Hillary Clinton: Better the devil you know

Hillary Clinton should absolutely become American’s 45th President. In the words of the respected moderate former Governor of Massachusetts and current libertarian vice-presidential candidate, William Weld – “Hillary is the most qualified presidential candidate in 2016”.

As Oprah Winfrey rightfully reflected – “There’s only one choice and you don’t have to like her”. Americans don’t seem to like Hillary, but she is the only viable choice against Donald Trump and the Libertarian’s private prison advocate, Gary Johnson. The contest is only between him (Trump) and her.

Long before Trump became the unlikely nominee of the Republican Party, he was a champion of Hillary as a Senator from his home state. He also donated generously to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Foundation. Trump has repeatedly called Hillary, ‘Lying Crooked Hillary’ throughout his obnoxious and xenophobic Rodrigo Duterte-like campaign and made his efforts more competitive than assumed.

The self-described “multi-billionaire successful businessman” has projected himself as a populist, criticising her for being elitist. Yet, as an elitist himself, he has not paid any income taxes in the last two decades, benefiting from loopholes in America’s generous tax system that favour the super-rich. He wants to build walls against Mexicans, yet his business empire continues to benefit from the cheap labour of illegal (mostly Mexican) immigrants. He criticises Hillary’s marriage and the sexual misdeeds of her husband, but has been married multiple of times and been accused of sexual assault by many credible women. He has been critical of the Clinton’s charitable efforts, but is known for misappropriating donations to his charity efforts, including purchasing a six-foot-tall portrait of himself for 20,000 dollars.

He runs his campaign, not as a serious mainstream candidate, but as an aspiring actor, auditioning to be on Saturday Night Live. His message is as narrow as that of the campaigns of Pat Buchanan from decades ago, but he has managed to bring the extreme right wing perspective to the Republican mainstream. He has managed to gallivant the David Duke segment of society and pushed Republican heavyweights, such as George Bush Sr and Mitt Romney, to abandon their party in this year’s election.

Seriously, how did Donald Trump get this far? In looking at the Democrat party nominee, I can’t help but wonder which Hillary is leading in the polls. Is it the Clinton of almost 50 years ago that was celebrated in the campus of Wellesley College, when she gave a celebrated convocation student speech that reflected the voice of her generation?

“We’re not interested in social reconstruction, its human reconstruction that we want,” she said, lecturing a Richard Nixon Republican apologist who was on the very same stage. “Every protest, every dissent – whether it’s an individual academic paper or Founder’s parking lot demonstration – is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age….that attempt at forging for many of us over the past four years has meant coming to terms with our humanness.”

How about the Hillary who spoke at a United Nations Conference on Women in China, reminding a communist nation and the world that women’s rights are human rights?

Or would it be the Hillary who helped calculate the execution date of a mentally challenged African American, Ricky Ray Rector, to coincide with a vote that was taking place in the more conservative Southern states in 1992, in order to construct the image of Bill Clinton as a moderate-Reagan Democrat, rather than a Michael Dukakis liberal? Or would it be the Hillary, who called young African-American men “super-predators” and on the advice of a Republican advisor, Dick Morris, helped push a crimes bill to win the re-election of her husband as a moderate Democrat.

That bill is noted for sending an untold number of non-violent Americans, mostly African-Americans, to prison. This helped populate the American prisons with African American men, according to a news report, with “more than the total prison populations in India, Argentina, Canada, Lebanon, Japan, Germany, Finland, Israel and England combined”. I hope African-Americans will begin to view the Clintons more critically and shake their blind love affair with them.

What did Bill Clinton mean, when challenged by the daring Black Lives Matter activists earlier this year, when he said – “Africa is a place where black lives matter”, and listed a slew of charitable work his wife has been involved in. Are African-Americans second class citizens, a charity or a defect problem yet to be fixed? Not American citizens? Has the American population and the media adequately scrutinised the Clintons’ charitable Foundation? What happened to the billions raised for the immediate needs of Haiti when Bill Clinton was the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, but mostly ended up building factories benefiting boutique stores in the United States and not Haitians?

The craziness that is the campaign of Donald Trump, its antics and dramas, stupidity and open racism, has denied Americans a debate on real issues this year. It has helped to shield the many shortcomings of Hillary Clinton and provided her with a cover that she did not deserve. Americans do have valid reasons to doubt Hillary Clinton and question her motives. Her blind ambition, not the commitment she has for public office, is what turns most away from the Clinton brand.

But, then again, she is running against Donald Trump, who is essentially unqualified to be President. In 1992, at the Democratic National Convention, its keynote speaker, Senator Zell Miller, highlighted why a progressive political institution is important to America – “I know what Dan Quayle means when he says it’s best for children to have two parents,” he said. “You bet it is. And it would be nice for them to have trust funds, too. We can’t all be born rich and handsome and lucky. And that’s why we have a Democratic Party”.

He might as well have been reflecting on the biography of Donald Trump. In the words of William Weld – “She (Hillary) deserves to have people vouch for her other than members of the Democratic National Committee”.

I hope that is what is about to happen and I hope she becomes the next President of the United States – not because she is an exceptional candidate, but because she is by far the better candidate compared to Trump. Between the devil-we-know and the devil we don’t, Americans will certainly be better off with the devil they have known for the last 50 years.


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.