CE Week #11: “Congenital Lawyer Redux”
Masters of politics can flip-flop. Clinton isn’t in a league with her husband, but is she agile enough?
By Jonathan Alter
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 3:29 PM ET Nov 3, 2007
“She’s a congenital liar.” that was New York Times columnist William Safire in 1996, assessing First Lady Hillary Clinton’s responses on Whitewater, “Travelgate” and other now-distant flaps. The line was a tad strong (not to mention imprecise for a language maven) and it led her husband to say that if he weren’t president, he would have punched Safire in the nose. But if Hillary hadn’t flatly lied about those often-trumped-up scandals, she wasn’t forthcoming either. Her parsimony with documents made it seem as if she had something to hide when she didn’t. More like a “congenital lawyer.”
The lawyer is back, like one of her bad hairdos from the 1990s. Clinton was bruised in last week’s Democratic debate in Philadelphia because she seemed trapped in a series of fuzzy nonresponses that might have worked in opaque corporate legal filings at the Rose Law Firm but sounded evasive and mealy-mouthed in politics. Her rivals pounded her for what John Edwards called “double talk.” It reminded me of when President George H.W. Bush said in 1992 that his challenger, Gov. Bill Clinton, “wants to turn the White House into the Waffle House.” (To drive home the point, Bush made the charge while campaigning at a Waffle House in Spartanburg, S.C.)
Of course, it didn’t work for Bush. “Slick Willie” had other great strengths to compensate for his exasperating I-didn’t-inhale word games. So did Franklin D. Roosevelt, who during the 1932 campaign was for the League of Nations—before he was against it. On Prohibition, he was neither a “wet” nor a “dry” but a “damp,” a position for weasels that left resolving the legalization of alcohol to the states. Masters of politics get away with trimming, hedging and flip-flopping, while the John Kerrys of the world cannot.
We know Hillary isn’t in a league with her husband or FDR as a politician, but is she agile enough to dodge all the incoming fire? Is she “Slick Hillary”? And what do her acrobatics on issues such as Iran, Social Security, driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and the Clinton Library records tell us about what it would be like to spend the next four or eight years with her?
On Iran, Clinton makes a decent case that she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization, to build diplomatic pressure on the regime. But her claim last week that Barack Obama’s plan for a new relationship with Iran would “short-circuit the diplomatic process” would be more convincing if the Clinton foreign policy she claims to have helped implement had done anything significant to advance that process when her husband was in office.
On another big debate topic—Social Security—Clinton’s position on bolstering the entitlement for the soon-to-be-retiring baby boomers makes her sound like a politician of the 1980s, afraid to touch the “third rail.” She may be right that the system isn’t in immediate crisis, but repeating like an annoying mantra that she’s against privatization (who among Democrats isn’t?) and for “responsibility” is itself irresponsible. Contrary to her obfuscations, she must know perfectly well that wealthy retirees should pay taxes on their Social Security benefits just like ordinary income.
Today’s rapidly developing third rail (at least in some states) is supporting driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, as favored by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. When Tim Russert asked Clinton her view of it, she claimed it was a “gotcha” question, as if he had asked for the name of the president of Tunisia. As of last week, driver’s licenses for illegals is for Democrats what the State Children’s Health Insurance Program is for Republicans—an “80-20″ issue, meaning they see a Mack truck (in the form of 80 percent of the public) bearing down on them if they get on the wrong side of the debate.
The issue that hurt Clinton the most last week was least relevant to the public. While the availability of the Clinton Library papers is not going to determine anyone’s vote, it gave Obama an opening to tap old fears about her. He made the reasonable point that she shouldn’t brag about her White House “experience” without releasing the evidence to prove it.
In truth, the Clintons have been much better than the Bushes on releasing documents. But once again, as she did in her famous “pretty in pink” press conference in 1994, she made you think something was there when there probably wasn’t. Houdini in reverse.
Despite her debate stumble, the Hillary Clinton I followed around New Hampshire last week is a much-improved model from the old days. It felt as if she were already the incumbent, with tightly choreographed events and a message that is poll tested but also adroitly customized to her personal story: a new anecdote about an arrogant Harvard law professor telling her 37 years ago that “Harvard already has enough women” is particularly compelling for starry-eyed young women in the audience.
Clinton was relaxed, at least mildly amusing and deft at drawing on her status as a history-making woman without sounding like a strident feminist. These are compensatory strengths for her frequent failure to answer direct questions directly. But politicians, like ordinary mortals, only change around the edges. A lawyer she was, a lawyer she will be.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/67935
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What do you expect? That is pretty much what I have to say. Let’s ask ourselves who are presidents? The first thing that comes to my mind is Lawyers. Of course they are going to answer questions like lawyers would, that is how they are trained. Something that I think is happening is that she is trying to be too much like her husband. I say this because in class we always talk about how former President Bill Clinton used to be very good with his words. For example the whole abortion thing, he said keep it legal, keep it rare, and keep it safe. PERFECT ANSWER! So Hillary tries to give these perfect answers, but in reality they are bad answers, and because she is the women candidate I think all the other candidates point it out, and I think it’s pretty funny. The second thing I am going to talk about is while I was reading this article I thought to myself wow, this is just like all the other articles and I say that because all the political articles right now talk about Hillary and how she is twisting her words around, the writers of the articles need to change it up!
Want to know something funny? Google “congenital liar.” Anti Hillary Clinton sites pop up… actually most of them on the first page are all anti Hillary. Like, oh, this one:
“She’s the most unbelievable actress I have ever met,” said a woman who worked on Hillary’s Senate campaign. “I remember one time at a Women’s Leadership Forum event in New York, thirty of us sat around Hillary, talking about politics. And she said, ‘You know, I love this organization, not just because we sit around and talk about politics, but because of the bonds of friendship forming around us.’ The way she said it, people were riveted by her performance. But I had gotten to know her, and I could tell she didn’t mean it. She has this unbelievable ability to be a liar. She is soulless.”
from the mouth of Mr. Edward Klein.
For the sake of adding my own thoughts, though, a congenital liar is kind of harsh. I mean, a liar since birth? And what exactly has she lied about, recently? I know that sometimes women mean to innocently conceal the truth via “everything is just peachy” attitude. Perhaps she is lying about all of her opinions, because I really do not know any of her positions on any of the topics aforementioned… besides the whole mess up on the “illegal immigrant driver’s licenses.” Which was brilliant. I’m sure that everyone is just waiting to crush her again.
Let us watch and see what happens to her, shall we?
I find it very strange how she answers questions. It seems like she went to the “Slick Willie” school of politics where every thing has to have spin on it. However, nothing has appeared to taint her moral or monogamous image like the things that tainted her husband’s campaign back in ‘91-’92. She thinks that she has to be ambiguous and be a lawyer, yet this isn’t Harvard law anymore, this is America and its people. I don’t really mind because I am not a big fan of Hillary, but from an objective stand point she is shooting herself in the foot. Supposedly she has a huge lead in the national polls but this is slipping and probably will start to slip even quicker if she continues to slip as well.