Solit Right Wing Conservative Views
SUPPORT WRITE YOUR
TERM CONGRESSMAN
LIMITS IT WORKS !!!
   
Breaking the cord with the Clintons


The article on this page is owned and copyrighted by the named author

Link to original article:   http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/08/25/breaking_the_cord_with_the_clintons/        

James Carroll
Boston Globe Editorial
August 25, 2008

I saw an ad that offered a "free Obama button," and I thought - now there's a slogan: "Free Obama." This week, what Barack Obama must be freed from are the Clintons.

The most obvious problem is the wild-card character of the Hillary Clinton faction in Denver, but there are ways in which both Clinton and her husband embody and prolong the deep dysfunction of the Democratic Party.

It was inevitable that each Clinton be spotlighted at the convention, but the prime-time focus on Hillary on Tuesday and Bill on Wednesday, with the Hillary Clinton roll call assuring an unpredictable outburst, threatens to derail the Obama campaign before it leaves the station. The Clinton-driven political extortion that made the vice-presidential selection so tortuous is just the beginning. The November election hangs on the Clinton hangover, the die-hard alienation of so many Clinton supporters, half of whom still decline to back Obama.

But the problem begins with Bill Clinton. Democrats never reckoned with the corrupting effects of his presidency. In policy terms, the Clinton administration's failures led directly to today's simmering crises with Iran and Russia. Clinton's Nuclear Posture Review of 1994 kept the nuclear arms race going when it could have stopped - and generated the proliferation current that runs in Tehran.

Clinton provided start-up funds for the National Missile Defense program that is now deploying in Poland and the Czech Republic, and he initiated the eastward expansion of NATO that is key to Russia's paranoia about Georgia's alliance with the West. Not all such problems begin with the United States, but if Cold War II is here, it is in large part because Clinton declined to end Cold War I, when he had the chance.

There are domestic equivalents to Clinton's large failure in foreign affairs, but policy is only half the story. In rallying to him when, through his dalliances, Clinton made himself vulnerable to the "great right-wing conspiracy" and impeachment, Democrats never reckoned with the ethical fallout to themselves of their defense of the dichotomy between public responsibility and private morality.

Clinton proved exactly what kind of person he is not so much when he committed indiscretions with the young Monica Lewinsky, but when - "I did not have sexual relations . . ." - he showed himself ready to destroy her. Not merely flawed, Clinton is utterly lacking in character. That he is still a celebrated figure among Democrats mortally compromises the party.

Hillary Clinton's evident civic virtue was undercut by the deliberate, if never acknowledged, strategy she adopted in her primary competition with Obama. Her campaign was accused of sly exploitation of racial prejudice, but that was not the real issue. Race is certainly a factor in Obama's political fate, but the Clinton campaign played a different card, an older one.

Clinton adviser Mark Penn's advice to attack Obama for his "lack of American roots" was supposedly repudiated, but the fake contrast between beer-swigging, Bible-believing Hillary and the elitist thin man who might be a Muslim was a subliminal exploitation of just that theme. The many Clinton supporters who remain suspicious of Obama were prepped by her campaign for the McCain pitch that this black man with the funny name and background is not really "one of us."

The most damaging political idea is that patriotism is somehow undercut by concern for, and ties to, the larger world. In its darkest form, this prejudice has been used against Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and various immigrant groups. Attacking "deracinated cosmopolitans" is standard fare of reactionary politics, and history shows it to be dangerous.

Hillary Clinton is herself a true cosmopolitan, her roots are multifaceted, and her intellectual reach is wide-ranging - all of which makes her narrow-minded, class-baiting campaign persona a sure tip-off. She has unleashed a dynamic that may poison the fall campaign, turning one of Obama's great strengths, an unfettered mind born of an expansive background, into the occasion of his defeat. If that happens, America will be a smaller, nastier place.

Barack Obama defines himself by change. This week, he inherits a party that has made itself hostage to Clinton self-obsession. In fact, that defines his opportunity. If he can free himself and the Democrats from the shackles of such a past, changing the nation should be easy.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. 
© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
www.davidstuff.com