Forrest Gump usually had a positive role to play at the hinges of fate; the equally ubiquitous Hillary Gump’s cameos have made history far worse.
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media
The fictional and cinema hero Forrest Gump somehow always managed to turn up at historic moments in the latter twentieth century. But whereas Forrest usually had a positive role to play at the hinges of fate, the equally ubiquitous Hillary Gump usually appeared as a bit player who made things far worse.
Take the issue of government abuse, ethics, and public transparency. The modern locus classicus of government overreach was the Watergate scandal. Over forty years ago Hillary was there as a young legal intern purportedly advising the House Judiciary Committee during the congressional investigations. She was also reportedly let go by her superiors for unethical conduct — quis custodiet ipsos custodes? From Watergate to Travelgate to Filegate to Whitewater to the current quid pro quos of the Clinton Foundation to her recent destruction of private emails and her private server while serving as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has been at or near lots of government scandals of the last half-century. Twenty years ago Hillary Clinton was brazenly evading federal law by hiding her legal records from a court-ordered subpoena for documents — in the same fashion that in 2015 she destroyed all traces of her email correspondence on her private server, in violation of State Department protocol and most likely federal law.
Hillary Clinton has been all over the Middle East meltdown. In 1998 the Clinton administration pushed the Iraq Liberation Act, calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein. In 2002 then Senator Clinton gave an impassioned speech in voting to authorize the Iraq war. By 2005 with rising unrest in Iraq and in worry over her own looming political ambitions, war supporter Clinton suddenly damned the war and blasted those who supported winning it. By 2007 she was ridiculing the surge. By 2008 she had berated Gen. David Petraeus’s congressional testimony that offered data proving the success of the surge — infamously suggesting that Petraeus was a veritable liar (“suspension of disbelief”). By late 2011 Clinton was helping to orchestrate the withdrawal of all U.S. peacekeepers from Iraq, the most unfortunate foreign policy decision of the last decade that birthed ISIS. She was also assuring the country that Syrian strongman Bashar Assad was a reformer: “There’s a different leader in Syria now. Many members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.” A little over a year later, the Obama administration was issuing a redline to Syria — soon to be withdrawn — threatening to bomb Assad out of power for his use of chemical weapons. When Clinton left office, no one could figure out what American policy toward Syria was — against Assad? Against ISIS, the enemy of Assad? Working with Iran, an ally of Assad, against ISIS? Working with Sunni regional powers, enemies of Assad? Working with moderate opponents of Iran, Assad, and ISIS to the extent they existed?
By 2011 Ms. Clinton was calling for bombing strikes against Moammar Khadafy without either congressional or UN approval. After the gruesome mob murder of Khadafy, she chuckled “we came, we saw, he [Khadafy] died”. A sort of Mogadishu on the Mediterranean followed in Libya, as the country descended into an Al Qaeda and ISIS miasma. Of the murders of four Americans that followed in Benghazi, Clinton scoffed, “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?” In the aftermath of the killings she also falsely assured the nation and the family of the dead that an obscure video maker, not al Qaeda affiliated terrorists, had murdered the Americans. She later filtered all her email communications concerning Benghazi, destroying thousands of emails that she insists were entirely private in nature.
Hillary Clinton came of age during the era of the new feminism, which lectured the nation about its sexist assumptions: professional women need not take their husband’s name; women who sleep with men outside the protocols of marriage are not to be denigrated as ethically suspect; women are to be paid the same wage for the same work for men; women need not cling to philandering husbands to maintain their economic or career viability or social standing. Yet Hillary’s feminist legacy is that loud professions of feminism can offer medieval exemption from sexist acts: she helped organize the administration’s demonization of younger, less powerful women who were harassed by the sexual predator Bill Clinton; she piggybacked her own career to that of her husband; she used census methodologies to criticize pay disparities in the work force that by the same formula show that her own female Senate staffers received much less than her male workers; she rebranded herself with the Clinton name when her husband’s persona proved politically advantageous.
In the last thirty years the once populist Democratic Party has embraced the financial elite. Hillary was there at the creation and knee-deep in the culture of corporate cronyism and personal greed. She once used her husband’s Arkansas contacts to parlay a $1,000 cattle futures investment into a $100,000 profit, oblivious to concerns that most cattle ranchers have no such influence or no such luck. Financial experts stated that the odds of such super-profiting occurring naturally without illegal or unethical massaging were 1 in 32 trillion. In frequent populist modes, Hillary has variously attacked hedge fund CEOs, and unwarranted compensation by the nation’s financial elite. Her daughter became a multimillionaire after brief stints with Wall Street funds; her son-in-law is a hedge fund owner. No American has recently better leveraged the government/private sector nexus. Clinton routinely charges $300,000 per speech to corporate concerns (many of whom gave far more to her family foundation in expectation of insider favors) and universities.
How about the increasing politicized IRS that predicates audits on political realities? Hillary was there too for a long time — from writing off the Clinton underwear as a charitable donation to not reporting fully her cattle futures profiteering to the more recent Clinton Foundation’s serial refiling of amended tax returns as investigative journalism turns up more unreported income.
The list of Hillary Clinton’s Gump-like appearances is near endless.
Reset with Putin that green-lighted Vladimir Putin’s absorption of Crimea and eastern Ukraine? Hillary Clinton claimed it as her signature foreign policy — plastic-red reset button and all.
Obamacare? Hillary was there first when she tried to ramrod down the throats of the nation the unworkable Hillarycare.
Gay marriage? Hillary lectured the nation in 2008 on why it was uncalled for — and in 2016 on why those who felt the same were themselves bigoted.
