A friend, reading my last post, suggested that Hillary’s experience
counted for something here. A reasonable argument. So let’s look at her much-touted “experience”.
As Bill Clinton’s “first lady” she tried to institute a
major health care initiative in 1993 that went nowhere, but managed to
antagonize all sides in the debate.
As a US Senator from New York (though she was born in
Illinois and lived in Arkansas) from 2001 to 2009 she tried to create jobs in
New York with a number of Federal programs, none of which seem to have been the
least bit effective. She did, though,
thoroughly support Bush’s ill-advised Iraq invasion, which is what one would
expect from a Cold War hawk.
As Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, she seems to have
spent an inordinate amount of time planning Chelsea’s wedding
(on the basis of her own claim that the 30,000 emails she deleted from her home
server were “only personal, having to do with things like planning Chelsea’s wedding”). The heavy lifting in the State Department
during her term was mostly done by “Czars” that Obama appointed – Richard Holbrook
for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Carol Browner for energy and climate change, Ron
Klain for Ebola response, Fred Daniel for Guantanamo, Dennis Ross for Iran,
Mary Ryckman for international trade, etc, etc, etc. Hillary herself seems to have had relatively
little influence on any of the major issues of the day. Compared to the current hard-working Secretary
of State, John Kerry, she appears to have been remarkably uninvolved in the
really worrysome issues - perhaps by choice, since she knew she would be running for president.
So I have to say I am not much impressed with her “experience”.
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