Michael Arnovitz
Jun 1218
min read
Photo Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque Graph Credit: Nate Silver/NY Time
“In the course of
a single conversation, I have been assured that Hillary is cunning and
manipulative but also crass, clueless, and stunningly impolitic; that she is a
hopelessly woolly-headed do-gooder and, at heart, a hardball litigator; that
she is a base opportunist and a zealot convinced that God is on her side. What
emerges is a cultural inventory of villainy rather than a plausible depiction
of an actual person.” — Henry Louis Gates
The
quote above comes from a fascinating article called “
Hating
Hillary”, written by Gates for the New Yorker in 1996. Even now, 20 years
after it was first published, it’s a fascinating and impressive piece, and if
you have a few spare moments I strongly recommend it to you.
And
I’m reading pieces like this because now that Hillary has (essentially if not
officially) won the Democratic Primary, I have become increasingly fascinated
by the way so many people react to her. In truth, I sometimes think that I find
that as interesting as Hillary herself. And I can’t help but notice that many
of the reactions she receives seem to reflect what Gates referred to as “a
cultural inventory of villainy” rather than any realistic assessment of
who she really is and what she has really done.
To
conservatives she is a radical left-wing insurgent who has on multiple
occasions been compared to Mikhail Suslov, the Soviet Kremlin’s long-time Chief
of Ideology. To many progressives (you know who you are), she is a Republican
fox in Democratic sheep’s clothing, a shill for Wall Street who doesn’t give a
damn about the working class. The fact that these views could not possibly
apply to the same person does not seem to give either side pause. Hillary
haters on the right and the left seem perfectly happy to maintain their
mutually incompatible delusions about why she is awful. The only thing both
teams seem to share is the insistence that Hillary is a Machiavellian
conspirator and implacable liar, unworthy of society’s trust.
And
this claim of unabated mendacity is particularly interesting, because while it
is not the oldest defamation aimed at Hillary, it is the one that most
effortlessly glides across partisan lines. Indeed, for a surprisingly large
percentage of the electorate, the claim that Hillary is innately dishonest is
simply accepted as a given. It is an accusation and conviction so ingrained in
the conversation about her that any attempt to even question it is often met
with shock. And yet here’s the thing: it’s not actually true. Politifact, the
Pulitzer prize-winning fact-checking project, determined for example that
Hillary was actually the most truthful candidate (of either Party) in the 2016
election season. And in general Politifact has determined that Hillary is more
honest than most (but not all) politicians they have tracked over the years.
Also
instructive is Jill Abramson’s
recent
piece in the Guardian. Abramson, a former reporter for the Wall Street
Journal as well as former Executive Editor of the New York Times, had this to
say about Hillary’s honesty: “As an editor I’ve launched investigations into
her business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a
reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in
Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising. Hillary Clinton is fundamentally
honest and trustworthy.”
Notice
how Abramson uses the word “surprising”? She’s obviously doing that for our
benefit, because she knows that many readers will be astonished at the very
thought of Hillary being “fundamentally honest”. But why? In my opinion we need
to go back to the time of Whitewater in order to answer that question.
In
January of 1996, while Whitewater investigations were underway but unfinished,
conservative writer William Safire wrote a scathing and now-famous essay about
Hillary Clinton entitled, “
Blizzard
of Lies”. In the piece he called her a “congenital liar”, and accused her
of forcing her friends and subordinates into a “web of deceit”. He insisted
(without any apparent evidence) that she took bribes, evaded taxes, forced her
own attorneys to perjure themselves, “bamboozled” bank regulators, and was
actively involved in criminal enterprises that defrauded the government of
millions of dollars. He ended the piece by stating that, “She had good reasons
to lie; she is in the longtime habit of lying; and she has never been called to
account for lying herself or in suborning lying in her aides and friends.”
I
am no political historian, but as far as I can tell this short essay was the
birth of the “Hillary is a Liar” meme. Now to be clear, most conservatives
already strongly disliked her. They had been upset with her for some time
because she had refused to play the traditional First Lady role. And they were
horrified by her attempt to champion Universal Health coverage. But if you look
for the actual reasons people didn’t like her back at that time, you won’t see
ongoing accusations of her being “crooked” or a “liar”. Instead, the most common
opinion seemed to be that she was a self-righteous leftist who considered
anyone with other views to be morally inferior. In short, the prevailing
anti-Hillary accusation was not that she was unrelentingly dishonest, but that
she was just intolerably smug.
