May 21, 2016
Special Report: In promoting
Hillary Clinton for President, the Democratic Party is betting that American
voters are ready to venture back into the Clintons’ “House of Cards,” a
structure long defined by scandals and self-interest, writes Greg Maybury.
By Greg Maybury
For “House
of Cards” fans who can’t get enough of fictional President Frank Underwood
and his First Lady Claire, it must be tempting to view Bill and Hillary Clinton
as their real-life political doppelgangers. Certainly there’s fertile ground
for those seeking parallels between the main protagonists of this
quintessential political soap opera, and our more flesh and blood “heroes.”
Like their imaginary foils, the Clintons’ moral compass is functionally impaired,
so much so one suspects the HoC scriptwriters modeled their lead characters on
the Democratic Party’s resident “royal couple.”
To be sure, a critical
assessment of Hillary Clinton’s fitness for the Oval Office can’t be undertaken
absent some reference to the respective roles she and her husband have played
in each other’s professional lives. Many folks will recall their indelible
slogan from Bill Clinton’s successful tilt at the top job in 1992, where the
campaign pitch to voters was, “Two for the price of one.”
Again, one not unlike the
mantra the Underwoods might concoct for voters. One wonders why the Clintons
have not retooled that hoary old refrain for 2016, and here I’m thinking, “Buy
one, get one free” might fit the bill.
The Clintons then (cue Frank
and Claire again) are the consummate political “chancers” (British slang for
“opportunists”), with style overwhelming substance, ruthlessness eclipsing
truthfulness, and political expediency supplanting personal integrity.
Occupying their own “house of cards” is a long,
yet not so illustrious history of deception, malice, corruption, duplicity,
careerism, avarice, turpitude, warmongering, hubris, incompetence, arrogance,
media manipulation, venality, hypocrisy, influence touting, and everything in
between that the ugly, sleazy side of politics has on offer.
This reality was first
underscored most notably when — in what must be the modern American narrative’s
most indelible “stand by your man” moment — the then “Tammy Wynette” of U.S.
politics vigorously defended her husband against allegations of unbridled
lechery and sexual predation. These allegations, along with many others in her
view, were invented by what she later defined as a “vast
right-wing conspiracy,” one that was unscrupulously trying to take them
down and out.
But irrespective of whether
this much touted “conspiracy” was actually a reality (the Clintons surely had
powerful and well-heeled enemies), a product of Mrs. Clinton’s penchant for self-aggrandizing
delusion, or simply dirty politics (the perfect tautology if there is one),
it is now safe to say it was going to take much more than a “vast right-wing
conspiracy” to stop the Clinton juggernaut in its tracks.
Powerful Juggernaut
That this “juggernaut” shows
few signs of losing steam is evident; at the same time it continues to showcase
all that’s wrong about Establishment politics — Republican or Democrat. And
whilst we can say now the accusations against her husband contained more than a
grain of truth (at least those related to womanizing and self-aggrandizement),
both Bill and Hillary were in for the long haul. That she tendered her
impassioned denials in the full knowledge that many were true is difficult to
refute, and if nothing else, says much about the candidate’s capacity to deny
reality in the service of a larger ambition.
And without placing too fine a
point on it, this is one area where given the prevailing zeitgeist in
Washington – in both neoliberal and neoconservative circles – Hillary Clinton
is most definitely qualified as both the preferred candidate of Democratic
insiders and the Establishment’s choice for president (including a number of
erstwhile Republicans).
In any event, the Clintons
themselves are no slouches when it comes to playing “dirty politics,” for whom
we might say all’s fair in love, war and their chosen vocation. They embody
moreover, raw political ambition at its hard-core finest, steeled by
narcissistic megalomania, all of it unencumbered by accountability,
transparency, humility, ethics, honesty, scruples or altruism. Her seemingly
inevitable selection as the 2016 Democratic flag-bearer — and from there most
likely the presidency — is ample indication of that “long haul” ambition.
To their credit as political
survivors, they’ve been effectively dodging political snipers ever since they
parachuted into public consciousness during the 1992 campaign. And if the
current contest is any guide, the Clintons have not lost their innate talent in
this regard. As for Hillary Clinton, one suspects even her most zealous
detractors could not help but admire — if begrudgingly — the mix of chutzpah
and resilience that have been key to her longevity, with her not always subtle
campaign “trump” cards: “It’s my turn!” Even without playing the “elect
me as your first woman president” card, the palpable sense of quasi-regal
entitlement becomes icing on the Clinton cake!
