“Women in particular expressed their distaste [for Hillary Rodham Clinton] in strong but inchoate terms. . . . two prominent Democratic officials told me, independently, that they had noticed much the same pattern in talking to female friends and constituents. They used the same word to sum up their findings: the feeling, they said, was ‘visceral.’”
— Elizabeth Kolbert, “Running On Empathy,” in the February 7, 2000 issue of the New Yorker

During the dark days of Clinton impeachment fever, when American citizens could not watch ten consecutive minutes of CNN without running across footage of Orrin Hatch in his customary lather of righteous disgust, I remember wondering why exactly the conservatives hated the President so feverishly. The sheer fury of the right wing in reaction to Clinton’s indiscretions seemed wholly out of proportion to the actual events; in fact, said fury seemed to have very little to do with the actual events at all. Certain conservative politicians – the men, like Orrin Hatch, who delivered snitty commentary on the news every day, the wattles at their jawlines fairly quivering with rage – hated Clinton so much that they could scarcely contain themselves. The hatred didn’t have its origin in Clinton’s carryings on with Monica Lewinsky at all; the conservatives just hated him, period, for murky and irrational reasons not based on any policies he espoused, and they always had. I suspect that many of his enemies resent Clinton for getting away with so many things – he smoked dope, he screwed around, he ducked military service, and he lied about all of those things, and yet the nation still elected him, twice. But that still doesn’t explain the violent, id-level lasting antipathy his political foes feel towards him.

Fast forward to the race for the Senate in New York State, featuring two of the less sympathetic figures currently populating the political landscape: Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Rodham Clinton. New Yorkers have begun asking each other who we plan to vote for, and as in so many political contests, we have to choose between the lesser of two evils. On the one hand, we have Giuliani, who has shown a demonstrated lack of respect for – even a lack of any interest in – how his constituents feel. Giuliani has repeatedly taken credit for the drop in crime, despite the fact that former police commissioner William Bratton instituted most of the programs that contributed to that drop before Giuliani even took office, and he has refused to address the fact that the drop in crime has taken place at the expense of people of color. Giuliani has had repeated public tantrums about relatively trivial matters like art exhibitions, and parades, and how much space street vendors occupy on the sidewalk. The man is a paranoid megalomaniac with no experience in consensus government, and I’d prefer not to vote for him and reward his delusions of grandeur. And then on the other hand, we have Hillary Clinton.

I absolutely cannot abide Hillary Clinton. I hate her, I hate her a lot, I hated her on sight, and at the mere mention of her name, I can feel my lip curling into an angry sneer, and the next thing I know I’ve started ranting, “carpet-bagging bitch” this, “power-grubbing criminal” that, and I can’t stop myself, and I don’t know for sure where it comes from. Hillary Clinton hasn’t done anything to me personally, or pioneered any legislation that affects me or that goes against my beliefs. I know nothing about her, really; I just have a collection of largely uninformed impressions of her. But based on those impressions, I have no intention of voting for her this fall either.

I can think of a number of valid reasons not to vote for her, although those reasons don’t have much to do with why I find her so terminally off-putting. The woman has no political experience, for starters. I don’t care that she’s married to a man who has served in various offices for the last twenty-odd years; I don’t care that he allegedly uses her as a sounding board on policy matters. We elected her husband, not her, and when it comes to time to rule on these policy matters, he has to do it, and he has to take the flak for it. Hillary has never had to take real responsibility as a leader, and furthermore, she’s proven incapable of taking any kind of responsibility at all. When investigators wanted access to her files to look into Vince Foster’s death, she got offended, then refused to cooperate, and she pulled the same nonsense during the travel-office affair. Nor did Hillary have intention of cooperating with the Whitewater investigation – and based on what I’ve read, she did know what went on, and she did break the law. Still, she refused to answer questions on the subject or admit any wrongdoing, and I don’t blame her for that per se, but I could have done without the above-reproach attitude. She should have just copped to it and paid the fine, particularly since the American public didn’t even flinch at the S&L blowout.

So, Hillary has no actual experience as an office-holder. She certainly has a few of the more unattractive elements of the job description – lying, falsifying documents, feigning memory loss – down pat, but she’s never held office herself. So she comes to New York, subjects the political reporters and the citizenry to an odiously fey “listening tour,” and she rolls out a bunch of meaningless and patently insincere doublespeak about sharing the concerns of New Yorkers. Oh, really? She shares the concerns of New Yorkers, then, does she? She’s never lived in New York, but she shares our concerns. Well, all right, she’s had to bunk in Washington for the last eight years, but she must love the Empire State, because she’s vacationed here every summer since – oh, wait. The Clintons vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. My mistake. But they came to the Hamptons once, and look, she’s wearing a Yankees hat! Hillary must love New York if she’s wearing a Yankees hat! I’d never suspect a cheap ploy to appeal to sports fans by affiliating herself with the World Champions. Oh, hold on. I kind of do. But at least she didn’t literally get down on her knees and kiss Al Sharpton’s ring. Not on camera, at least.

Give me a bucket, somebody.

Hillary does not care one whit about the “concerns” of New Yorkers. She married a charismatic guy and rode his coattails to the very top, and when the ride had almost ended, she needed to find another way to satisfy her power fix. She assessed the situation, selected a reasonably liberal state with a retiring Democratic Senator, and headed in at an angle to suck up to the locals, only to jam a foot sideways in her mouth by talking a bunch of trash about Israel and the Yankees and Amadou Diallo and having to take it all back the next day. Hillary’s lack of experience doesn’t bother me so much, and neither does the tiresome year-of-the-child, bridge-to-the-future crap she insists on spouting. It does bother me that Hillary – a third-rate attorney at a fourth-rate law firm whose greed got her mixed up in a seventh-rate real-estate scam – so clearly values power above everything else. It bothers me that Hillary seems incapable of admitting this, to herself or to anyone else. It bothers me that she didn’t just run for office herself instead of just standing by her man, and it bothers me that her man whored around for years and she not only tolerated it but pretended that the religious right had fabricated the stories. Way to set an example for Chelsea, Hillary. Way to teach your daughter a lesson of strength. Way to communicate her that, if she wants something, she has to attach herself to man and take what he dishes out to get it, that her husband can treat her like crap as long as she gets what she wants out of it, that at least whores get paid.

And now, we have arrived at why I hate Hillary Clinton. A lot of people find the overt desire for power unbecoming, unseemly, inappropriate, especially as expressed by women. We don’t realize it, probably, but a lot of us still think that women shouldn’t demand what they want, shouldn’t try too hard to get things, because it isn’t “nice” or “feminine” or whatever. It seems to me as though Hillary has an ugly-duckling complex, and faced with the choice between going all-out for what she wants and having to listen to people call her a ball-buster, or falling in three paces behind her husband and working the back end, she’ll take the back end every time. I’ve got zero respect for that. If Hillary wanted political power for herself, she should have gone out and tried to get it on her own, in public, for real, and not just settled for managing the winning team.

Hillary doesn’t have to set an example for the nation’s women, and I don’t expect her to. Everyone does what she has to do, and part of me feels that it’s unfair to hold Hillary to a higher standard. But another larger part of me feels that it’s unfair of Hillary to expect us to respect her as a candidate when she’s proven herself such a dishonest sellout as a human being, and that it’s unfair to the citizens of New York if her dutiful service as a doormat earns her a Senate seat in a state she probably couldn’t find on a map six months ago.

Campaign slogans for “Hill On The Hill.”
New York Press‘s MUGGER weighs in.

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