THE RODHAM TO THE WHITE HOUSE

Like the title of the Dick Morris biography on Bill Clinton, Hillary is running for president "Because She Can". This is one frightening woman. That's not because I fear powerful women. Have you ever heard her get wound up on the stump? There's a reason some wags call her "Shrillary". It has been said that, when she speaks she could be talking about giving every man a million dollars, and all that man will hear is his ex-wife yelling, "Have you taken out the garbage yet?!"



Hillary Rodham Clinton was educated in that bastion of old fashioned American values, Wellsley. She was radicalized there, eventually doing legal work for the Black Panthers. Big on all feminist causes, she did what Gloria Steinem did: she hitched her wagon to a guy who was going places. Much to her chagrin, it was Little Rock, Ark.



While in Arkansas, Hillary did what any self-respecting feminist would do. She coupled her legal career with Bill's political career, taking time out here and there to destroy the next Bimbo Eruption and make a killing on the cattle futures market. Hillary Clinton was hired by the Rose Law Firm on the day Bill was sworn in as Arkansas attorney general. And on the day he became governor, she was made a full partner.



Bill valued Hillary's input into governance. He put her in charge of reforming education in Arkansas. Ross Perot sang her praises when he pointed out that she took Arkansas from 48th place in education to 50th place, a record only recently broken by Washington DC and Michigan.



Hillary continued her stellar performance as First Lady. Once in Washington she was brought out to do for America's healthcare system what she did for Arkansas' schools. Fortunately for those of us capable of banging the rocks together from time to time, she failed. However, while she was kludging her fiasco into a written policy, she managed to violate a few Sunshine laws, sold whatever healthcare stocks she owned short, and tried to destroy anyone who might be opposed to nationalizing 1/7th of the national economy.



Then came those dark days: the Whitewater investigation, Vince Foster and who sanitzed his office, Travelgate, Filegate, who hired Craig Livingston, Troopergate, Cattlegate, ad naseum!



After all the fireworks ended, she and Bill had succeeded in putting the Republicans in the majority of both houses of Congress for the first time in almost seventy years. It was then that Bill found the perfect job for her: good will ambassador around the world. For the next couple of years, Hillary made appearances in many different countries. She also was an important speaker at a forum for Women's Rights, in the country that's a hotbed of feminist ideology, Communist China. It didn't matter what she did or where she did it. As long as it wasn't in the United States.



Unfortunately, Bill missed Hillary so much that he couldn't help himself: he stained the dress of one of his interns. News broke ten years ago that the President of the United States was having an affair with a twenty-something intern. Now the pressure was on! Now was the time to bring Hillary back into the spotlight!



Masterfully ( or is that "Mistressfully"?) Hillary stormed the networks, defending Bill's honor, which was more than he ever did for it! She denied all the allegations made about Bill, as if she were actually around to witness his innocence. She told Matt Lauer that it was all about "this vast right-wing conspiracy". But, she also said, if the stories were true, "that would be very serious".



Serious, indeed!



Behind the scenes, Hillary had her troops mobilized. Sidney Blumenthal and Paul Begala were the public hatchet men, men who would stop at nothing to end the talk about Bill. Of course, there was also Pelicano and Lenzner, Hillary's PI buddies, who would do the real, but necessary, dirty work: intimidation, blackmail, and the like. Meanwhile, the Legacy Media circled the wagons and said, "What story? It's only about sex! Big Deal?" It looked like Bill, with Hillary's unwavering support might --just might -- find his way out.



But such was not to be. On the day that Monica Lewinski was to testify, Bill sent a few cruise missiles at al Qaeda, careful that Madeleine Albright warned them through the Pakistani intelligence agency, and manfully destroying an aspirin factory and a couple of empty camps. Ken Starr, however, was not distracted by this dazzling show of military prowess, and proceeded to find out that Bill was not only lying to Hillary, he was also committing perjury, suborning perjury, and obstructing justice. Now what should Hillary do?



Well, she swung into action all over again. Now, despite claims back during the '92 campaign, she was Tammy Wynette, "Stand by My Man", and "I forgive you, Bill". She started to go to church with Bill, holding his hand. They went on vacation to the Bahamas, where they were accidentally on purpose photographed dancing in a lagoon, wearing their bathing suits. When no one seemed to notice the photo in the papers for a couple of days, Mike McCurry went out a guaranteed a story by complaining about the intrusion ( at the Clintonistas' insistence) of the photo.



The House of Representatives amassed whole storerooms of evidence about the perfidy of Bill Clinton and his Clintonistas. They voted for impeachment of the President. The Senate, flopping to the challenge, set the rules of the impeachment trial such that it would be impossible to convict, and then promptly ignored all the evidence amassed by the House. Arlen Specter, in a rare show of candor, said that the House manager of the impeachment had failed to prove their case.



