Watched the debates last night. Hoo boy, another Saturday night and we rocked it hard.
For Hillary, it’s becoming a question of credulity, methinks. I do think she can do the job. She’d be competent, if not blazing and super charismatic and intelligent like her partner. And, surely Bill would be tossing in a few cents along with some advisors from his administration.
But, why, oh fucking why, does she have to oversell and overplay to the point where incredulous is the nicest word I can come up with for my feelings? I mean, come the fuck on, 35 years of experience? Well, yeah, undoubtedly you’ve been doing shit while living on the planet, but are you fucking telling me, Hillary Rodham, that your lawyering at the age of 25 is your groundwork for becoming the leader of the free world? And, I guess by extension, because and only because you are older than the other kids on the dais, you got more done?
(With almost a full month on living on the planet over Bill Richardson (born November 15, 1947), Hillary (born October 26, 1947) clearly has a vast wealth of greater experience as a “change agent.”)
I’m just not buying that angle, probably because I’ve interviewed too many job candidates and/or worked in non-profits for too fucking long. I mean, it’s great that Hillary was working for the Children’s Defense Fund back in the day, a couple years after it was founded. But, she wasn’t and still isn’t Marian Wright Edelman. So when Hill says she helped pass legislation that mandates that millions of disabled kids get to go to school, I say “yay” for being part of the team, but my skepticism creeps. How much you figure they let the new kid, the eager 25 year old fresh-faced with damp ink still on her sheepskin, do for the legal stuff compared to say what Edelman, an honored civil rights attorney did herself?
She worked for a group that advocated for legislation that would have been, I dunno, written up in Congress, rather than say by the newest lawyer in the non-profit place that can’t legally write actual legislation but only advise and educate and inform. Relevant experience, sure. But experience toward being President of the United States? Hmmm. (Actually, from surfing the web, it’s unclear to me whether Hillary was Edelman’s lawyer or worked for the CDF. If she was the attorney to the founder, she’s even one more step removed from the bill of which she’s proud.)
By the way, CDF is behind the Leave No Child Behind® Movement, which has worked out so well with GW.
Speaking of non-profits, I gotta say husband Bill is getting on my nerves in his post-presidency career. Lots of interviews and specials and whatnot have him reinventing philanthropy to be more accountable and business-like. Only I have been associated with one of the West Coast-based places that has been pointed to as a leader and innovator in that field for decades before Bill entered the fray or “reinvented.”
I know that politicians are full of shit, but it’s rare for me to have such specific first-hand knowledge to be able to cry a little bullshit on Bill and his Global Initiative. If he’s creating new stuff his own bad self, I wonder why his was offering to comp folks I know who would be presumably behind his curve.
Hill, sadly as a feminist, is becoming for me what I think Jesse Jackson is for a bunch of African Americans. I want to vote for her, because we are fellow travelers and I’m sure she was bummed about the failure of the ERA, and I want to tick the box for that moment in history. I do.
But, like black folks and Jesse, there’s a lot of doubt over a bit of a charlatan, who hyped his involvement with civil rights and MLK and who is cringeworthy when he takes on the role of spokesperson for a race. His candidacy was historic in the 1980s, but in the end he couldn’t carry a nation and lost support from his presumed (arrogantly) base.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is a feminist’s Jesse Jackson. And, it makes me sad.
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