We might argue that given the
weight of mounting evidence against her fitness for office — a modicum of which
would deep-six most politicians’ career ambitions — they have become ever more
adept at keeping their political ducks flying in a row, and well out of the
range of the shooters. Not that they’ve achieved this all on their own.
In this the Clintons have been
ably
served by the mainstream media (MSM), who’ve generally eschewed the
forensic analysis — whether political, policy or personal — vital to
objectively evaluating her fitness as the Democratic nominee (and therefore
president).
Mistress of Malevolent Mayhem
The prospect then of another
Clinton presidency should make all right-thinking Americans increasingly
concerned – even afraid – about the direction in which their country is
heading. I know I am, and I’m not even an American!
Like many of America’s key
allies over recent years, our country Australia is no different in that more
and more Aussies are harboring anxious — one might say existential — fears
about the respective agendas of the U.S. neoconservative and neoliberal
establishments. And notwithstanding her blandly reassuring campaign rhetoric on
both counts, Clinton hasn’t just aligned herself with these agendas; it’s
increasingly clear she’s the preferred standard bearer of the authors.
With this in mind, outside of
her aforementioned Tammy Wynette moment, we should explore a little more of the
aspiring president’s résumé. In an excellent book, aptly titled Queen
of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton, Diana Johnstone does just
this. The author chronicles in a clear-eyed manner her subject’s back story in
excruciating detail. What makes Johnstone’s tome all the more remarkable and
essential is the depth and breadth of her narrative, one that goes way beyond
the outwardly narrow focus suggested by the book’s title.
For Johnstone, Clinton’s
“misadventures” aren’t simply a reflection of the warmongering misadventures of
the country she aspires to lead and whose dubious “virtues” Clinton
obsequiously and glibly extols at every turn. In Johnstone’s studied analysis
of the candidate, Hillary Clinton embraces all the vices that distinguish the
prevailing Washington “group think” on foreign, national security and military
policy. Indeed, Clinton does so as promiscuously as her philandering spouse did
in pursuing his own personal vices.
Moreover, along with being
attendant to her husband’s career, the back story of Hillary Clinton’s
political ascendancy is inextricably woven into the larger narrative of
America’s preeminence as the “indispensable” empire du jour in the aftermath of
the collapse of the Soviet Union, itself coinciding more or less with Bill
Clinton’s election to the presidency in 1992.
As Johnstone notes, in her
youth, the then Hillary Rodham, a former Republican and “Goldwater
girl,” “grew up with the viewpoint of a rich and dominant America obliged to
maintain its position on top of an envious and resentful world. This was the
standard attitude.”
It should be noted that it was
her husband’s foreign and national security policies that in so many ways
facilitated the rise of the “full-spectrum
dominance” mindset that prevails in Washington to this day. In fact, Bill
Clinton’s track record as POTUS is a singular pointer to how a Hillary Clinton
presidency will shape up on the critical economic and financial, as well as the
geopolitical and national security fronts.
Though we may never know the
full extent of Hillary Clinton’s influence on her husband’s foreign and
national security policies during his tenure, we can safely assume it was never
less than substantive. In this we might point to her well-documented
encouragement of Bill Clinton to bomb Yugoslavia, as just one example.
Bringing in Bubba
And now with her husband as a
key fundraiser, campaign strategist and arguably her closest political
confidant, it’s a safe bet that once Hillary Clinton is ensconced in the White
House, “Bubba” Clinton will almost certainly reign behind the throne as her
indispensible consigliore. In fact, we can’t rule out his appointment as a key
player in the next administration.
As it is, such a prospect was announced
just this past week when the candidate said she is likely to appoint her
husband to a senior economic advisory position, purportedly to “revitalize” the
economy. “You know, he knows how to do it,” she declared.
On the foreign policy front,
the aptly designated “War Party” — the cabal of neoconservatives and liberal
interventionists who are the flag-bearers of America’s hegemonic ambition — are
now more entrenched than in Bill Clinton’s heyday and key
leaders are backing Hillary Clinton. This being the case, the die one
imagines is already cast — America’s future preordained. There can be only one
outcome from a Hillary Clinton presidency – more wars.
In an interview
with Joan Brunwasser on OpEdNews, Johnstone explained there were two things
[that] inspired her to write Queen of Chaos. The first was the Libyan
intervention and accompanying “regime change” gambit. Johnstone described the
war that eventually destroyed Libya as “totally unjustified” — a familiar
refrain in the decades-long history of America’s
war for the Greater Middle East. The author added that most people are
“totally unaware [of] how much falsification was used to justify that war.”