After
the Safire piece however, this all changed. Republicans, who learned from Nixon
never to let a good propaganda opportunity pass if they could help it, repeated
the accusations of mendacity non-stop to anyone who would broadcast or print
them. And if you doubt the staying power of Safire’s piece, type the phrase
“congenital liar” into a Google search along with “Hillary Clinton” and see
what happens. To this day, that exact phrase is still proudly used by many on
the right. This, even though Safire was eventually proven wrong about
everything he had written. And despite the fact that he stated himself that he
would have to “eat crow” if she were ever cleared, Safire never apologized or
even acknowledged his many errors once that happened. Because as we all know,
swift-boating means never having to say you’re sorry.
But
while conservative propaganda and lies are a constant in “Hillaryland”, if we
look at Hillary’s career, and the negative attacks so often aimed at her, it
seems clear that more than just political machinations are at play. My current
conviction is that the main fuel that powers the anti-Hillary crowd is sexism.
And yes I’m serious. So go ahead and roll your eyes. Get it over with. But I
think the evidence supports my view, and I’ve seen no other plausible
explanation. And just to be clear, I don’t think it’s ONLY sexism. But I do
think that this is the primary force that has generated and maintained most of
the negative narratives about Hillary.
Of
course accusations of sexism always bump up against several serious
impediments:
1) Almost nobody will admit to it. Conservatives decided long ago that all such
accusations (sexism, racism, homophobia, etc) are standard liberal bullshit
whose only real intent is to shut down debate, and liberals tend to possess a
sense of moral entitlement which leads them to consider themselves
automatically exempt from all such accusations. (Side note: if you did roll
your eyes above, there’s a good chance I’m describing you here. Sorry.)
2) Overt sexism is significantly more likely to be tolerated in our society
than overt racism. It is a low-risk form of bigotry and discrimination that
rarely damages professional or political careers. Because of this, far fewer
people worry about crossing that line.
3) We have formed a sort of collective blindness to sexism that allows us to
pretend that we are on top of the issue while simultaneously ignoring the many
ways in which it actually permeates our society. (Side note 2: There’s a reason
it’s called a “glass” ceiling.)
4) Unlike men, women who make demands are still often seen as unfeminine and
inappropriately aggressive, bordering on deviant. And if the people most
aggressively pushing against the glass ceiling are “broken” or “deviant”, it’s
easier to justify dismissing both them and their concerns.
So
I’ve made a claim. Let’s look at some numbers. Take a look at the image above.
On the right side you’ll see a chart. This is a chart of Hillary’s popularity
over time. It was put together by Nate Silver, who based it on over 500
high-quality phone surveys dating back to the early 90’s. If we take a look at
the polling data, very obvious patterns emerge.
In
the early 90’s her polling was great, which was typical for an incoming First
Lady. But Hillary had no interest in being a typical First Lady, and soon took
charge of one of the most important policy initiatives of the Clinton
Presidency: Universal Health Care. If you look at the first large red arrow I
have on the graphic, you’ll see that as soon as she did that her negatives
skyrocketed. And yes this was before Whitewater. In fact during the ongoing
Whitewater investigations her polling improved dramatically, so she actually
became significantly MORE popular during that period, not less.
Now
take a look at the second arrow. This is where she declared that she was going
to run for the Senate. See what happened? She was at one of the most popular
periods of her life, but as soon as she declared a run for the Senate her
favorables plummeted while her unfavorables rose sharply. Then once she was
elected, her scores stabilized and even improved. Now look at the third arrow.
Nearly exactly at the same time she withdrew from the Presidential race her
favorables took off again, rising to levels that many considered remarkable. (Or
are we pretending not to remember that until very recently Hillary was one of
the most popular politicians in the country?) In fact the image on the left of
the graph is part of the “bad-ass Hillary” meme that started during this time.
And her polling stayed high right up until she decided to run for President
again. Her numbers since then are not on this particular graph, but I think we
all know what happened to them.
So
what do we see in this data? What I see is that the public view of Hillary
Clinton does not seem to be correlated to “scandals” or issues of character or
whether she murdered Vince Foster. No, the one thing that seems to
most negatively and consistently affect public perception of Hillary is any
attempt by her to seek power. Once she actually has that power
her polls go up again. But whenever she asks for it her numbers drop like a
manhole cover.
