http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-hillary-the-tormentor.html?&_r=0Hillary the Tormentor
JUNE 6, 2015
LATELY I’ve been running into people even more put off by the Clintons than the nefarious operatives in the “vast right wing conspiracy” ever were.
They’re called Democrats.
I had breakfast with one last week. I’d quote him directly, but The Times doesn’t permit profanity.
He’s furious at Hillary and Bill, because they’ve once again created all these ugly, obvious messes that they could and should have avoided. He’s disgusted, because he has come to believe that they’re tainted.
He’s also resolute: He’s voting — even rooting — for Hillary.
Party loyalty motivates him. On top of which, he’s worried about the Supreme Court and how a Republican president might pack it.
And he keeps hearing the voices of little girls in his life who have asked him whether a woman can be president of the United States in reality, not just on some TV show.
He wants them to see: Yes, she can.
So here he stands, or rather squirms, exhilarated by what Hillary embodies and repelled by what she represents, wanting to see her take the oath and wanting never to lay eyes on her and Bill again, determined that they reclaim the White House and despairing of the muddy road there and the certain muck beyond. He’s a riot of warring emotions, a paradox with a pulse.
The Clintons will do that to a person.
Or to a country.
There was a suggestion last week that Clinton weariness and wariness had again overtaken Americans: Two new national polls showed that regard for Hillary had declined, at least for the moment, to levels not seen in many years.
In both surveys, more respondents saw her unfavorably than favorably. In the one by ABC News and The Washington Post, only 41 percent said that she was honest and trustworthy, while 52 percent said that she wasn’t.
Such findings will fluctuate, as Jack Shafer noted aptly and archly in Politico: “While glory awaits the journalist who buries Hillary Clinton, carves her tombstone and tidies her grave, the makings of her demise cannot be read in these poll results. Clinton rides a favorability roller coaster, and has been riding it hard for the past 23 years.”
I bring no coffin, carry no shovel and am less interested in her roller coaster than in the hard ride that she and Bill have taken us on. It never ends.
And it’s different from politics as usual. It’s politics as a peculiar form of psychological torture, because the Clintons have a way — it’s their trademark — of being the best, most exciting vessel for people’s hopes even as they make those people feel icky about their investment in the couple.
Just ask Democrats who were in Congress during Bill’s impeachment. Many fought to save his presidency, and thus gave the requisite interviews and said the right words, all the while roiling with outrage over the selfish, reckless manner in which he’d put his and the party’s agenda at risk.
Just look at all the liberal women who rallied then to his defense, studiously turning a blind eye to his personal behavior because his policy priorities were preferable to those of his attackers. It was an understandable bargain, but it wasn’t a pretty one.
It’s never as simple and humdrum as being for or against the Clintons. And while countless other politicians force supporters to make special allowances, stomach imperfections and come to terms with a tangle of good and bad, few do so on the Clintons’ operatic scale.
A prediction: With the publication on June 16 of two new books that assess Richard Nixon — “One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon,” by Tim Weiner, and “Being Nixon: A Man Divided,” by Evan Thomas — you’re going to see and hear some comparisons of Nixon and Hillary.
These will touch on paranoia and on relationships (or, rather, the lack of them) with reporters.
“It’s definitely true that Hillary is like Nixon in her sense of aggrievement and her deep suspicion of the press,” Thomas told me, though he hastened to add, “Nixon ultimately was a darker figure.”
It’s also true that voting for her may require of many Democrats what voting for him did of many Republicans, which is the suppression of profound misgivings. Thomas said that in 1968, people backing Nixon often felt that “there really wasn’t any other choice.” At least for the nomination, he was inevitable.
As is she, and this time around, in contrast to 2008, there’s no Barack Obama in the wings, at least none that Democratic operatives can detect. Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley and Lincoln Chafee don’t qualify.
At some point over the last year Democrats placed just about all of their chips on Hillary, reassured by the depth of her experience, aware of how much money she could raise, and inspired by what a perfect sequel to Barack Obama she’d be. He broke the color barrier. Now she’d shatter the glass ceiling that she put all those cracks in.
Back-to-back Democratic precedents.
Back-to-back Democratic presidents.
But the Clintons facilitate a thrilling scenario only to pollute it. They come wrapped in shiny folds of promise and good intentions, then the packaging comes off, and what lies beneath are emails from Sidney Blumenthal, shakedowns of Petra Nemcova.
Recently Bill wrote a letter to supporters of his, Hillary’s and Chelsea’s sprawling charitable foundation, outlining its global reach. He described the breadth of services it provides, including H.I.V./AIDS medicines for nearly 10 million people in 70 countries, and the diversity of people it supports, from farmers in Africa to female entrepreneurs in Latin America.
His words were a reminder that perhaps no other former president has lavished so much travel and star power on such an ambitious engine of good deeds. The foundation is an exemplar.
Until you peek inside and behold a convoluted braid of public service and personal aggrandizement, a queasy-making brew of altruism and vanity, a mechanism for employing loyalists and rewarding friends, a bazaar for favor trading. Straightforward admiration is no longer possible.
Frustration supplants it. Worry, too. A few days ago I spoke with one Democratic elder who ranted, like my breakfast companion, about all the ammunition that the Clintons had needlessly created for a Republican nominee.
He envisioned a flood of negative ads in Florida and Ohio about State Department emails, speaking fees and foreign donations. He said that this deluge could very well make a difference.
He was livid.
Would that keep him from campaigning for Hillary?
No, he said. Even if he couldn’t count on her, she could count on him.
It didn’t seem fair.
It did seem familiar.