It was Clinton as Secretary of
State, Johnstone says, who cajoled President Obama into that war and is “quite
ready to use it as model for further regime change in countries whose leaders
she doesn’t like.” Clinton’s sniggering, grandiose exultation — “we
came, we saw, he died” — upon hearing of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s
grisly demise at the hands of Western-aided anti-government rebels was clear
evidence of this.
Her close pal (and now
presumably, aspiring “presidential whisperer”) Henry
Kissinger — himself a past master of malevolent mayhem and Machiavellian
mischief — doubtless would’ve been mightily impressed with the way the Libyan
debacle unfolded, although “Hank” one expects may have had the decorum not to
gloat about it in public, if only for appearances’ sake.
As for her second reason,
Johnstone points out it was, “the totally disproportionate hostility aroused
against Vladimir Putin and Russia as a result of the Ukrainian crisis …
[itself] incited largely by Washington and the European Union. That hostility
was already brewing, and Hillary has kept it stirring. These events are part of
a trend toward a much greater war than people today think possible.”
In
a recent article at Counterpunch, Johnstone declared that she had hoped the
occasion of the campaign might be seized upon not only to “expose the lies of
Hillary Clinton,” but, also to “seek freedom from America’s seven decades of
subjugation to the military-industrial complex and its organic intellectuals
who never cease conjuring up threats and enemies to justify the war economy.
This entire policy needs to be exposed, denounced and rejected.”
The Regressive Progressive
Andrew
Levine from the Institute for Policy Studies singled out so-called
“progressive liberals” for their unstinting support of Hillary Clinton. In his
view, no notable people within this nebulous constituency (one of her unabashed
admirers Paul
Krugman comes to mind here) have been able to come up with examples of “anything
progressive or worthwhile that Hillary has accomplished.”
Levine notes, somewhat
acerbically, as First Lady Clinton, “set the cause of health care reform back a
generation, laying the groundwork for all that is wrong with Obamacare; as a
Senator, she did nothing noteworthy at all; and, worst of all, as Secretary of
State, all she has been good for is facilitating world-endangering disasters.”
And on the neoliberal front,
more people are now viewing secretive faux trade agreements like the Trans
Pacific Partnership (TPP) as Trojan Horses concocted to enhance corporate
power and influence, allowing the transnationals to further enrich themselves
at the expense of the national sovereignty, economic prosperity and
self-determination of the countries who sign off on them. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons
and Neolibs: How Dead Ideas Kill.”]
In Australia, our all but
obligatory commitment to this agreement has
many Australians doubtful not just about the alleged benefits of the pact
itself, but our “no questions asked” vassal-status alliance with America in
general. That few if any of these agreements do what their advocates claim they
do is evident to all but the most myopic or deluded of observers of the
political economy.
Bill Clinton’s own 1994 NAFTA
agreement might be Exhibit A here. And Hillary Clinton’s flip-flopping
on this issue is not a good “look” in the eyes of those increasingly
opposed to these “trade” regimes.
Further, despite her earnest
proclamations about reining in Wall Street, Clinton is not likely to do so. The
Clintons’ respective presidential campaigns — indeed their political
ascendancy, and by
some accounts, their personal financial rehabilitation after Bill Clinton
left office — were funded in large part and via various means by the “gangbanksters”
of “grab-it-all” street.
These massive payments —
essentially pay-to-play “payola” dressed-up as speaking fees, charitable
donations or campaign contributions — could be viewed as Wall Street’s
protection money guaranteeing that a President Hillary Clinton will use her
office as the bulwark between the financial criminals and the
folks with the pitchforks.
Pepe
Escobar has noted that “Wall Street’s Golden Girl” likes to portray herself
at least for public consumption as a dedicated disciple of the “No Bank Is Too
Big To Fail” ethos and “fully committed” to financial industry reform. But she
is “the reigning Queen of Turbo-Charged Casino Neoliberalism … the evidence
insists to suggest that her actions do not exactly match her rhetoric.”
It seems then that few
presidential aspirants have campaigned for office schlepping so much obvious
“baggage” with them. In fact, it is a testament to the Clintons’ formidable,
perpetual motion political machine that much of HRC’s “baggage” is either
hidden from public view or is rarely subjected to the rigorous scrutiny that
should accompany any candidate aspiring to the highest office in the land.