And
in fact I started thinking more about this after reading an article that
Sady
Doyle wrote for Quartz back in February. The title of the piece was,
“America loves women like Hillary Clinton — as long as they’re not asking for a
promotion.” In the article Ms. Doyle asserted that, “The wild difference
between the way we talk about Clinton when she campaigns and the way we talk
about her when she’s in office can’t be explained as ordinary political
mud-slinging. Rather, the predictable swings of public opinion reveal Americans’
continued prejudice against women caught in the act of asking for power…”
And
yes this is the kind of statement that many people will find reflexively
annoying. But that doesn’t make it any less true, and the data certainly seems
to support it. Even NBC news, looking back over decades of their own polls,
stated that, “she’s struggled to stay popular when she’s on the campaign
trail.” If this has nothing to do with gender, then wouldn’t the same thing
happen to men when they campaign? But it doesn’t. Why not?
So
let’s look at the issues people are currently using to disparage Clinton. Let’s
consider the issues of dishonesty, scandals, money and Wall Street.
1)
Honesty — In terms of honesty, I’ve already addressed that. Hillary is a
politician, and like all politicians she is no stranger to “massaging” and/or
exaggerating the truth. And yes on occasion she will let loose a whopper. But
is she worse than other politicians? As I’ve already discussed, the evidence
suggests that she is no worse, and actually better, than most other
politicians. Internet videos like the “13 minutes of Hillary lying” appear to
be mostly examples of Hillary changing her position over several decades,
combined with annoying but typical political behavior. But similar videos of
Donald Trump exist showing him doing an even more extreme version of the same
thing. Why is he not being accused of this type of mendacity? In fact there is
very little dispute that Trump has been SIGNIFICANTLY less honest on the
campaign trail than Hillary. According to Politifact he is in fact the least
honest candidate they’ve ever analyzed! So if the issue of honesty is really
that important, why are so many people (on the right and left) holding Hillary
to such an obviously different standard than Trump?
2)
Scandals — Webster’s dictionary defines a scandal as, “an occurrence in which
people are shocked and upset because of behavior that is morally or legally
wrong.” But here’s a question: Are scandals still scandals if nobody actually
did anything wrong? And I think that’s a fair question, because Hillary’s
political foes love to point out all the times she has been implicated
(directly or indirectly) in scandals. Not surprisingly, however, they fail to
point out that she has always been cleared of any wrongdoing.
So
if she’s always innocent, why then does she find herself caught up in so many
scandals? For that answer, perhaps we should look at the Wikipedia definition
of scandal, which states, “A scandal can be broadly defined as an accusation or
accusations that receive wide exposure. Generally there is a negative effect on
the credibility of the person or organization involved.” Notice the important
difference? Perhaps the “negative effect on credibility” is not so much the
RESULT of these scandals as it is the INTENT of those who create them.
Did
you know that Republicans once spent 10 days and 140 hours investigating the
Clintons’ use of the White House Christmas Card list? Because that is a real
thing that actually happened. As the Atlantic recently
pointed
out, “No other American politicians — even ones as corrupt as Richard
Nixon, or as hated by partisans as George W. Bush — have fostered the creation
of a permanent multimillion-dollar cottage industry devoted to attacking them.”
(And for an impressive presentation of this issue I highly recommend Hanna
Rosin’s piece “
Among
the Hillary Haters”, also in the Atlantic.)
Compare
for example the treatment Hillary is getting due to her private email “scandal”
to that of General David Petraeus. Hillary has been accused of hosting a
personal email server that “might” have made classified documents less secure,
even though the documents in question were not classified as secret at the time
she received and/or sent them. (Side note: some government documents receive
secret classifications “at birth”, while other can be retroactively classified
as secret.) In order for Clinton to have committed a criminal act, she would
have had to knowingly and willfully mishandle material that was classified at
the time she did so. After months of investigation no one has accused her of
doing that, and it doesn’t appear as if anyone will.
General
Petraeus on the other hand, while he was Director of the CIA, knowingly gave a
writer, who was also his mistress, a series of black books which according to
the Justice Department contained, “classified information regarding the
identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and
mechanisms, diplomatic discussions quotes and deliberative discussions from
high level National Security Council meetings and [Petraeus’] discussions with
the president of the United States of America.” Petraeus followed that up by
lying to numerous government officials, including FBI agents, about what he had
done. And lets not forget that according to the Uniform Code of Military
Justice, adultery is itself a court-martial offense. And I remind you that none
of this is in dispute. Petraeus admitted to all of it.
Petraeus’
violations were significantly more egregious than anything Clinton is even
remotely accused of. And yet Republicans and other Hillary foes are howling
about her issue, wearing “Hillary for Prison 2016” t-shirts while insisting
that this disqualifies her from public office. Meanwhile even after pleading
guilty to his crimes Petraeus continued to be the recipient of fawning
sentiments from conservatives. Senator John McCain stated that, “All of us in
life make mistakes and the situation now, I hope, can be put behind him…”
Politico quoted a former military officer who worked with Petraeus as calling the
entire situation “silly”. Prominent Republicans have already made it clear that
they would call him back to work in the highest levels of government if they
win the Presidency. And some are still attempting to convince him to seek the
Presidency himself.
