Who is Hillary?

I'm overjoyed that one of my idols, Theda Skocpol, is blogging at TPMCafe. She's a major political scientist, a woman, and she also studies things that I find really interesting.

She has this to say about Hillary after observing her at a 1995 event at the White House.

Hillary Clinton was among the most cold-blooded analysts in attendance. She spoke of ordinary voters as if they were a species apart, and showed interest only in the political usefulness of their choices -- usefulness to the Clinton administration, that is.

I vividly remember at the time finding it impressive that Bill Clinton (not Hillary Clinton) showed real empathy for the ordinary people whose motives and supposedly misguided choices were under analysis. Ironically, just as Barber reported, Bill Clinton was the one who combined analysis and empathy, much as Obama himself did in his full San Francisco remarks.

I think this whole angle of "gotcha" politics about snippets of speech transposed from one context to another is ridiculous and pathological for democracy in America -- and I cannot fathom why the Clintons or George Stephanopoulos are descending to this dirt, not to mention the guilt-by-association crap. It is particularly despicable of them to criticize Obama for the sort of observation/analysis that was routine in and around the 1990s Clinton White House. And I cannot help but feel there is a psychological edge of pure envy in Bill Clinton's attacks: Obama is empathetic and charismatic as well as smart, just like Bill was back then, in those so much better days!

Comments

[Wendy]

Our idols have stone feet, Laura. Just recently, I had my heart broken by Michael Berube. And you know, I really don't trust a single thing an Obama fan has to say about Clinton these days. I'm expecting Kos to come out and explain how Hillary Clinton once expressed a desire for killing puppies in his presence. (This is the man whom I remember quite clearly stating that he thought Clinton was a warm, likable and intelligent person.) When Clinton Derangement Syndrome gets you, it gets you bad.

LeftCoaster has some examples of the Obama campaign using similar negative tactics. It's political campaigning. *shrug*

[bj]

Laura -- I'll chime in to say that I have never felt as hopeful about a political candidate as I do about Obama, and the potential he frames for an America that's ever closer to the ideal.

But, I too find the characterization in this snipped to be meaningless. I mean calling Hillary "cold-blooded", followed by nothing substantive? I too am distressed by the direction that Hillary's campaigning has taken, but to take the opposite tack, I'll list some things I like about Hillary, in spite of the fact that I do not want her to be the democratic nominee (and see no way for that to happen in a way that will not put McCain in the white house).

1) I like that she stood up in Beijing and said "women's rights are human rights."
2) I like that she has raised a strong, capable woman in Chelsea, under extremely trying circumstances. I'd be proud to have done the same in my much less trying circumstances.
3) I think she is smart.
4) I think she's a fighter, and I think a lot of women loose out in the world's games because we're just not willing to fight enough, and prefer to retreat to our comfort zones. She's taken tremendous, painful personal risks to continue. I admire her for not retreating (even when I disagree with the methods).
5) I've heard that people who work for her like her, and I think that means a lot, to earn the respect of people who work beneath you.

OK, I'm going to stop now, lest I start putting in too many caveats on my attempts at positive statements.

[bj]

Oh, I'll add one more. I think she's actively encouraged the careers of other women, and seems to have a strong contingent of women in her own inner circle.

[bj]

"LeftCoaster has some examples of the Obama campaign using similar negative tactics. It's political campaigning. *shrug*"

OK, now that I've reminded myself of the reasons why I don't hate Hillary, I have to say that there is a difference in the texture and quality of their campaigns. I wouldn't for a moment allege that difference to result from one of them being a "better" person than the other (I'd have to know them awfully well before I'd try to use that explanation). They just have different things working for them, and Obama's campaign is built differently than Hillary's. Obama's campaign is built on an assumption of civility, and Hillary's isn't. That means that Obama has to run things differently than she does, to be effective (no need for him to have a better heart), and he has.

Hillary has said a number of things (not her surrogates, but she herself) that I find downright offensive (the easiest to refer to and remember being the "as far as I know" comment that i like to bring up as often as possible. The same is not true for Obama (the two I can think of are the "likeable enough" and the "periodically getting down and lashing out" statements. Both are bad, but Obama backtracked on those as well as he could. Has Hillary even explained her potentially misleading statement about Obama's religion? (That's not rhetorical -- if someone knows of a cite, I would love to have it).

