Wait a Minute, Mr. Postman…
March 24th, 2007 by 
Caroline Spector
Dear Hillary,
We don’t know each other, so it may seem a bit presumptuous for me to be writing to you. But after your eight years in the White House, and your seven years as Senator, I feel as if I know you just a little. And that’s why I’m writing now, because, girl, you need some talking to.
I know you’ve spent a lifetime in politics. You’ve been a tireless advocate for children’s rights. You were a Republican who became a Democrat after the assassination of Martin Luther King. You also worked for the committee that was investigating Richard Nixon during the Watergate Scandal. As First Lady, you tried to implement universal healthcare, but were stymied by your political adversaries. Your life has been one primarily of service.
Sadly, this is not what people know you for. And that’s the problem. While I think you’d do quite well as President — and Bill as the first First Man would be a thing to behold — I think the baggage that you’re bringing to the table may far outweigh your positives. And given the absolute shambles the country is in right now, we can’t afford another Republican in the White House.
You’ve got an image problem that no amount of nifty TV ads is going to cure. And sadly, the first hit to your image is one you inflicted yourself. It’s the ridiculous and infamous “cookie” remark. You managed to piss off about half of the women in the country with that. And those women won’t forget it. Smart women I know are still pissed at you about that. Look, it’s moronic. But it’s the truth. You showed contempt for women who chose a different career path than you, and they will never forgive that. (We could have a nice long chat over tea about the whole “Mommy Wars” thing. But suffice it to say, you lobbed a whopping, big-ass grenade into the middle of that – and in such situations, there is always blowback.)
The second problem is tied to the first problem: Bill.
I totally get why you love him and why you stayed with him. He’s whip smart, charismatic as hell, and probably a fun guy to be around who makes you laugh. And the fact that he was, you know, Leader of the Free World was probably pretty cool, too. But Bill has, well, a dick problem.
And said dick problem has had a strange outcome for you. All the women you pissed off over the cookie remark think you’re a hypocrite for staying with him, especially after the whole Lewinsky matter. (A tough lady-lawyer would have left him, right?) And the feminists think you’re a sell-out for staying with him because it made you look weak.
I think both positions miss the point – it’s your marriage and whatever you and Bill have worked out is your own damn business, but when you’ve chosen to live your life on the public stage, don’t be surprised when people start having opinions about your private matters.
That’s just the tip of the personality problem. Despite the fact that you’re funny, and have managed to raise a lovely daughter who has, you know, manners, there are people who just find you grating. Sadly, you don’t have Bill’s easy charisma. And it doesn’t help that over the years you’ve stopped being a person to many people and are now an icon for everything horrible they can think of.
The other problem is your record on the War in Iraq. You voted for the resolution to allow Bush the power to invade, and you haven’t bitten the bullet and admitted it was a huge fucking mistake. Look, I know you don’t want to be tarred with the “She Doesn’t Support the Troops” brush, but honestly, you screwed up. Maybe your vote then was a political gamble – at that time it appeared that Team Bush would rule the planet for a thousand years. But damn, girl, how about having some spine? If I knew the Iraq invasion was bullshit, why the heck didn’t you?
I don’t know what political lessons you took from your trial by fire in The White House. It appears you chose to fly under the radar in the Senate and have actually made those Republicans who hunted you and Bill change their tune. But if you think that the specters from Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, Vince Foster, and the Healthcare debacle won’t be unearthed during the next presidential campaign, you’re smoking crack. And there will be lines of right-wing pundits salivating at the chance to pretend that it will really be Bill running the country if you’re elected.
I wish to hell that none of these things were going to happen, but you and I know differently. Even though you’ve got good poll numbers right now, that’s not going to stay the case once the dogs of political war are set loose. Of course, everyone who runs for office has to put up with this crap. But they already know how to assassinate you. Look what they did to Bill during the last two years of his administration. If you win the Democratic nomination, yes, I’ll vote for you for president, but I’ll also be voting for a losing candidate.
I think all of this sucks, but it had to be said. Do I think you could run the country? Of course. Do I think your policies would be better than what we have now? Shit, yeah. But you can’t win. And even if by some freak chance you do win, they will crucify you.
I’m sorry, but it had to be said. By all means, run for office. But when things go terribly wrong, don’t say you weren’t warned.
Posted in Caroline, History, Politics, The Big Dog | 
March 24th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Amen, Caroline, amen.
Yeah, she could run the country; yeah, if she wins the nomination, I’ll be voting for her, but damn…
In some ways, the “1984″ spot nailed it perfectly: droning on and on, saying little to nothing. And I’m way tired of hearing her non-response responses to far too many kinds of questions. Not everything needs poll data before you take a stand, or it shouldn’t.
