"She has learned how to be ruthless."
Thus spoke Robert Reich of Hillary Clinton, and I don't think he meant it in a complimentary way -- the way, for instance, in which friends and colleagues of Robert Kennedy spoke of him as being ruthless.
When applied to RFK, the term carried with it a certain wafting admiration for his singularity of mind in achieving some vast social goal of justice or point of honor. His determination to win, at almost any cost, was an inner compulsion directed upward and outward for a higher purpose, whether it was cornering labor racketeers as a Senate counsel, furthering the presidential policies of his brother as attorney general, or advancing the cause of fundamental sociopolitical change in the years before his death as a U.S. senator and presidential candidate.
And then there was the contemporary ruthlessness of, say, a Joseph McCarthy or Richard Nixon; pols who would do or say anything to advance nothing but themselves. Their compulsions began from within and in purpose traveled no farther. Their major battles were always about them -- their egos, their success, their power and its extension. Everything else was secondary.
It was in that sense that the "ruthless" tag sprang to the fertile mind of Robert Reich, a man who has known Mrs. Clinton since their college days and served her husband as secretary of labor. He conceded that hers was probably not a congenital condition -- "I doubt that it came to her naturally, but she has learned" -- as it commonly is with the McCarthys and Nixons of this world. But whether congenital or not, it is what it is, and it is, in fact, upon us.
We need a president who’s a fighter again," exhorts Clinton at rallies, while remaining comfortably afar from any intelligent explanation as to what in hell that means. Just when was it that we lost a "fighting" president? One may not admire what George W. Bush has fought for, but in him there's been plenty of fight. Pugilistic tendencies and the immoderate need to suppress any sign of weakness or compromise have not gone wanting in the political personage of President Bush.
I am not, however, closely comparing Mr. Bush to Mrs. Clinton. For at least the former has always retained a sense of political direction. As wrongheaded as his policies have been -- around the world and at home -- and as tragic as their consequences are, Bush has steadfastly adhered to whatever he somehow manages to believe is right.
With Clinton, on the other hand, it's something of pot luck night, every day. One simply never knows what she'll be willing to put her political reputation on the line for, until, that is, the polling is done.
Oh, that's popular? She's for it. That other thing, the one not so popular? She's dead agin it.
At least we can laugh at her sudden and gallant enthusiasm for that noblest of unprincipled causes: the gas tax holiday. Two weeks ago she wouldn't have known it from a winter retreat at Aspen, but, within hours, quite literally, it became the grandest salvation for working-class Joes everywhere, and its rude denial became America's greatest scourge.
She's a woman possessed. Anything for the little guy -- that's her motto -- even if it's colossally stupid.
What's not so humorous, however, was her similarly opportunistic support for something far more grave (also quite literally): the Iraq war. That vote set the pattern, the one she, hubby and other strategists outlined as the smoothest path back to the White House: just blow wherever the popular winds may carry you.
That vote was, of course, also colossally stupid, but only in the superficial sense of human lives lost and the national treasury wasted. Its deeper importance lay in what it could do for Hillary. War, peace, diplomacy or invasion, they were all the same to her; the only difference was which might play out to her singular advantage. As to that, she was all for it.
Conviction is for beginners; indeed, losers, should conviction run up against personal triumph. And Hillary, as we know, is no beginner, and her life's only mission is now to prove that she's no loser.
Not at all. No, she's a fighter -- you know, like George W. Bush, only without the conviction.
Or those other names now enshrined in the Political Hooliganism Hall of Fame, such as Messrs. McCarthy or Nixon, whom you may or may not have had the unpleasant experience of knowing, unbiblically speaking, firsthand, although they were always prepared to screw anyone who stood in their way.
So, more often than not, was Robert Kennedy. Yet some, such as he (who once even worked for McCarthy until disillusionment set in), acquire the quality of ruthlessness in the pursuit of a higher cause, while others possess it solely as an instrumental stepping stone.
You tell me, from your heart of hearts, in which camp you believe Hillary dwells.
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