The Confederate Flag controversy? For Hillary Clinton in 2016, the stars and bars were proof of inveterate racism; in 1992 she had no problem with the Clinton-Gore logo plastered over the Confederate flag as a southern campaign prop for her husband’s campaign. In her 2008 blue-collar populist moments, Hillary was not concerned about the appearance of white chauvinism when she infamously bragged of her supposedly ascendant polls “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me. There’s a pattern emerging here.”
Yes, there is.
On the great issues of our times — scandals involving the abuse of government power, parlaying public service into private profit-making, reset foreign policy, nationalized health care, gay marriage, and race relations — Hillary Clinton almost always was in the news, and largely for something either unethical or hypocritical.
Copyright © 2015 Works and Days. All rights reserved.
I don’t know about the USA but a bit of light relief doing the rounds in New Zealand
Dear Agony Aunt,
My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and, when I confront him, he denies everything. What’s worse, everyone knows that he cheats on me. It is so humiliating.
Also, since he lost his job 14 years ago, he hasn’t even looked for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, cruise around and talk bullshit with his buddies while I have to work to pay the bills.
Since our daughter went away to college he doesn’t even pretend to like me, and even hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do? Signed: Clueless
Dear Clueless: Grow up and dump him. You don’t need him anymore! Good grief woman, you’re running for President of the United States ..
Who are we to think that Hillary should not become our first openly post-logical President, whose standard of truth is that it contradicts logic? Logicians prepare to be humiliated.
I predict that Hillary, juggernaut that she is, will again LOSE the Democratic primary fight for her party’s presidential nomination. Mainly because she’s an unlikeable, shrill shrew (how often to you see those two words used consecutively?) but also because her party is increasingly leftist / Marxist, and she’s such an obvious and shameless ‘one percenter.’ In her younger days, before her big cattle futures trade, she would not have had a problem selling her inner-Alinsky as sincere. But now, given her age, her experiences as cataloged above, and her wealth, she can no longer credibly play that card. That’s not to say I think Bernie Sanders will win. The few sensible Democrats that remain realize that he’s unelectable in the general election. In fact, I think that Elizabeth Warren will win. She’ll be pressed into the race by desperation, and like Obama, she’ll make a huge initial splash, then go on to win the big states and take the nomination. In some ways, she will be a harder candidate for the Republicans to defeat, because she isn’t as burdened with the ugly baggage that Hillary carries. But let’s get ready for her. Defeating the country’s first Native American woman candidate will not be easy.
“The few sensible democrats..” That says it all. Never under-estimate the power backing the Clinton-type political animal. That, and the populace is trained clockwork-orange style in the “suspension of disbelief” of all things democrat. Philandering Bubba will be jettisoned once power is secured. During or after the first term of democrat rule, the dollar as a reserve currency is hanging by a thread or severed, likewise, the United States treasury market. Print, borrow and fund prosperity is now a Shakespearean play. Foreign policy? Only the brave will dare to look.
“Hillary Gump” might be the turning-point of this campaign! A pithy, loaded catchphrase for people to latch on to.
Now, if only the Stupid Party can seize the opportunity. Ideally, they would find a credible, right-thinking, accomplished woman candidate who’s not easily parodied or feared; if they had grabbed someone like Colin Powell ten years ago, the whole Obama debacle might not have happened.
I always felt the whole D party turn against the war had as much to do with the various polls that came out giving Powell a 70% favorably for the presidency post-Bush. The timing was too coincidental. Suddenly he was liar, Bush was a liar Cheney was a lying cartoon villain and their war “heroes” Murtha and Kerry were always against the war, really.
The Republican party and with effort has moved so far against their conservative base, that this base will not show at the poles and Hillary will win, hands down. She will win by default.
Count on it.
What a great comparison/ contrast Dr. Hanson… thoroughly enjoyed it !!!
I think Mickey Reno’s last comment was tongue in cheek.
Very nice post. Too bad the libs won’t admit to any of the flaws in their queen.
why beat around the bush? she is a revolutionary who regards law as a bourgeois convention to be flaunted & violated. she has the ethics of a mink in heat. she is way more dangerous than obama ever dreamed of being.
she is a viper. very dangerous. totally w/out restraint, remorse or inhibition. if she ever gets the chance, she would dearly love to be shooting people behind the ear, as they cowered before in terror.
a totally loathsome person. she would have made a very good ss guard, or kgb agent. no difference from her standpoint.
” Alexis Tsipras twitter.” Fissures. Time. Dominoes.The core is protected.
” Taking the BRICS seriously project syndicate.”” Whither U.S. as center of world finance?
How did I miss the Forest Gump comparison?
It’s too obvious and too true!
You’re brilliant.
She scares the hell out of me.
With her, life is like a box of Road Apples.
You always get the same old….same.
A small thing but did anyone else notice when Bill & Hillary were on stage for some function they were holding hands for a minute. Hillary pulled her hand away and grimaced a bit, in the middle of her phony ear to ear smile. It was the most unfriendly unloving bit of hand holding ever. KDM
Pingback: Hillary Gump | Newport Mesa Tea Party Patriots
She’s the quintessential liberal. Do what I say, not what I do.
Heard one on the radio this morning (“PBS”). “It’s like deciding to wrestle with a pig. You’ll both get dirty; but, the pig loves it”.
Hillary is a piece of work, no doubt. But more importantly, there has to be something profoundly wrong with a country that allows this kind of person to wield power.
The only people who will vote for Hillary are those who watch propaganda and listen to sound bites. Those who study her history and its outcomes will find it impossible to embrace the abject stupidity of electing her into a position of enormous failure potential.