5 0 October 2016
R
ejected Democrat candidate Bernie
Sanders would have done nicely. He
is passionate about the agendas of
equality, sustainability and
accounability.
On equality: “The issue of wealth and income
inequality is the great moral, economic and
political issue of our time”. On Climate: “Climate
change is the single greatest threat facing our
planet. On accountability: “Are we prepared to
take on the enormous economic and political
power of the billionaire class, or do we continue
to slide into oligarchy?”. Sanders, much more
than Corbyn in Britain, more than the anti-prop-
erty-tax, anti-water-charge Radical Left in
Ireland, gets it.
However, in his absence we are left with two
conservative candidates: one sober and clever,
the other bombastic, mendacious, fascistic and
intolerant.
Clinton is strong on the environment and cli
-
mate but doesn’t buy the rhetoric or the meat on
equality, and her record on accountability is
tainted.
Trump never mentions equality, doesn’t
believe in climate change and can’t stop lying
and reversing his positions.
It would be better to like Hillary Clinton but
she’s just too boring, just too insincere, just too
compromised and above all just too conservative
for this magazine. Since every word she has said
since Bill became Governor in Arkansas in 1978,
when she was 30 has been shredded, she has
not really been alive to exciting new ideas. Her
intellectual curiosity seems to have peaked as
an academic in Yale when she had radical views
on children. Her political life has been a history
of triangulation, of compromise, of expediency
– with, for America, a vaguely liberal, Democrat-
just-left-of-centre gloss.
This is a woman who until three years ago was
not even in favour of gay marriage. In 2005 she
said “I believe marriage is not just a bond but a
sacred bond between a man and a woman”. She
does not have the instincts of secular European
liberals: "Bill and I went into our bedroom, closed
the door and prayed together for God’s help as
he took on this awesome honor and responsibil
-
ity”, Clinton wrote of her husband winning the
1992 election. She grew up in a Methodist house-
hold, taught Sunday school like her mother and
is a member of a Senate prayer group.
Hillary has had a difficult time in the public eye
but coped with some dignity, for example, with
a husband who had a nastily roaming eye. Unfor-
tunately for this otherwise gilded couple: for
many the rosy picture they paint of undaunted
mutual support rings false. This is something
Trump was always liable to exploit.
She is not an empathetic candidate. She is a
shocking orator, shouts at public meetings and
weirdly emphasises the wrong parts of words
and sentences.
More substantively, Hillary was never far from
financial wrangles when Bill was in the White
House: there was Whitewater, Travelgate, File-
gate, and a cattle-futures controversy.
Anomalously and disturbingly for someone
whose earnings flow almost exclusively from her
public life, she now has an estimated worth of
$45m. For the fifteen months ending in March
2015, Clinton earned over $11m from speeches
and in 2013 she was paid $225,000 to speak at
a Goldman Sachs’ conference on ‘Builders and
Innovators’. When the Clintons’ indulgence of a
revolving door of their policy-makers into and
out of top positions in delinquent banks is taken
into account, it leaves an unpleasant odour.
Inevitably with such a long record in public life
Clinton has left a legacy of controversy. Her fail-
ure to get healthcare reform through Congress
during her husband’s Presidency has been
attributed to arrogance.
Her performance as Secretary of State was
steady and wonkish but generated a number of
controversies.
When in 2012 members of the US diplomatic
mission in Benghazi, Libya, were killed, Clinton
was forced to take responsibility for security
lapses.
In 2015, it was revealed by the State Depart
-
ment's inspector general that Clinton had always
used personal email accounts on a private server
instead of a federal server, during her tenure as
secretary of state. In July the FBI concluded an
investigation. The FBI said: "It is possible that
hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clin-
ton's personal email account”.
Although Clinton or her colleagues were
"extremely careless in their handling of very sen-
sitive, highly classified information", the FBI
recommended no charges. Clinton has tended to
exaggerate the extent of the FBI’s exoneration of
her.
On many issues, the positions of Clinton and
Trump align with that of their parties - Clinton
wants to raise taxes on high-income households
while Trump wants to cut taxes for all income
brackets Clinton is pro-choice, Trump is pro-life;
Clinton supports the DREAM Act and a path to
citizenship for undocumented immigrants, while
Trump wants to deport all undocumented immi-
grants, build a wall on the Mexican border and
be nasty to China; Clinton wants to expand gun
control legislation, Trump does not;. Clinton is
for LGBT rights; Trump says he sees himself as a
"traditional guy" on the issue.
On other issues, the lines are more blurry.
Ironically, for example, alleged billionaire Trump
claims to be for the small voter.
Clinton has served as Secretary of State in the
Obama administration, where she was respon-
sible for orchestrating US foreign policy. She is
perceived as more interventionist than Obama.
Trump tends to non-intervention. Unless some
-
one annoys him.
Clinton in
perspective
Hillary has offered no radical
new ideas since her college days
by Michael Smith
Her political life
has been a history
of triangulation,
of compromise,
of expediency –
with, for America,
a vaguely liberal,
Democrat-just-left-
of-centre gloss
OPINION

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