Minty:
Well, that quote of mine seems to contradict what you said earlier. This position of Hillary’s was not simply as advisor, she was writing the policy. She ran the thing.
It’s hard to deny, because I think the Clinton’s took pains to portray it this way, if you’ll recall the whole “Co-president” thing.
I think she was weilding executive power in this, and I think that was wrong.
HER sense of entitlement? Take a look at the Bush family.
Is it possible for you to make a comment without relating it to your dislike of Bush et al?
Why not just discuss the specific topic at hand without taking knee-jerk potshots?
I seem to have noticed a complete and utter failure on your part to back up your assertions regarding the criminal activity you’ve accused Bush and Cheney of.
Well, ok, then what specific executive power do you think she was wielding? She could “write policy” until she was blue in the face, and so what? Until you can pin down some specific empowerment, this is all smoke, mirrors, and innuendo.
“Co-President”. Piffle. He is stating that he turns to his wife for advice, counsel, and insight. In other words, he’s married. There is considerable flattery in that designation, which will be understandable to any man who ever swore that a particular dress did not make a certain persons butt look big.
Cut to the chase. What specific executive power devolved upon Ms. Clinton? If the answer is none (and it is) your accusations are empty.
I’m just pointing out the utter hypocrisy of everything the conservatives say about the Clintons. Bush and Cheney are criminals IMO and I don’t feel like opening up yet another endless thread on the subject. it’s obvious that no amount of evidence would convince you anyway. (BTW “evidence” didn’t seem to be much of a requirement for all of the relentless right-wing allegations against the Clintons. Did YOU demand “evidence” for Vince Foster, Mina Arkansa, or any of the other absurd conspiracy charges that were leveled for eight years by conservative talk show hosts?)
Anybody can “write policy.” That Bush education commission I linked to earlier “wrote policy.” If Hillary was actually enacting policy, then there would be a legitimate complaint. But all she ended up doing was recommending policy to the president and Congress, just like every other presidential commission.
Holy shit…Now that’s a scary thought!
Would somebody please explain to Diogenes how thoroughly I detest Bush II? Maybe then he’ll stop hijacking the thread with pointless pot-shots.
Minty, I’m only trying to make a point about the HYPOCRISY of the pot-shots at Hillary.
No, you’re as wrong about that as december is when he complains that newspaper editors are “making policy”, and as hypocritical as anyone who doesn’t condemn Cheney equally as strongly for his secret-committee work on energy policy.
But let’s be clear - the OP generally asked why Hillary is so widely thought “evil”. The listed reasons from several of you all seem sincere enough - even though they all fit somewhere on the hypocrisy-to-lying spectrum.
I’ll toss in another observation. Who (besides Big Bill himself) were the most vilified senior members of the Clinton Administration? Seems to me they were Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno, and Madeline Albright - fair enough? See a common factor there, anyone?
Dio, Minty is an intelligent, perceptive and well-informed person. As such, naturally, he detests Bush II. By an odd coincidence, so do you. Come to think of it, so do I.
Any of the suggestions you have made is worthy of its own thread. Please be advised that the level of proof required changes drasticly when Our Leader is involved. Suggestion and innuendo, which is utterly convincing when applied to Ms. Clinton, is not admissable for the Man Who Fell Up. Be prepared for a long sentence in the Cite Mines.
Hell, go for it! But not here. Bush II is not Hilary, and the difference in gender is the least of it.
I agree, Elucidator. I made an off-hand comment about Halleburten,etc. a long way back in the chain, and now I’ve getting besieged w/ “cite, cite, cite” ever since. I’ve been trying to avoid it because it’s: a) off-topic and b) been discussed to death on previous threads. I never should have brought the criminality of the current administration into this thread. It was a hijack and I’m sorry. There’s no way to get into it without starting yet another pointless, unresolvable, bickering thread.
Notice the complete lack of support, however for statements pertaining to Hillary “hiding evidence,” etc.
Egotist te absolvo. Go forth and sin no more.
But don’t sell thread short. More than once I’ve become disheartened when involved in a “pointless, unresolvable, bickering” thread. Don’t sell yourself short. Evidence and brilliant argument bounce like popcorn balls off a tank when aimed at a closed mind. But that ain’t the game, its the people who read and think, who are amenable to argumentation, that are your proper audience. If you’re afraid of getting piled on and sneered at, well…
In the words of Karl Rove “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a thousand schools of thought contend”.
