Everyone Sees the Hillary They Want to See
Eleanor CliftHillary Clinton has been a divisive figure for decades. The controversies erupting around her new memoir promise more of the same down the road.
I first interviewed Hillary Clinton in the fall of 1991, shortly after her husband announced for president, an era when political wives with ambition and a law degree were still rarities on the campaign trail. Her unflinching advocacy for issues that stirred women made her a target from the beginning, and the following spring, when Vice President Dan Quayle attacked sit-com character Murphy Brown for her fictional out-of-wedlock child, the culture wars flared and became part of the presidential contest between President George H.W. Bush, a Greatest Generation war hero, and the baby-boomer Clintons, “Buy one, get one free.”
It seemed preposterous for Quayle to assail a made-up television newswoman for her “poverty of values,” but Democrats suspected it wasn’t the long-running CBS show that Quayle was after, but the hard-charging Hillary new on the national scene and a role model for women. Newsweek noted that cultural pioneers get high ratings in Hollywood, but make people nervous on the campaign trail. In a presidential race that could turn on the question of values, the magazine harrumphed that a candidate can ill afford to have a wife who somehow seems to symbolize the “wrong” ones.
Republicans had great fun at their ’92 convention portraying Clinton as a radical feminist with a Rasputin-like influence over her husband to implement her not-so-hidden agenda. Even the headband she once favored took on an ominous tone. The assault on Clinton backfired, but it silenced her for much of the fall campaign. A cartoon on the final weekend showed Bill Clinton assuring a box with air holes, “Only a few days more, Hillary.” On election night, with victory in hand and his voice gone, Clinton turned the podium over to Hillary. A campaign staffer in Little Rock, watching TV, yelled, “Hey guys, the headband’s back.”
Twenty-odd years later, Clinton is no longer the avatar of radical feminists but a center-right politician who has to worry about her left flank, and whose values as a mother, soon-to-be grandmother, and steadfast wife are no longer questioned. In an interview with The New York Times Book Review, she was asked to “name one book that made you who you are today.” She cites the Bible, calling it “the biggest influence on my thinking.” Laugh if you will, for what politician could go wrong citing the Bible, but those who know Clinton say this is for real. Lissa Muscatine, her longtime confidante and speechwriter, told The Washington Post there are three things that explain Hillary. She’s a Midwesterner, hard-working and earnest; she’s a Methodist, which drives her commitment to social justice; and she was born in the middle of the last century, which put her on the trajectory of the women’s movement.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/17/everyone-sees-the-hillary-they-want-to-see.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
The one reliable thing about DU, the daily let's hate Hillary post. It doesn't matter that it's a positive article, the haters will crap on it in 10 seconds flat.
Don, why do you even bother posting articles on Hillary? She's obviously not liked by some here. Post articles on Warren and Sanders. You'll get a lot of positive comments.
and you just proved my point.
It's on DU that the hate fest is allowed 24/7. It has gone beyond politics, it's now personal. It doesn't matter if a post is innocuous, the sh*t throwers take practice shots. It's the kind of blind hatred that I see on RW sites, but this one calls itself Democratic. I guess it's only Democratic if they like the Democrat in question. If they don't, the mud is flung with abandon.
Well, if Hillary does choose to run, it will suck to be them.
as the Party has changed such that a "Goldwater Girl" is now in the mainstream of the Democratic Party.
Hillary = Goldwater girl at 17
Warren = Republican at 46
