The BBC's Paul Reynolds looks at the fading career of Mrs Hillary "Rodham" Clinton as US Secretary of State and like a blind man in a brothel completely fails to find the most interesting part of the story.A year on, people forget that Mrs Clinton and Mr Barack Hussein Obama turned the Democrat Party nomination into another edition of Thunderdome. By the time the convention rolled around, neither of them had secured enough standard delegates to secure the nomination because the Left couldn't figure out how to have another joint coronation unless Hillary divorced Bill for Barry. With The One relying on superdelegates and Mrs Clinton holding victories in two primaries that she won uncontested, Mrs Clinton, who had literally nothing to lose, could have turned the convention into a St Valentine's Day Massacre bloodbath. That would have left Mr Obama tainted as just another dirty-fighting politician and the party hopelessly divided and in danger of enjoying nothing more than a slim election victory that could scarcely be called a "mandate for change"–unless the entire electorate could be kept chloroformed for four years. That proving to be impractical, another idea was needed. Unfortunately, it was the candidates who had it.
So how did Mr Obama end up as President and Mrs Clinton as Secretary of State? That's where politics turns into farce because this is what happens when two not very intelligent people try to be clever. Mr Obama thought he could buy off his hated rival (Or Mrs Clinton thought she could blackmail her rival; it works either way). Since he couldn't guarantee Mrs Clinton a Supreme Court judgeship, he made her the offer (or she him) of running the State Department that he (or she) no doubt framed as some sort of latter day triumvirate with Mrs Clinton getting the Eastern Empire while Gaius Julius Soetoro Caesar got the West. Meanwhile, Mrs Clinton figured that as Secretary she could maintain her power base for a possible shot at the 2012 election if (or when) Mr Obama imploded like a certain peanut farmer.
The only problem was, both of them ended up screwing themselves instead of each other. Far from becoming the next Henry Kissinger with an American birth certificate, Mrs Clinton merely demonstrated how she knew as much about foreign policy as a nun does about throwing cocaine-fuelled orgies. Add the fact that her boss is equally as inept as he is narcissistic, and it's no wonder that the former First Lady is caught in another dysfunctional partnership. But then, Mr Obama isn't sleeping too well either as he discovers that his cunning plan has resulted in his handing his worst enemy a large hunting knife and asking her to stand close behind him.
Granted, there's a lot of entertainment value in this, but how hard you laugh depends on where you're sitting. This would be about as funny as watching a bunch clowns trying to put out a fire, but only if your seats are in Tehran or Beijing. Our problem in the civilised world is that we're smack in the front row ringside and the fire isn't fan-blown streamers; it's real. And the bucket of water they're getting ready to throw at us isn't filled with confetti; it's petrol.
You don't even want to know about what's in the seltzer bottle that Nancy Pelosi is carrying.
1 comment:
I used to think that the only phrase scarier than "President Hillary Clinton" was the phrase "Supreme Court Justice Hillary Clinton".
In a year however I've caught myself thinking how much less of a nightmare it would have been for H to be in charge. At least her agenda was more self serving than state building.
And worse still, I've actually thought fondly of the Bill Clinton years! At least when the economy started to tighten up he'd announce some tax rate reductions and thing would putter along again.
The BBC still seems to be very much enamored by Big O, I particularly like the "it was he..." section of the article when they are trying to put frosting on his screwups.
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