As a female-type person, I’m somewhat chagrined that I don’t support her whole-heartedly, but I don’t. She’s far from my ideal candidate.
March 24th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I hang out in Left Blogistan a lot, as many of us Brainiacs do. As a matter of fact, Caroline turned me on to Buzzflash, which led to the rest of it. This informs or perverts my opinions on the subject, take your pick.
First, I don’t respond well to her emotionally. She just feels wrong and phony to me, and always has.
Second, the war that’s breaking out between the netroots and the traditional Democratic power structure is heating up. Hillary is a big-money top-down corporatist Democrat, and I’m very much in support of the bottom-up grassroots model of organization and policy creation. The corporatists have been running things way too unilaterally for way too long, and, as a result, the middle class is badly damaged.
Money and power is flowing only to the top, because they make the policy and laws, and screw everyone below them. And this kills a nation like ours.
Nothing wrong with a little oligarchy in your system; it’s the American dream to claw your way to the top of the heap. But we’re way out of balance, and the rules have become completely unfair.
And Hillary will continue that trend. She’s a pure pragmatic corporate politician, not a leader or an idealist. (Yeah, I know ‘idealist’ has become a dirty word. Fuck all the criminals and idiots who let that word become a slur.)
No more triangulation, trying to play it safe, get that razor-thin majority, don’t make a mis-step, don’t be the nail that sticks up type of political behavior any more. Revolution is in the air, and it’s happening in the Democratic party. It may fail, but I’m on the other side from Hillary.
I think she has the same disease that hurt Bush I so badly in his re-election attempt. He wasn’t trying to become Prez to do anything. He just wanted to be the Prez. I have no fucking idea what Hillary would really do, about nearly every issue, if she wins.
That said, I’ll vote for her and send money to other Dem candidates, what little I have, for the 2008 cycle.
The Republican party is now run by nothing but violent sociopathic thugs — my apologies to any idealistic conservatives out there still clinging to your illusions that they represent you in any way at all — but we have at least the possibility of sanity and balance in the future of the Democratic Party.
Hillary is, I think, banking on winning with the mood of the country in 2008 being ‘Anybody But a Republican’.
I guess we’ll see how that plays out.
March 25th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Hard to argue with your points, Caroline. I already find myself frustrated, fed up, and disgusted with the 2008 presidential election — and it’s only March 2007.
Sometimes I wish we could pick our presidents the way the MacArthur Foundation picks its Fellows. Just surprise some brilliant, unsuspecting citizen with a phone call: “You, pack your bags and get your butt to Washington. You’re President.” “But I was just about to cure cancer!” “Well, you’ll have to finish that in your spare time after you balance the budget and host a Middle East summit. Suck it up, punk.”
Chris Rock had some relevant comments about the current crop of candidates in the cold open for the March 17 SNL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RlVtsAvKfs
March 25th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
The Chris Rock thing was painfully funny, and, I’m thinkin’, pretty accurate.
(By the way, I’m not the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.)
March 25th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Steve said: (By the way, I’m not the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.)
You’ll eventually have to submit a DNA sample to prove this.
As did all the rest of us.
March 26th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Love the video.
Full agreement - and well stated. The linchpin (for me) was “And it doesn’t help that over the years you’ve stopped being a person to many people and are now an icon for everything horrible they can think of.” It is bitter irony that the same rage Left Blogistan feels vis-à-vis GWB is the poison that keeps the most qualified Democratic candidate from being a lock - because sectors of the Right have adopted her as an equivalent Queen of Darkness.
I think she could do a good job. I’m glad her political enemies shot her healthcare plan down (living here with socialized medicine - cheaper for a reason), but that’s almost a decade and a half ago. She’s done reasonably well in Congress. It’s a gamble, but a fair one, to shoot for Anybody But A Republican - but that’s a negative statement, not a driver, and doesn’t get people to the polls (as we saw last cycle). Changes in position to match polls? Endemic among politicians - not much to be done.
But there’s too much baggage. Ask Jeb.
March 26th, 2007 at 6:48 am
The Republican party is now run by nothing but violent sociopathic thugs — my apologies to any idealistic conservatives out there still clinging to your illusions that they represent you in any way at all — but we have at least the possibility of sanity and balance in the future of the Democratic Party.
And we take the flipside, looking at Right Rushistan, where the opinions run something like
“The Democratic Party is run by corrupt, cynical, babykilling communists who hate this country and all it stands for - apologies to any idealistic liberals who still think there is anything there but the perpetuation and growth of stifling bureaucracy and to look forward to, ’cause all your leaders care about is cash. At least we lost Congress, and the bad’uns were purged, so there is a possibility of sanity and balance in the Republican party.”
Straw men burn merrily, but the smoke makes me choke.
