Cutting loose the past

James Carroll of The Boston Globe writes today of the deleterious impact that Bill Clinton’s presidency had on the Democratic Party. It wasn’t just that his presence in the White House helped create the momentum to shift the House of Representatives over to the GOP. Or that he governed as a moderate, Nelson Rockefeller-esque Republican, rather than as a populist Democrat.

The list of policy failures that corrupted the party includes a foreign policy that “kept the nuclear arms race going” and that “led directly to today’s simmering crises with Iran and Russia” and includes NAFTA, welfare reform and his tough-on-crime stance. (This could be the shore on which the choice of Joe Biden as vice president founders.)

There is something else, as well:

In rallying to him when, through his dalliances, Clinton made himself vulnerable to the “great right-wing conspiracy” and impeachment, Democrats never reckoned with the ethical fallout to themselves of their defense of the dichotomy between public responsibility and private morality.

Clinton proved exactly what kind of person he is not so much when he committed indiscretions with the young Monica Lewinsky, but when – “I did not have sexual relations . . .” – he showed himself ready to destroy her. Not merely flawed, Clinton is utterly lacking in character. That he is still a celebrated figure among Democrats mortally compromises the party.

He adds another important point, about the Hillary Clinton campaign and its echoes in the general election campaign:

Hillary Clinton’s evident civic virtue was undercut by the deliberate, if never acknowledged, strategy she adopted in her primary competition with Obama. Her campaign was accused of sly exploitation of racial prejudice, but that was not the real issue. Race is certainly a factor in Obama’s political fate, but the Clinton campaign played a different card, an older one.

Clinton adviser Mark Penn’s advice to attack Obama for his “lack of American roots” was supposedly repudiated, but the fake contrast between beer-swigging, Bible-believing Hillary and the elitist thin man who might be a Muslim was a subliminal exploitation of just that theme. The many Clinton supporters who remain suspicious of Obama were prepped by her campaign for the McCain pitch that this black man with the funny name and background is not really “one of us.”

The most damaging political idea is that patriotism is somehow undercut by concern for, and ties to, the larger world. In its darkest form, this prejudice has been used against Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and various immigrant groups. Attacking “deracinated cosmopolitans” is standard fare of reactionary politics, and history shows it to be dangerous.

Hillary Clinton, he says, “a true cosmopolitan,” should have known better that her “her narrow-minded, class-baiting campaign persona” was a hazardous gambit.

She has unleashed a dynamic that may poison the fall campaign, turning one of Obama’s great strengths, an unfettered mind born of an expansive background, into the occasion of his defeat. If that happens, America will be a smaller, nastier place.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet