International Law

Clinton 2.1

By Garry J. Wise, Wise Law Office, Toronto

It certainly looks like Barack Obama's momentum is going to be tough to stop.

Nonetheless, I am hardening in my desire to see Hillary Clinton pulls it off.

There has been quite a bit of discussion about the Obama magic - perhaps, far too much - but a paucity of genuine analysis as to why Hillary has left so much of her support behind.

I am starting to think it is because she has made the same mistake Al Gore made.

She has failed to embrace and harness her greatest potential strength - her central role as part of the extremely prosperous Clinton years.

Bill Clinton was one of America's most successful, recent presidents. His administration's record on the economy, race relations, domestic policy and international affairs speaks for itself.

That case can easily be made.

And it needs to be.

Had Hillary's campaign attempted to capture America's imagination through a thematic reinvention of the Clinton legacy, America might have been a bit more interested in listenin

Beyond that, Mrs. Clinton has failed to make the not-unimportant point that it was the very enemies of the Clinton presidency - the same operatives who pushed the Lewinsky debacle to the brink of impeachment - who have now taken America to the brink

It is the former enemies of the Clinton presidency, in fact, who subsequently gave the nation eight years of Republican ineptitude and turpitude. They have been behind a never-ending litany of policy blunders that have left the nation winded, the U.S. dollar wounded and the balance of world scratching its head.

Conventional wisdom was that it would be bad for Mrs. Clinton to reopen the old wounds of yesteryear's fights by "going there" and discussing the past.

That was and is a mistake.

Conventional wisdom these days is all-too-often just a repackaging of talking points, spun by Republican strategists and planted in the collective ear of professional punditry for ultimate public consumption.

I suspect it is Republican strategists who don't relish the reopening of argument on the Clinton years.

Hindsight in America allows for the connecting of dots between Clinton's impeachers and their subsequent ineptitude in government. And history allows us to look back at the impeachment process as an all-too prescient indicator of the Republican hackery that was to follow.

Mrs. Clinton could have fought this campaign by forcing Republicans onto a turf that made them answer for their actions, ideologies and endless corruptions - yesterday and today.

In doing so, she may well have left Obama on the sidelines.

Bluntly, her fight against Republican hackery would have been far more interesting to watch - and far more important for the nation - than yet another well-rehearsed and crafted Obama oratory.

Frankly, I think it still would be.

Mrs. Clinton now asks America to believe she is a fighter. But she has cowered from the one fight that I would like to see her take on.

Mrs. Clinton of all people - the first person to out the "vast right wing conspiracy" against the Clinton administration in the m,ainstream media - is in quite a good position to say, "I told you this is who they are. This is how they act. And this is how they have brought America to its knees."

She now needs to remind America that the Clinton years were good for America - and that the future can be even better - with her own version of Clinton 2.1 - a new administration for and in the 21st century, ready to rebuild, reinvigorate and renew the American dream.

To date, her campaign has largely buried Bill Clinton - not just Bill Clinton the man, but Bill Clinton, the President, and Bill Clinton, the symbol.

It has seemed expedient at times, perhaps, but it hasn't worked.

As I recall it, Bill Clinton remained the man America most wanted to hear from on 9-11, when Bush was in hiding and Cheney was still "undisclosed."

Bill Clinton continues to have currency in America, even if he arguably has lost a bit of his fastball.

The Republicans wanted nothing more than to have Bill Clinton treated like a liability.

Mrs. Clinton has obliged.

She could have been elevated by her status as former First Lady, with her credibility sealed by her subsequent record in the Senate. Instead, she has almost entirely distanced herself from those largely-positive associations about her family's political legacy and has been left reeling by her vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

In the process, she has lost her inherent advantage, and fallen right back into the jaws of a media machine that has been as complicit in stoking Obamamania as it was in hyping the Lewinsky affair and cheerleading for the Bush Administration's zeal for war in Iraq.

It is now up to Mrs. Clinton to change the subject.

Obamamania may be getting a bit stale.

She has very little time to turn this around.

And it really is now or never for Clinton 2.1.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Full post as published by Wise Law Blog on February 29, 2008 (boomark / email).