As Kristof suggested in the NYT on thursday, I try very hard to exercise my "mental muscle" to avoid confirmation bias. I'm sure I fail a lot, but I try.

(BTW, I haven't tracked it down yet, but I found fascinating the description of the study of smokers/non-smokers listening to noisy (static was added to an audio recording) information on the dangers of smoking/the over-rating of the dangers of smoking. Kristof cites the article as showing that the smokers worked to decrease the static when statements about the over-rating were made, while non-smokers decreased the static (listened better) when the dangers were emphasized.

We're clearly doing the same here, but that doesn't mean that there aren't true under-lying differences in the characters of the campaigns, as well.

[laura]

Yes, I agree. Hillary isn't a puppy killer and the anti-Hillary rhetoric is out of hand. I also do think that there is an undercurrent of sexism in some of the criticism of her.

Still, Skocpol's first hand observations of her are relevant and not of the puppy-killer variety. Maybe I pulled out the wrong paragraphs from Skocpol's blog post. She was just saying that Bill had more of interest in working class voters than Hillary did during this event in 1995.

[dave.s.]

Hillary displayed her puppy-killer nature once and for all time on the White House Travel Office firings. These guys were Schedule As, served at the pleasure of the President. She fired them, as she was allowed to do, to put in place Clinton loyalists who could make money at it. So far, not usual, but not vile. Maybe a little tawdry - most administrations have thought of travel services as something to do, rather than a place to get pork. Then she set out to claim that they were terrible people and to destroy their reputations after they were out the door, to make her actions look better. Odious.
So, yes, puppy killer.

[Wendy]

Laura, I'll be honest. I think it's a really crappy thing for Skopcol to pull out recollections from one day 13 years ago of a woman who was under immense pressure and treated as a failure for the health care reform fiasco and use them as the basis for condemning her in the blog of the Person Who Kidnapped Josh Marshall. It's just crappy.

Skopcol is using ONE DAY as a reason to condemn Clinton. Meanwhile, Clinton's POLICIES actually would HELP people--more people than Obama's would (her health care plan comes to mind--Elizabeth Edwards agrees that it is a better plan).

You know, LBJ wasn't a great person, and he was really cold-blooded about politics, but he created the Great Society and oversaw a lot of Civil Rights legislation. Wikipedia says: "Legend has it that, as he put down his pen, Johnson told an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation," anticipating a coming backlash from Southern whites against Johnson's Democratic Party." In other words, did LBJ say "Screw 'em"?

[Wendy]

"Obama's campaign is built on an assumption of civility, and Hillary's isn't."

I have no idea what this means.

Who is assuming civility? It looks to me like *you* are assuming civility. Because I sure as hell do not think Obama thinks that!

This is the kind of amorphous unsubstantiated stuff about Obama that makes people think Obama supporters are ... weird.

[Wendy]

And one last thing before I go for the day (am in NY, heading back to MA, which celebrates Patriots Day today, so there's no school for the kids). I'd like to see someone defend Obama's fallacious PA ads on Clinton's health care plan. This is civility?

[Siobhan]

"Obama's campaign is built on an assumption of civility, and Hillary's isn't."

I have no idea what this means.

Who is assuming civility? It looks to me like *you* are assuming civility. Because I sure as hell do not think Obama thinks that!

This is the kind of amorphous unsubstantiated stuff about Obama that makes people think Obama supporters are ... weird.

Wendy, you have no idea how weird things can get. This weekend, I was on the phone with a friend in Chicago, a total Obama diehard, who claimed that I was lying about Obama's attack ads here in PA, that's not what the Obama campaign is about, Obama is so obviously above all that, ad nauseam. He was saying this to me as I was watching one of Obama's attack ads on TV!

When every uncomfortable question for Obama is decried as "gotcha politics", when every dirty campaign trick is not dirty by virtue of his holy association with it, when all-out sexism is fair game, I don't know what to do anymore but close my eyes and ask "Is it August yet?"

[WendyW]

An interesting perspective on Obama's "Bittergate" reaction here.

I don't usually read that blog but got there from a link from Delaney Kirk's blog (management prof who has a blog on teaching tips).