Paradoxically, this applies
even more so now despite more informed folks having the Clintons’ political and
personal measure. But as indicated, the MSM has dutifully shoved her dirty
linen down the political laundry chute and welded the doors shut at both ends
so the smell doesn’t offend the nostrils of the voting public.
In at least one case, the MSM
appears to have been joined in pulling punches by some in alternative,
independent media (AIM) circles. Fellow Australian, renowned filmmaker and
journalist John
Pilger noted recently, in reference to an article he published on Counterpunch
concerning Clinton’s fitness for the White House, another well known and
generally respected AIM outlet Truthout, refused to republish it in full until
he excised some of what they viewed as his more contentious statements
regarding the Woman who Would be President. Pilger said this was the first time
he’d ever been asked to undertake such self-censorship. He was, as might be
expected, less than impressed, saying “like all censorship, this was
unacceptable.”
Pilger added that Truthout
said “my unwillingness to submit my work to a ‘process of revision’ meant
[they] had to take it off their ‘publication docket’. Such is the gatekeeper’s
way with words. At the root of this episode is an enduring unsayable. This is
the need, the compulsion, of many liberals to embrace a leader from within a
system that is demonstrably imperial and violent. Like Obama’s ‘hope’,
Clinton’s gender is no more than a suitable facade.”
In this case, it was a news
outlet positioning itself as a credible alternative to the glorified
stenographers and perception managers populating the newsrooms and editorial
boards within and across the NYT/WPost/LAT axis.
For Pilger and other
like-minded observers, the broader challenge for those wishing to expose the
leading candidate’s “dirty linen” to greater scrutiny when it is needed most is
made more difficult as a result of her status as the anointed candidate amongst
the Washington power elites.
Now that Clinton has fashioned
herself as the “women’s candidate” and “champion of American liberalism” in its
“heroic struggle” with those mostly unelected folks who dictate U.S. economic,
foreign, military and national security policy, it is increasingly difficult
given the existing political climate to counter this cockamamie narrative.
Or as Pilger put it: “This is
drivel, of course; Hillary Clinton leaves a trail of blood and suffering around
the world and a clear record of exploitation and greed in her own country. To
say so, however, is becoming intolerable in the land of free speech.”
Surviving President
Clinton-45?
What should be especially
troubling for Americans contemplating their next commander in chief, Clinton
clearly views herself amongst those elites whose position, profile, public
persona and self-importance license them to see themselves being above the law.
Of course, this
phenomena is nothing new, but it is becoming increasingly obvious to
ordinary Americans that those in power and/or those with influence aren’t
routinely — without fear or favor — subject to the same rules and penalties as they
would be, all things equal.
Given her legally suspect
track record on so many issues, this alone should disqualify Clinton from
consideration as President. Her arrogant, contemptuous dismissal of the very
idea that she might face prosecution from her careless handling of sensitive
information in the so-called “Server-gate” scandal — “it’s
simply not going to happen” — is ample evidence that she sees herself as a
member of the exclusive
but expanding “Too Big to Jail” Club.
As former CIA intelligence
analyst Ray
McGovern sees it, with the FBI investigation into the matter about to wrap
up, it’s anyone’s guess at this stage as to whether the U.S. Justice Department
will find against her for using a private email account and server to conduct
official, classified and/or top secret State Department business while
Secretary of State, and from there prosecute her to the full extent of the law.
But McGovern goes on to add
the following: “if there is something incriminating — or at least politically
damaging — in Clinton’s emails, it’s a safe bet that at least the NSA and maybe
the FBI, as well, knows. And that could make life difficult for a Clinton-45
presidency. The whole thing needs to be cleaned up before the choices for the
next President are locked in.”
In a recent
piece — querulously titled “Would The World Survive President Hillary?” —
Paul Craig Roberts noted that the Clintons represent everything that is deeply
flawed about the way Washington works as they serve as the “poster couple” for
the corrosive graft, corruption, political perversion and criminal sleaze that
infects the Beltway milieu.
Roberts writes: “government
has been privatized. Office holders use their positions in order to make
themselves wealthy, not in order to serve the public interest. Bill and Hillary
Clinton epitomize the use of public office in behalf of the office holder’s
interest. For the Clintons, government means using public office to be rewarded
for doing favors for private interests.”
Part of the reason HRC’s
fitness for the Oval Office has not been subjected to the sort of scrutiny we
all should expect was the reluctance of her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders to
go for the jugular throughout the primary campaign. Hillary Clinton might own
the most vulnerable “jugular” in this battle, but she’s been extraordinarily
adept at ensuring hers is a constantly moving, hard-to-hit target.