Well spoken, Elucidator, now back to the OP:
I think the reason so many right-wingers would characterize Hillary as “evil” probably has something to do with the eight-year (well actually 10 years and counting) propoganda campaign which has been launched against the Clintons by the right. In particular, the use of RELIGION as a weapon has helped to paint an image of the Clintons as basically cartoon villains in some sort of holy war. Pat buchanan talked about a “culture war” at the '92 GOP convention. Resident Fox News demagogue Bill O’Reilly has often said that we are in the midst of something he calls an “ethical civil war,” (in which the implication is that conservatives are the “ethical” ones and liberals are the “unethical”) Religion is used constantly to demonize liberals who support such “evil” policies as abortion rights, gay rights, and “hand-outs to the poor.” (Isn’t helping the poor supposed to be a Christian principle BTW?) or OPPOSE such “good” policies as the death penalty, tax-cuts for the rich, school prayer, creationism, or (ahem) unprovoked military attacks on innocent civilians in Iraq.
The right-wing media has actually succeeded in defining POLITICAL policy in MORAL terms, i.e: conservatives=“good”
liberals=“evil”
I’m not saying that ALL conservatives (or even most) think this way, and obviously liberals are capable of being sanctimonious in their own right, but I haven’t seen a propoganda onslaught that has had the ferocity and malice of the one against the Clintons not even Nixon got the endless venomous attacks that the Clintons have gotten.
That’s not how this was presented to us. It was not a committee making recommendations saying such and such should go into a healthcare bill.
Hillary was tasked with creating the healthcare bill. Bill had delegated the task to her.
We seem to be arguing in circles. You’re next argument will probably be “Presiden’ts always delegate tasks to advisors. Do you think they write these things themselves?”
I understand this, but your are missing the point. These things change when the delegate in question is your wife, and especially when you are the President.
Now you can insist on looking at this as if it were just another Presidential advisory position and ignore the obvious problematic repercussions. However, the fact that she was in the position of power is specifically because of one of these repercussions, i.e she was married to the President.
The founding concept behind her position of reforming healthcare was that she was the President’s wife. It seems disingenuous then to simply critique this as another simple advisory post, and ignore that fact in the critique.
She certainly exercised more influence over the President, and had more effective control than your typical Presidential advisor.
Even had she been the most qualified candidate for the position, it seems to me that her relationship should have disqualified her from it, rather than empowered her.
All Hillary did was draft a PROPOSAL. It is not the same thing as writing legislation, which BTW is the done by CONGRESS not by the POTUS
It was precisely that. Couldn’t have said it better.
In what way? You keep insisting that this is obviously so, yet seem to have difficulty in defining what is so obvious. What executive power, properly placed with the President, had been misplaced in her hands? If the answer is none, your case fails.
The term “repercussions” in this is confusing, since a “repurcussion” is a result, not a cause. At least, finally, you have resorted to a fact: she was married to the President. No doubt about it, won’t even ask for a cite. As noted above, just about every President in recent memory has set thier wives some role, usually little more than a figurehead, as when Nancy was set out to eliminate the scourge of drugs (it is difficult to imagine anyone less qualified).
If only this were so, oh, the trouble that could have been averted!
Alas.
Ah, theres the rub. Why? Yes, I know its obvious to you. You’ve made that clear. What you haven’t made clear is why that should be obvious to us.
Whatever Hillary Clinton’s actual powers over the Health Care Task Force, I think there was a common perception that she was “in charge” of health care reform. Whether that is true or not seems irrelevant. What is important is that she was seen to be, and a lot of people shaped their opinion of her from that.
Also, I think she was widely perceived as being both more liberal and more intelligent as her husband, so there was the perception that she was his “evil genius”, so to speak…that she was responsible for a lot of his more liberal ideas.
Diogenes, please produce proof that Bush ever used cocaine.
Please produce proof that Bush and/or Cheney violated the law in their financial dealings.
Please cite which member of the SDMB has characterized Hilary as “evil”.
Or, please withdraw the accusations.
Regards,
Shodan
There is tremendous value to a President in having an adviser who knows what he thinks, shares a basic belief set, has a great deal of ability of their own, makes a great sounding board, and lacks a personal agenda or ambition that might diverge from his own and is therefore absolutely trustworthy to him. Very few have had the advantage of such a person that important things can be delegated to.
So Clinton not only had one but was married to her? So what, Scylla? Isn’t that fact largely why he could trust her absolutely as an adviser? Or why any other adult can trust their own partner?
There have been numerous other examples in history of First Ladies being so powerful that it was reasonably asked who was in charge - Edith Wilson most notably, Nancy Reagan (and her astrologer) later in Ronnie’s term, Eleanor Roosevelt in domestic policy … but no others, I’d bet, were hated as deeply and inchoately, despite rationalizations like those we’ve seen in this thread.