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Alongside all the finger pointing about bank failures and the collapse
of the US housing bubble has come the slow puncturing of the legend of
consequence-free 1990s economic growth. Peter Baker's fantastic New York Times Magazine piece takes a good, hard look at the maker of that world: Bill Clinton. Like Hanna,
I find the portrait both honest and poignant. The meat of the
article—which follows Clinton on various travels, speeches, meetings,
and duties related to the Clinton foundation—is naturally the
substantive, frank, and reflective conversation between Bill and Baker
with respect to the Clintonian economy. David Leonhardt, also of the Times, parses the back and forth, wherein Bill admits that he "should have raised more hell about derivatives being unregulated"... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Well, I never wanted the Clintons to divorce on our account and don't think they ever will split up, either—for one thing because she would get all of the art and all of the friends while he would get the "art'' and be stuck with the "friends.'' (B: "No, you take Terry McAuliffe.'' H: "No, darling, you.'') But as fantasies go, Emily, it is fun to imagine her throwing him out because she can and because she might just take up with that 24-year-old Sharon Stone broke up with after losing her custody battle. (You know, the one in which her ex accused her of suggesting that their 8-year-old son use Botox to fight foot odor.) Now that it's official for Hillary as secretary of state, I do want her to do well there. And to enjoy this moment, with or without the Mr.
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So as I'm reading how Bill Clinton is making himself all kinds of amenable so that Hillary can say yes to running the State Department, it at long last occurs to me that Obama's job offer to her might not be the total madness I took it for: See here in the New York Times, where it quotes former Clinton White House counsel and Obama supporter Abner Mikva? The way Mikva puts it is that for this thing to go forward, "There would have to be FULL [caps mine] disclosure as to who ALL [me again] were contributors to his library and foundation." Which is not quite the same as the former president's reported willingness to "release the names of some major donors,'' is it? So maybe Obama has reason to believe that in the end, Hubby Bubba can't open all the books for all the world to see? And if that's the case, then instead of being a chump he's making the world's most magnanimous gesture at absolutely no cost to himself or the country.
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At this point, I think we are arguing just to keep our skills up, because Hillary as Madame Secretary seems to be a done deal. But, my mother always said I would rather argue than eat, so: Whoa, Hanna, how is it that "in every way it is petty to want to deny her" the top foreign policy job when her views on foreign policy are not compatible with Obama's. (At least, that was my understanding when I voted for him.) As McCain campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb says in a post for the Weekly Standard, "On the issues, Clinton's a hawk ... Clinton flipped on the war, but as the nomination slipped out of her reach last spring she spoke of the threats this country faces, and of the prescriptions offered by Obama, in language that would warm the hearts of neoconservatives. ... She threatened to 'obliterate' Iran in response to unprovoked aggression against Israel, she spoke of unconditional meetings with the leaders of rogue states as 'irresponsible and, frankly, naive,' and she castigated Obama's transparent saber-rattling on Pakistan. ... On matters of diplomacy, Clinton's views are not so different from those held by John McCain and most Republicans [big fat bold letters mine]—and they are certainly well to the right of Obama.''
I fail to see why it is "right-minded, in a feminist way'' to appoint someone whose views were rejected by the majority of Americans. And though I understand the impulse to aw, just go ahead and give it to her, this job is too important to be anybody's consolation prize, and that she has suffered does not mean she has earned it. To me, her trippy Tuzla flashbacks, or whatever those were, do not suggest a firm grasp of even her own life. Emily B., you imagine that though she's been a lousy manager in the past, she's "too smart not to figure out (finally) how to successfully delegate the management of this'' State Department. But isn't history a better predictor than IQ?
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