By Klaus Rohrich
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
A recent Gallup poll showed that nearly four out of ten American voters have strong negative feelings towards former First Lady and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton. When asked about her high negative ratings among voters at a recent Iowa Democratic all-candidates' debate, Clinton blithely blamed it on the "Republican attack machine" and dirty tricks by Karl Rove.
Somehow I don't think any but the most gullible and most rabid of the Democrats' base is going to buy that explanation. Hillary Clinton managed to achieve those dubious numbers all on her own without assistance from the likes of Rove and America's "vast right-wing conspiracy". It would be politic if some of Mrs. Clinton's handlers explained to her that the negative numbers (she has the highest negative rating of any presidential candidate in the history of the Gallup Poll) she has managed to rack up have a lot to do with who she is and with how she comes across to voters.
There are also some concrete examples of things for which Mrs. Clinton is responsible that have contributed to those historically high negative ratings.
The first is the scandal surrounding the White House Travel Office (WHTO) and how several innocent people's careers were ruined as a result of Mrs. Clinton wishing to clean out any remnants of George H. W. Bush's administration. She accused those then in charge of the WHTO of corruption, had them investigated by the FBI and fired the entire office staff in order to pay back a loyal political supporter with the job of running the WHTO. No criminal wrongdoing was ever proven against those who were singled out for destruction by Mrs. Clinton.
Next came Hillary-Care, the disastrous effort on the part of the First Lady to ram a Canadian style government healthcare monopoly down America's throat. Her negatives during this time grew so dramatically that the Clinton Administration actually had to sequester Mrs. Clinton and keep her from public view until the healthcare debacle blew over.
Then came the miraculous discovery of the Rose Law Firm billing records that Mrs. Clinton claimed to have lost during the Whitewater investment scandal, which cost a number of very close Clinton associates time in prison and in several cases, their lives. The billing records showed that Mrs. Clinton was lying through her teeth when she claimed to have minimal involvement in the Whitewater real estate project, while she was a lawyer with that Arkansas-based law firm.
Then came the Vince Foster "suicide" and the intimations that Foster had had a long-standing affair with Mrs. Clinton. These were mere rumors, but given the mysterious circumstances surrounding Mr. Foster's death, those rumors took on an element of credence without the aid of Karl Rove.
This was followed closely by Mrs. Clinton's insistence that her husband Bill's diddling of an impressionable young White House intern was the fabrication of, you guessed it, the "vast right-wing conspiracy", which was attempting a coup d'etat against her beloved Bill.
Interspersed into all these events were numerous other events, not the least of which being the 10,000% annual profit made in a cattle futures deal, the pardoning of convicted felons, some of whom were pardoned with a little help from Mrs. Clinton's family members and the campaign irregularities of which some of her campaign workers have been accused in the past. And who could forget her refusal to release her personal papers while she was First Lady until after the 2008 Presidential election?
Mrs. Clinton intimates that Karl Rove, his Republican attack machine and the vast right-wing conspiracy are jointly and severally responsible for her overwhelmingly negative public perception. If she really believes this to be true, then she shouldn't be running for President of the United States, as it betrays a degree of self-delusion most often associated with individuals who have been institutionalized.
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