson and Kucinich had rolled out their own.

Just as Chesler conveniently forgot that that Hillary’s plan, while giving little patient perks, primarily is dedicated to further bloat a managed health care industry that’s been licking its chops and rubbing it hands waiting for a plan such as this. In fact, it’s exactly the kind of health care plan that reflects the massive donations made to the presidential campaign of the person who’d largely written it. This, in spite of an all-but unanimous consensus among progressive voters that a single payer, not-for-profit plan is the way to go.

Still, at least she didn’t give a target date of January 2013 for a universal health care plan as Obama did back in March.

Finally, Chesler gets around to telling us what I suspect to be her overarching rationale for her endorsement: “I am supporting Hillary Clinton because I think she is the best candidate for this job, but I shamelessly want her to win because she is a woman.” Ah, finally, some truth.

But I have to ask in response: Is it really so important that we make feminist history by putting in the White House an “independent”, empowered woman who chooses to use her popular husband’s surname instead of Rodham when we’re still in the middle of making history of the most disastrous variety, a history that Hillary wants to see extended until at least the end of her first term? A history that she seems dedicated to extending to a country east of Iraq on yet another pack of long-digested lies?