March 26th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Alden — From what I’ve read, the seriously-informed Right and the seriously-informed Left get their information from such different sources these days, that they are operating from much different basic ‘facts’ in forming their opinions.
I read an article recently, which seems intuitively true, that everybody thinks they’re a maverick within their own side, operating much more rationally and with less partisan intent than everyone else.
Your post, and likely mine, illustrate that belief pretty well, I think.
Both of us are likely sitting here thinking “Hey, he’s a smart guy. How can he honestly believe that? He’s so obviously wrong, he must be lying.”
I’m not a fan of the Democratic establishment, but I instinctively revulse from the Republican Party and everything I perceive it to stand for. This isn’t new. It goes back at least as far as Nixon. And I grew up politically in an era where a Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, was egregiously screwing the pooch.
Stripped of all subtleties, I think this is where my core emotional belief ends up for me:
Democrats want to steal your money and fuck your wife and/or daughter.
Republicans want to imprison or enslave people like me.
A pox on both parties, as they’re presently constituted, but I do honestly think that the current Democratic Party is merely corrupt. The Republican party has gone homicidally insane over the past few decades.
I know which one I have to support, when it comes right down to it.
March 26th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
The bottom line for me is that politics is a filthy rotten business. And anyone who lives in politics for any amount of time is likely to get dirty.
The question is: Do they like being dirty or do they actual try and stay clean?
The irony is that this is nothing new. Look at political writings from any period in mankind’s history and you’ll see the bitterest of invectives being hurled at everyone.
March 26th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
You know, it’s so easy to miss the little things. See, my gamut of presidents covers from Carter on - my examples of Dem presidents are Carter and Clinton. Contrasted against twelve years of Regan and Bush 41.
I never saw Nixon as anything more than a historical footnote - can you imagine? Still don’t - I have no visceral reaction to the man.
I really needed your post to see that there really are information imbalances that are hard to take into account… like not living or being “involved” when Vietnam was rolling - or Korea - that there are decades of malfesance and ill-will that don’t really… register. I mean, I know about J. Edgar Hoover, but in a WWII B-reel sort of way, not a CNN sort of way. It comes home to me that the NYT wish to turn Iraq into Vietnam isn’t dishonesty - it’s the context, bugaboo, and yardstick of a generation and more.
Us new arrivals don’t have the baggage of the times - but we also don’t have the experience those times gave us under our belt. Most of the players have changed - but some of the most influential are the same as back then.
Hard to untangle.
I think the most-informed Right and Left should get their data from the same sources(not to say that they do) - that they should read their bitterest (intelligent) critics as well as their staunchest supporters. If for no other reason, they need to know what the “enemy” is thinking, of course… but postulating that we’re all in this together, Making It Work needs to be the first priority.
Fortunately, there are folks on both sides of the aisle that still get it done (sometimes) rather than grandstanding.
I’ll grant you this - I suspect I know where you’re coming from on the whole “homicidal Republicans” idea. It is sure that (since Johnson) there has been a lot more war prep and bellicose talk from Republicans than from Democrats. If taken raw, the upshot of this tendency is that Republicans make war, and are homicidal, QED. I think this might be an unwarranted simplification, but it’s sure understandable.
If I might offer a counterpoint - my dad worked in nuclear policy for a while. He’s a Christian (with all the “Thou Shalt Not Kill” drilled into him) and grew up in the 60s, and had some serious qualms about working with such terrible engines of destruction.
I noted a graph above his desk a few years ago that plotted the deaths in war per capita worldwide. It trended upward, sharp peak at the American Civil War, rising higher at WWI and WWII - turning asymptotic, it seemed - and then fell off sharply to pre-1600s levels (maybe lower). The cliff was the advent of nukes. You have a lower chance of dying in a war now than has ever been the case in most of history.
As I was looking for a copy of this graph, I found the following page, which makes some interesting points:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/WSJ.ART.HTM
War is not the biggest culprit as far as human misery goes. I think there can be reasoned argument as to whether a well-fought war in the right place might reduce the body count in the mid-to-long run. That’s certainly the desire of myself and all the other conservatives I know - at least those that don’t need to be on medications.
I think most people are less maverick than the extremes that are driving the bus right now. Sometimes I do think someone has to be lying, because they surely can’t be that dumb - but I have to regain self-control and tell myself that we’re working with different datasets, and he (or I) may well be working from incomplete data - so I have to listen and do my share of the work to either inform him - or myself.
Really, though, core emotional beliefs really do account for a lot of what happens after.
March 26th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Just a quick response to your first few paras, Alden, since I’m at work.
If Carter was the first one you remember, then you don’t remember when we actually believed that we could make the world a better place. You came in as a colder, more cynical age began.
