American Elephants

About a year ago today Bret Stephens, the Wall Street Journal’s foreign affairs columnist obtained an advance copy of Hillary Clinton’s memoir Hard Choices. He reported:

But to go point-by-point through the prose would be to miss the book’s true purpose. Like Victorian children who were supposed to be seen but not heard, this is a book that is supposed to be bought but not read, discussed but not examined, excerpted but not critiqued.

In fact, it’s not really a book at all. It is an artifact containing printed words, an event conveying political seriousness. Perhaps it could have been written at half its length (635 pages) with twice the interest. But that would have made it easier to read from start to finish, defeating its own purpose of being big and therefore, presumably, weighty. …

Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, doesn’t really have a story to tell: Her book is an assemblage of anecdotes, organized geographically, held together by no overarching theme, or underlying analysis, or ultimate accomplishment. In April she was asked to name her proudest achievements as secretary. She fumbled for an answer, as well she might. There are none.

Hillary is out on the campaign trail, and a very odd campaign it is. She accepts no questions from reporters, saying only that her speech is the interview. When she has informal meetings with voters, they turn out to be Democrat campaign workers and not ordinary people at all.  She has had a big campaign announcement, but decided she’d better do it over, and I’m not sure if that’s happened or not.

Many Democrats speak of Hillary’s “leadership,” but Hillary has been, like many celebrities, famous for being famous, not for any leadership whatsoever. I’m a fourth-generation Republican, so I’m not required to like her — and I don’t. I think she is a woman of very bad character, and would be a disaster as president.

When she was a young attorney working on the Watergate investigation, she was fired by her supervisor “Because she was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality,”

As First Lady, Hillary treated the Secret Service Agents assigned to protect the first family like servants, and Chelsea learned from her parents to call them “the Pigs.” These agents are sworn  to protect the president and his family with their lives.

Hillary has been known to hurl a book at the back of the head of one agent driving her in the Presidential limo, accusing him of eavesdropping, forget her ps and qs by never thanking her protectors and lob profanity-laced orders when she just wanted the agents to carry her bags – a job not on agents’ ‘to do’ list.

‘Stay the f**k away from me! Just f*****g do as I say!!!’ she is quoted as saying to an agent who refused to carry her luggage in the book Unlimited Access by FBI agent Gary Aldridge.

Add to that display all the scandals, mostly involving a determined effort to get rich, whatever the cost. The terminology is “Influence peddling,”” corruption,” “the revelations of Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash“, “private server,” “facilitating weapons deals,” “quid pro quo, and “national security implications.” Democrats, of course, are trying to slough it all off as unimportant, pretend scandals, and Republican falsehoods.

I would have expected that Hillary, having been in the White House for 8 years, the Senate for one term and Secretary of State — would have some pretty definite ideas about what government needs to do differently, what are the urgent problems, but that is not the case. Her first thrust was “income inequality,” and the second was a remarkably condescending effort to make black Americans believe that Republicans were trying to keep them from voting by insisting that voters prove their eligibility by showing identification.

A few inconvenient facts: 2.8 million people are registered in two or more states. 1.8 million voters are dead. In the last election North Carolina election officials repeatedly offered ballots to an imposter who arrived at 20 different polling places with the names and addresses of “inactive” voters who hadn’t participated in elections in many years. In a recent poll 13% of illegal aliens admit that they vote. Billionaire George Soros has committed $5 million to help fight voter ID laws and other legislation, like a requirement to regularly scrub voter rolls of dead people and those ineligible to vote.According to the Washington Post, about 3/4 of all Americans support the idea that people should have to show photo identification to vote.

Black voters turned out in impressive numbers in the last two presidential elections with enthusiasm for “the first Black President”. Hillary is unsurprisingly concerned that they may not turn out in such numbers for her. It is condescending to assume that black voters have to be threatened with “Jim Crow.” In a 49% black district in Danville, VA, Joe Biden said “They gonna put y’all back in chains.”

All this would seem to be a remarkable confession, especially when combined with Obama’s amnesty proposal, that the Left believes that they cannot win without cheating. The fraud is well documented, and we here in Washington state are especially aware of it. Voting is a precious privilege, not an obligation. People should be proud of our free elections — perhaps you remember free Iraqis proudly holding up their purple-stained fingers to prove that they did indeed get to vote.

It will be an interesting campaign as it develops. There will be more revelations as large as the Clinton Cash scandals and as silly as Marco Rubio’s wife’s traffic tickets. Former Governor of Virginia Bob McDonnell and his wife have both been convicted and sentenced to prison terms for scandals far, far less than those detailed in Clinton Cash.