Does Marrying Bill Clinton Qualify Someone To Be President?

Posted: Nov 16, 2007 9:11 AM
Does Marrying Bill Clinton Qualify Someone To Be President?

If a CEO of a fortune 500 company were to retire, would anyone seriously consider his wife to be an adequate replacement simply because she was married to him when he ran the company? What about a Super Bowl winning football team? What do you think the reaction of their fans would be if their coach's wife was being seriously discussed as his replacement?

It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Yet, Hillary Clinton has practically been anointed by the press and the punditocracy as our next President, despite the fact that her run at the presidency is almost entirely based on being Bill Clinton's wife.

By that, I mean that if Bill Clinton had meant the sweet nothings that he whispered in Monica Lewinsky's ear and he had divorced Hillary and married Monica, today Monica would be planning her Senate reelection campaign while Hillary would probably be working as a lobbyist for the Chinese toy manufacturers association.

But isn't Hillary Clinton is a brilliant politician in her own right? Oh, please. She has been involved in more scandals than the whole rest of the Democratic and Republican fields combined, she's a participant in an off-putting sham marriage, she has minimal charisma, she is one of the most polarizing figures in politics, she has a reputation as a shameless liar, and so far, in her entire tenure in the Senate, she has never once accomplished anything of great significance or displayed notable leadership on any issue. Additionally, this is a woman who has gotten away with taking bribes, which is what her famous "cattle futures" scandal was really all about and had she been Hillary Jones, ordinary person, as opposed to Hillary Clinton, First Lady, she would have ended up in a jail cell over White Water.

However, if you listen to the talking heads on TV, she's talked about as if she's a political genius. Does it make you a political genius to poll test every publicly stated position you have and then script out a response that allows you to change your position and go the other way if public opinion changes or, more importantly, if you think you can get away with it? Maybe it does -- if you can come across as being genuine while you do it. But, Hillary comes across as exactly what she is: An amoral shrew who's willing to lie about anything and everything, destroy the lives of people who get in her way, and help cover up and enable the frequent affairs of her husband, all because she has an all-consuming urge to achieve power for power's sake -- and that's just what liberal Democrats like John Edwards and Maureen Dowd think of her. Republicans generally aren't as kind in their assessments of her personality and character.

So, how in the world has she managed to become the favorite in the race for the presidency? Simple: because of her husband, she has been the beneficiary of a double standard that is outrageous, even by the standards of the mainstream media.

Many of the liberal movers and shakers in the press are Baby Boomers who look at Bill Clinton as being "one of them" while many of the women in the MSM have the same attitude as Time Magazine's Nina Burleigh, who once famously said, "I would be happy to give him [Bill Clinton] a blow job just to thank him for keeping abortion legal." (PS: Would anyone be surprised to find out that Bill Clinton took her up on that offer?)

Out of love for Bill, Hillary has received the sort of fawning press coverage that'd you expect a Soviet premier to get from Pravda before the Berlin Wall fell. That's why Hillary can get away with staging questions at her political events and also why her campaign was so grievously offended when Tim Russert actually tried to get her to come down on one side or the other on a question about giving illegal aliens driver's licenses: Hillary Clinton is so used to being treated with kid gloves by the mainstream press, that she was shocked when she was asked to play by the same rules as the other candidates.

Sometimes people like Clinton, who've been given every break and then some because of nepotism, try to step it up a notch to prove to people that they're worthy of the high honors they've so effortlessly acquired. For example, whatever you may think of Ted Kennedy, nobody can say that he hasn't been a great champion of liberal causes. George W. Bush is another example. He may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he ran a business, he flew fighter jets in the National Guard, and he was elected twice as Governor of Texas before he became President. On the other hand, Hillary has not only never run a business, every job she ever held the private sector was given to her because of who her husband was.

Yes, she did manage, again, because of who her husband was, to get elected as a Senator in New York, one of the most liberal states in the nation, but that's a rather thin reed to use as justification for a run at the Presidency. Just as a point of comparison, Dan Quayle was relentlessly bashed as being too inexperienced and green to be Vice-President, despite the fact that he has served in the Senate just as long as Hillary Clinton and had spent two terms as a Congressman besides. Even more impressively, Quayle won office on his own merit, not because he happened to have married the right person.

What it all boils down to is that Hillary Clinton is Kevin Federline becoming famous because he was married to Britney Spears. She's "Brownie" being appointed as head of FEMA, not because he was the best-qualified person for the job, but because he knew the right person. She's every 22 year old "C" student with a business degree who has been allowed to leapfrog over dozens of more capable people and start as a top executive because his daddy happens to be a heavy hitter in the company.

Does that mean she can't win the Presidency? Oh no, she could certainly pull it off. In fact, people like Hillary Clinton get ahead of their more qualified competitors so regularly that, "It's not what you know, it's who you know," has become a cliche. But, Americans should be forewarned that who holds the presidency, particularly during the war on terror, is not a trivial matter and unlike the Senate, where you're just one of 100 members, the President alone has to make decisions of great import. Since that's the case, don't Americans deserve better than a leader of the free world whose chief qualification for the job is being Mrs. Bill Clinton?