Not knowing how to "act" has been "natural" for Clinton--just ask the president

Yesterday on iHeart radio’s talk show “The Breakfast Club,” Hillary Clinton spent some time talking about how she didn’t know how to “act” as a “natural” politician because there were so few women leaders in the world. Currently there are 18 female heads of state or government in the world (three of them in Western Europe), which admittedly isn’t many, but closer to home is six female governors, and Clinton has never endangered her expectations by even considering such a run—it is better to get right down to brass tacks and make fools of voters for the highest office in the land. But the truth is that voters should be concerned about this. Unlike Donald Trump, who knows how to play the crowd because he is a “natural” at communicating with ordinary people, Hillary Clinton has always been secretive about herself and her doings, because of her contempt for “ordinary” people and her belief that laws only exist to impugn her and her “freedom” to act in any morally or ethically corrupt way that she feels is her “right” to do.

Naturally, Clinton tried to make a gender issue out of it—after she had in a rare moment of candor confessed “It is really hard for me. I've said this before. I look at somebody like my husband or President Obama. They are so natural. I mean, they are fluid, they got the moves, they can just go into a room and really capture it – they've got charisma.” I’ll give Clinton this much: her husband’s “charisma” has enabled him to escape accounting from a multitude of sins and scandals; but it has also helped her to escape accounting for her own even greater sins of corruption. If people can “forgive” Bill after accusations of sexual assault and even rape, then certainly people will give his wife the “benefit of the doubt” as well. It is only “fair.”

Today, meanwhile, President Obama pardoned another 98 prisoners in jail for nonviolent drug offenses, bringing the total to 872 whose sentences the president has commuted. Why bring this up in the context of Clinton? Because the massive influx of nonviolent offenders spending years in prison is due either directly or indirectly to the Clintons’ Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which funneled massive amounts of funding for increased police presence and power, established special “drug courts,” and mandated the “three-strikes” rule. Although technically aimed at violent offenders of federal law, it in fact served as a template for state and local statutes that were much more harsh and comprehensive, especially for petty drug offenders, and much more likely to target blacks and Hispanics, rather than well-off whites in their “nice” neighborhoods.  One recalls that Hillary Clinton defended the law at the time, using her ignominious “super-predator” reference. 

Was this one of the “mistakes” that Hillary Clinton was guilty of that the president has made reference to during interviews of recent note, that have been “magnified” because of her position? Or does the president actually hold a secret “grudge” against Clinton, and taking mild jabs at her? I frankly think he is, after jibes from Clinton dating back to the 2008 primaries. I also have no doubt that he felt forced to offer Clinton the position of Secretary of State because he knew the vindictiveness of the Clintons (and of Hillary in particular) when they were “crossed,”  and he needed to get on their “good” side. 

There is also no doubt that the president felt that Clinton was not someone he could trust, and especially in the Middle East he felt that her judgment was not useful to his administration, perhaps deliberately so. According to a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, the president was reportedly upset by Clinton’s and her loyal subjects’ dispersion of the president’s “don’t do stupid shit” mantra as being “unbecoming” of a great country:

Obama became “rip-shit angry,” according to one of his senior advisers. The president did not understand how “Don’t do stupid shit” could be considered a controversial slogan. Ben Rhodes recalls that “the questions we were asking in the White House were ‘Who exactly is in the stupid-shit caucus? Who is pro–stupid shit?’ ” The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid shit.

Clinton, against the president’s own inclinations, did do “stupid shit” by pushing for the intervention in Libya. Today, that country remains in complete tatters, ripped asunder by tribalism, proving why such a country needed a “strong hand” to keep it “under control.” Of course, there was what occurred in Benghazi, which I am certain also angered the president in that Libya was Clinton’s “baby” and she allowed that to happen. No wonder he didn’t trust her “judgement” in regard to intervening in Syria. According to the Atlantic, “Joe Biden, who is acerbic about Clinton’s foreign-policy judgment, has said privately, 'Hillary just wants to be Golda Meir (the war-hawk former Israeli prime minister).'”

Hillary Clinton still obviously holds a grudge against the president for upsetting her plans eight years ago, and this was exposed once again when last week at a Roman Catholic charity dinner in New York she made a “joke” about “How will Barack get past Donald Trump's Muslim ban?”. Reportedly the “joke” didn’t amuse anyone, as there was complete silence for a moment or two.