Carter was a good man who tried to live by the Golden Rule and got fucked to death for it; Clinton is an amoral corporate politician who I instinctively like. Restating my opinions about the Republican Presidents I’ve seen would merely be inflammatory invective.
Part of my mourning on this subject is about the loss of my youth. But a bigger part is the loss of belief that things were going to get better. I’ve lived in horror since the 80’s. This may or may not make sense to you, given that you didn’t see those earlier days before, and would perhaps have viewed them differently.
I’m not just a grumpy old man talking about how things are going to hell in a handbasket.
It doesn’t have to be this way. This planet could be paradise. We could make it so.
It won’t happen in the US unless the modern Republican Party is destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up, and the modern Democratic party is overthrown from within. IMHO, of course
March 27th, 2007 at 3:15 am
Carter was just after I was born until I was five.
I only remember the aftershocks.
******
I have a somewhat different apocalyptic view. The “planet” is better than it’s ever been - much less poor, dirty, nasty, brutish and short (as in lifespan). There are questions about whether it’s too late to stop certain destructive processes in the environmental sense, but that’s too fraught to add to this thread.
I formed my worldview from two idealistic sources as a child - sci-fi and church. One gave me my Utopia of the physical, the other my Utopia of the moral. I remember the elation of Pons and Fleischmann’s cold fusion claims, because my dad had described the dreams of a fusion catalyst to me when I was 7. He was working on inertial confinement fusion. The future was bright, and in just a few more years, fusion (or solar or …) would give us the means to escape the fuels trap and create this paradise. Believe me, it’s clear in my mind’s eye as well. I Believe.
I went into the sciences to contribute to this Utopia of the physical, and have come to understand that it’s not quite so simple. If we had a massive budget going into alternate fuels, results would not suddenly pop into being. There are some places where the mechanical search of parameter spaces would be much faster - but those searches might not even be in the right ballpark. The key to this problem is having the right person in the right place with the right insight. If the key idea were already there, you’d see a Manhattan Project spring into being before your eyes. Those corrupt money men on both sides? They know a money-maker when they see one.
On the moral Utopia side… well, this country could be a paradise if people would spend as much time working for the good of others as they spend watching corrosive and discouraging crap on TV. Not going to happen right away, and I’ll postulate that the political parties have nothing to do with this, and no power to change it. This is grassroots.
The law of unintended consequences bites us from all sides. There are so many men and women of good will who work so hard for that paradise - if not for the world, at least in their community. Failing that, at least in their home.
Nothing is simple. It takes a long time, much effort, and insane luck to get things right - and even then, keeping them right is Herculean task. We could make the world a paradise - if we were more than we are. If men were angels.
I’m an optimist about that, though - I think that kind of change can take place. That comes from church, though.
March 27th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Rats. Allergies are wrecking me this week. Pollen count in our area is throug the roof. So, I won’t be posting much until this gets better . I’m just plain stupid now.
I just thought I’d say that I’m glad you’re posting here, Alden. I enjoy reading your comments and enjoy chatting with you. I suspect that we sometimes feel like a den of (liberal) vipers to you in some ways, and you’re consistently extremely graceful in your posts.
I agree with you that the world is a much, much better place for some of us. Not so much for others. Africa may be crashing to continent-wide chaos as they lose so many people to AIDS, for instance. And the First World still maintains its lifestyle and luxuries on the back of the Third World. Saw a survey on American per capita consumption of resources, compared to elsewhere on the planet, and it’s pretty shocking. Wil dig it up when I’m smarter. The US is very much #1. Japan is #2 if I remember. Outside of about the top five nations, the percentiles go down VERY quickly.
I massively agree with you on the fusion thing. It and functional nanotech are the big hopes I have for civilization surviving the next century, when we start hitting all the limits and the tipping points. Workable fusion means, essentially, unlimimted safe energy and resources. All the rules get blown away, the ones that have triggered so many wars for control of resources.
Fusion also means we get to colonize the planets, maybe the galaxy. Out of our fragile egg-basket.
I also agree with you about the human nature points and helping each other. And that it’s gonna be a grassroots thing. Too many assholes see civilization as a zero-sum game, which means that they have to ruthlessly rip off everybody in order to get their stuff.
AS you may have figured, if you read my post about trees, the word ‘church’ triggers me in very bad ways. And we probably don’t need to re-fight that tired argument.
I guess all I should say is that almost all of my friends are unchurched, and subscribe to no mainstream religion, if any religion at all, and are still good, moral people, many of them spending huge amounts of their time and treasure to be of use to their brothers and sisters.
We find our moralities and sacredness in many and diverse ways.
March 28th, 2007 at 2:12 am
That’s for sure. The unifying thing is that we find them at all. Another part of what makes us human.
Most of my friends and acquaintances (outside church, natch) are areligious as well.