Yet even if Sanders had
conducted a more aggressive campaign against Clinton based on her dubious
record, it’s arguable the MSM would not have accorded such efforts that much
attention, no matter how on the money Sanders was or how well such tactics
might have played with voters. Insofar as the MSM is concerned, the nomination
of Clinton as the Democratic — indeed, Establishment — candidate, was a
foregone conclusion from the get-go. The MSM’s job is to make it a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
Neglecting Sanders
All this was underscored by
the amount of MSM ink lavished on the respective campaigns, with Sanders receiving
a fraction compared to Clinton (or certainly Donald Trump). Even then, the
coverage of Sanders was often begrudging and dismissive (focused recently on
why he won’t just concede the nomination and stop “hurting” Clinton).
Plus, there were the reports
of vote
rigging in various primary contests and Democratic campaign
funding anomalies, all of which have been ignored or played down in MSM
circles. For its part, the MSM have long since abrogated any and all
responsibility for guiding voters towards the selection of a president who
might begin to reverse the course America seems hell bent on pursuing, whether
in the broad economic, financial, social, military, national security or
geopolitical spheres. It wasn’t going to change gear this time around.
Last but not least is the
aforementioned Clinton machine itself, whose principal drivers are doubtless
leaving nothing to chance in their relentless, ruthless drive towards the
“inevitable” nomination of their standard bearer and ultimately the presidency.
This, coupled with the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) own “out of the
starting gate” anointment of HRC as the presumptive nominee along with the
crucial backing (above and below board) that accompanies said “anointment,”
translated to Sanders having to work much harder to gain sufficient traction,
and from there position himself as the more qualified, suitable candidate for
nomination.
That he continues working
harder as of this writing is both a testament to Sanders’s own determination
and the undeniable
level of grassroots support for him. It is also an indictment of the
Democratic Party itself which seems determined to stop him — along with those
among the “opinionocracy” equally determined to write him off — even if this
means risking
destruction of the party as a viable political entity.
In an interview
with talk show host Ed Schultz, Sanders said “super-delegates” – party
insiders who get to vote on the nominee without being elected as a regular
delegate – had to “do some hard thinking” before deciding who to support at the
convention.
The Vermont senator had this
to say about the state of play: “‘Take a look at the polls, take a look at the
nature of the campaigns. And I think if you do that, you’ll find that the
energy, the enthusiasm, the voter turnout will be with us. We are the strongest
campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton — to defeat Donald Trump, and hopefully
Hillary Clinton as well here, and if that’s the case, I would hope they support
us.”
Clinton’s Fitness
And though it may be too
little, too late, some people within the AIM ranks are still calling into
question Clinton’s suitability, qualification and fitness for the White House.
To this end, in a recent article journalist Robert
Parry of Consortiumnews posed a simple but seemingly vexed question about
HRC — is she qualified to be president, not just based on her résumé but on her
actual performance in office?
Parry wrote that Clinton
“seemed incapable of learning from her costly errors — or perhaps she just
understands that the politically safest course is to do what Washington’s
neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment wants. …
“That way you get hailed as a
serious thinker in The Washington Post and at think-tank conferences. Virtually
all major columnists and big-name pundits praised Clinton’s hawkish tendencies
as Secretary of State, from her escalating tensions with Iran to tipping the
balance of the debate in favor of ‘regime change’ in Libya to urging direct
U.S. military intervention in Syria in pursuit of another ‘regime change’
there.”
Such fitness for office should
be a fundamental consideration for selecting a U.S. president, along with an
equally crucial question: What kind of individual is the best person to reverse
the course America seems intent on pursuing at the expense of everything it
purports to stand for? At one stage Obama held out this promise to America, and
more recently for some, Sanders.
Hillary Clinton is, indeed,
the “Queen of Chaos” inhabiting her own real-life “House of Cards,” one that’s
been erected by a fawning, uncritical mainstream media, bankrolled by wealthy
elites and the denizens of Wall Street and the military-industrial-security
complex with its perimeter secured by the neoconservatives and their fellow
travelers, the (not-so) liberal interventionists. In other words, the power
enclaves that constitute the existentially toxic Washington political
firmament.
All things considered, simply
being “afraid” somehow just doesn’t cut it. When it comes to the Clintons, one
imagines we’d all be safer and more secure with the conniving Frank Underwood
as President and his calculating wife Claire as Vice President, or perhaps vice
versa. Now, there’s a thought!
Greg Maybury is a freelance
writer based in Perth, Western Australia.