Hillary's reward for all of this: she was finally allowed to get out of Arkansas, that land of exile in service to the man who made her what she is today. She came to New York and announced her candidacy for the US Senate, scuttling bids by such New York luminaries as Carl McCall (more about him in a bit) and Nita Lowey. Once she secured her election (this is, after all, in the People's Republic of New York) she bought a house in Chappaqua to satisfy the residency requirement and avoid being called what she really was: a carpetbagger.



In the Senate she quickly eclipsed Chuck Schumer, much to his chagrin, who became the other Senator from New York. She promised on the campaign trail that she would not run for the presidency, although only an idiot would have believed that. She did little in the Senate other than running against Republican earmarks. Once she secured her reelection and was once again in the Majority in the Congress with the 2006 election, she promptly brought home to New York a multi-million dollar earmark to fund the Woodstock Museum.



Oh, while in the Senate, she did repeat the intelligence gathered in the past decade about Iraq and its ties to terrorism, as well as the potential for Weapons of Mass Destruction. No surprise, Bill had made several speeches on the subject and even took out a building janitor in Baghdad to drive home the point. In the end, Hillary voted for the invasion of Iraq, only to spend her ensuing years trying to explain why Bush is so stupid that he got us into a war, and so smart that he fooled even her, the reputed "Smartest Woman in the World".



Bill Clinton is once again on the campaign trail, this time to become the First... er... what? Husband? Man? Laddie? I'm not sure, but he's been in search of a legacy ever since the impeachment.



Hillary started off as the "inevitable" Democratic candidate in the 2008 election. She had the name, the pedigree, the (for lack of a better term) experience. She and Bill were serious players in politics. They still had the copies (allegedly) of the FBI reports to prove it. Besides, after all the crap Bill put her through, she deserved it.



Reality, however, can be a real pain! It's proving to be a real struggle for Hillary. She moderated her tone, trading in her shrieks for her cackles, trying to be the strong woman in control of all around her, even crying, in an Oprah moment, about what the press has done to her. Finally, when she won the New Hampshire primary, she told her supporters that she had "finally found my voice". This from a sixty-year-old, '60's radical who tried to nationalize 1/7th of the national economy.


No, I didn't forget about Carl McCall. Although Bill has been hailed as "America's First Black President", despite his pallor, Hillary hasn't exactly been a friend to black Democratic candidates. To get into the Senate, Carl McCall, a very prominent black New York politician, had to abandon all his political aspirations to make way for the carpetbagger... er... I mean Hillary. Now, in the presidential campaign, Hillary's minions are out their suggesting that Barak Obama might have something to hide about his past, hinting broadly at racial stereotypes. Through it all, the Hillary-istas are claiming that Obama is playing the race card. Hillary herself claimed that the primaries weren't about race or gender or even Hillary, while talking endlessly about race and gender and using the pronoun "I" more than a dozen times in one statement.




Oh, Hillary still wants to nationalize healthcare, make no mistake. This time, instead of a 10,000 page opus with detail and penalties all spelled out, she got smart. Her proposal is now a ten page Clift Notes version, without all those pesky details.



And she wants to raise any taxes she can. She wants to confiscate property from the Big Oil, Big Pharmacy and Big Anyone Else who has money in his pockets. She has proposed Baby Bonds, giving each child born in the nation a $5,000 check, just for being born. For a clearer description of Hillary's philosophy on taxes and government programs, please see Montag's Fourth Immutable Law of Nature.



Watching Hillary's various stances on the Iraq War is like being a spectator at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. She's for it/she's against it, we're winning/we're losing, she'll pull our troops out/she'll leave some in/she'll leave more in/she'll leave fewer in. If this keeps up, we'll need John Edwards to sue her for giving us whiplash!



Hillary says, with the utmost confidence, that she will personally lower the price of gasoline merely with the words of her first State of the Union address. You see, the world will see just how serious she is about making America energy independent (not drill our own oil, silly! Just cut back and try alternative energy) that the oil producing nations will have no choice but to drop their prices.


And let's not ever say that Hillary doesn't know where her priorities lay. In each and every debate thus far, she boldly states who the real enemy is: President George W. Bush. Of course, this ignores that pesky little fact that Bush isn't on the ballot this year. But why confuse the issues with the facts?


Basically, should Hillary get elected to the White House, we can expect a return to those halcyon days of the 1990's: tax hikes, pointless military engagements, stained dresses, scandal upon scandal, and -- oh yeah! Lots and lots of Chinese money.


"It's deja vu all over again!"







Copyright January 20th, 2008