Should Hillary have the leading role?

Hillary Clinton is a wonderful leader, so some memes tell us on Facebook and some pundits tell us in mainstream media.

I might agree she is a good leader if only it weren’t for her enmeshment and record with Watergate, 1974; Whitewater, 1978–1998; a cattle futures scandal, 1978; the Vince Foster suicide, 1993; Travelgate, 1993; Paula Jones, 1991–1999; Monica Lewinsky, 1995–1998; the Clinton Foundation 2001–2015; WikiLeaks, 2010; destroying Libya and killing Gaddafi, 2011; Behghazi, 2012; banksters, telling them what they wanted to hear for $250,000 or so per speech, taking in $2 million or so in personal pocket change during 2013–2015, bribes for 2017 and beyond; her private email scandal as secretary of state, which she is now under investigation for by the FBI; husband Bill’s campaigning near a primary voting place in Massachusetts, 2016; voter fraud in Arizona, 2016.

Scandals for four more years, anyone?

Gene Lyons, a columnist writing out of Arkansas, apparently a long-time friend of the Clintons, published an editorial April 8, 2016 in the Statesboro (GA) Herald titled, “Bogus ‘scandals’ won’t beat Hillary.”

It seems to me there is no such thing as a bogus scandal. A scandal is a scandal, period, especially when a scandal is documented in books and articles in the public domain. True enough a person enmeshed in a scandal may be innocent of a crime, as Hillary may be in all the scandals in which she has been enmeshed.

Be that as it may, she attracts, or is attracted to, scandals, like a lightning rod attracts lightning bolts, or a moth is attracted to light; and it seems to me that propensity will not go away if she becomes president of the United States.

Her political record is devoid of significant positive legislative and administrative accomplishments, aside from getting elected to the US Senate and appointed Secretary of State, in my opinion; and it seems to me most Hillary supporters are delusional about her leadership accomplishments. It seems to me most of the good ideas in her presidential platform are ideas she stole from Bernie Sanders.

One of Bernie’s best ideas—bringing back Glass-Steagall—Hillary has not yet stolen, to my knowledge. This entails repealing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, possibly the worst piece of US legislation of the 20th Century, which husband Bill signed into law in 1999, that repealed necessary provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, making possible the US banking collapse and scandal of 2007, and the US financial threat today.

I did not write this because I dislike Hillary. I think she is an attractive, determined, intelligent, well-educated person. She has entertained her audience playing an interesting character in the US political soap opera for over 40 years. Unfortunately she lacks the acting skills of a Ronald Reagan.

If only it weren’t for those above mentioned scandals and her propensity to get enmeshed in scandals . . .

Go, Bernie!

Richard John Stapleton is the author of a recently published book, “Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning,” available at Amazon.com. He writes in Internet journals such as Intrepid Report and MWC News (media with conscience), on his Facebook page, and on his webpage at www.effectivelearning.net.

3 Responses to Should Hillary have the leading role?

  1. William John Cox

    It is not that Hillary is an unaccomplished actress that will spoil the show, it is the quality of the producers and directors, as well as others she brings into the cast, who will make the performance a disaster. ~wm

  2. Paul Ziegler

    Gene Lyons knows what he’s talking about. He literally write the book when he wrote “The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton” with Joe Conason. A scandal is is a scandal but a bogus scandal is no more a scandal than a teddy bear is a bear. It has been standard practice for some time now for Republicans to generate bogus scandals about any Democrat occupying the Whitehouse. Think the birthers with Obama.

    That said, I much prefer Bernie but this is because Hilary is a pro-business Democrat in a time when business is pretty much the problem.

  3. I guess you’re right about bogus scandals and teddy bears Paul. But it seems to me it’s a matter of semantics. Seems to me a teddy bear is a form of bear. As Bill Clinton said at one point defending himself during his Monica Lewinsky scandal, it depends on what “is” is. Seems to me Hillary has been enmeshed in more so-called scandals than most politicians, largely thanks to the undeniable scandals of her husband, which we will continue to hear about if she gets elected. A major problem of politics today is that it’s almost impossible to prove to any audience who’s lying and who’s not about facts and bogus facts published in mainstream and non-mainstream media.