Hillary Clinton’s humourless response to a Congolese student who asked what her husband thought of China’s economic relations with the Congo should remind President Obama of the hazards of having the Clinton family drama back at the centre of US politics.
The student, who in fact asked for Obama’s thoughts on the subject and had his question mangled by a hapless translator, was dealt a stinging reply by Clinton.
“You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?” she asked incredulously. “My husband is not the secretary of state, I am. You ask my opinion, I will tell you my opinion; I’m not going to channel my husband.”
The incident confirms that self-deprecation remains an art foreign to Clinton and that her status as secretary of state has done little to assuage her resentment at not landing the top job.
In today’s Independent, Helen Wilkinson (while failing to note the erroneous translation) apparently defends Clinton on the basis that she is a female politician and that some of her critics are misogynists. She refers her readers to the almost “pathological” attacks on Clinton during the presidential campaign.
Well, in fact there was something rather vulgar and sinister about the sexist attacks on Clinton.
The Fox News correspondent Tucker Carlson, for instance, crudely remarked that Clinton: “feels castrating, overbearing and scary . . . When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs.” While right-wing goons, whose idea of a fun day out is to chant “iron my shirt” at female politicians, were painfully conspicuous throughout the campaign.
But what will not do is to rewrite history, as Wilkinson does, and portray Clinton as a political innocent who has always steered clear of smear tactics.
It was Clinton who during the scurrilous campaign to ‘out’ Obama as a ‘secret Muslim’ pandered to such paranoia by declaring that Obama was not a Muslim “as far as I know “. And it was the Clinton camp that appealed to the US electorate’s basest instincts by circulating images of Obama dressed in traditional Somali garb across the media.
Moreover, Clinton’s mendacious claim to have come “under sniper fire” at the Tuzla Air Force Base during her trip to Bosnia (a subsequent video revealed her peaceful arrival) should have disqualified her from holding any political office.
Obama’s decision to welcome Clinton into his administration after her disgraceful campaign may have appeared magnanimous to some but to me it seemed almost masochistic.
As Maureen Dowd has cogently argued in the New York Times, the presence of Clinton in Obama’s team has stymied his attempt to transcend the old political divisions.
“The postpartisan, postracial, post-Clinton-dysfunction world that Barack Obama was supposed to usher in when he hit town on his white charger, with turtle doves tweeting, has vanished.”
At a time when the Obama administration desparately needs to mount a rearguard action against the conservative assaults on its health-care policy it can ill afford the revival of the Clinton psychodrama.
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