Why
is Hillary Clinton being held to such an obviously different standard than
Petraeus? Is it really only politics?
3)
Money — OK let’s talk about her money. Hillary has a lot of it. And she has
earned most of it through well-paid speaking fees. And the idea of getting paid
$200,000 or more for a single speech seems so ludicrous to many people that
they assume that it simply must be some form of bribery. But the truth is that
there is a large, well-established and extremely lucrative industry for
speaking and appearance fees. And within that industry many celebrities, sports
stars, business leaders and former politicians get paid very well. At her most
popular for example, Paris Hilton was being paid as much as $750,000 just to
make an appearance. Kylie Jenner was once paid over $100,000 to go to her own
birthday party, and to this day Vanilla Ice gets $15,000 simply to show up with
his hat turned sideways.
And
let’s talk about the more cerebral cousin of the appearance agreement, which is
the speaking engagement. Is $200k really that unusual? In fact “All American
Speakers”, the agency that represents Clinton, currently represents 135 people
whose MINIMUM speaking fee is $200,000. Some of the luminaries that get paid
this much include: Guy Fieri, Ang Lee, Cara Delevingne, Chelsea Handler, Elon
Musk, Mehmet Oz, Michael Phelps, Nate Berkus, and “Larry the Cable Guy”. And no
that last one is not a joke. And if you drop the speaking fee to $100k, the
number of people they represent jumps to over 500. At $50,000 the number jumps
to over 1,200. And All American Speakers are obviously not the only agency that
represents speakers. So there are in fact thousands of people getting paid this
kind of money to give a speech.
For
millions of Americans struggling to pay their bills, the very idea that someone
can make $100,000 or more for just giving a speech or hanging out at a Vegas
nightclub is obscene. But as Richard Nixon used to say, “don’t hate the player,
hate the game.” Hillary didn’t invent the speaking engagement industry, and she
isn’t anywhere near the first person to make a lot of money from it. And while
her fees are in the upper range of what speakers make, neither they nor the
total amount of money she has made are unusual. It’s just unusual FOR A WOMAN.
And
yes, I’m back on that, because I feel compelled to point out that before he ran
for President in 2007, Rudy Giuliani was making about $700,000 a month in
speaking fees with an average of $270k per speech. It’s estimated that in the 5
years before his run he earned as much as $40 million in speaking fees. Nobody
cared, no accusations of impropriety were made, and there was almost no media
interest. So why did Giuliani get a pass, while Hillary stands accused of
inherent corruption for making less money doing the same thing?
And
speaking of corruption, after leaving the Florida governor’s office Jeb Bush
made millions of dollars in paid speeches. This includes large sums he
collected from a South Korean metals company that reaped over a BILLION dollars
in contracts from his brother’s presidential administration. Speaking to an
Indian newspaper about this type of thing Bush said, “This is the life of being
the brother of the president.” Do you remember reading all about that while Jeb
was running for President? I didn’t think so. Jeb got a pass too.
So
if this discussion is really about money in politics that’s fine. But I’m going
to need someone to explain to me why we only seem to focus on it when the
person making the money has a vagina.
4)
Wall Street — First things first. No, the majority of the money Clinton has
made from speaking fees did not come from Wall Street. In fact it’s not even
close. She has given nearly 100 paid speeches since leaving the State Dept.,
and only 8 were to “Wall Street” banks. Nearly all of her speeches were to
organizations like American Camping Association, Ebay, Cisco, Xerox,
Cardiovascular Research Foundation, United Fresh Produce Association,
International Deli-Dairy-Bakery Association, California Medical Association,
A&E Television Networks, Massachusetts Conference for Women, U.S. Green
Building Council, National Association of Realtors, American Society of Travel
Agents, Gap, National Association of Convenience Stores, the National
Association of Chain Drug Stores, Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, etc.
Corporations
and Associations pay large fees for important speakers all of the time. And
Hillary got booked fairly often because she is interesting and popular, and
because there’s a great deal of status attached to having her speak at an
event. Ignoring all of this however, a large contingent of anti-Hillary people
continue to insist that all speaker’s fees from Wall Street banks were bribes,
and that because of this they “own” her. But by that logic shouldn’t we all be
asking what the fuck the American Camping Association is up to?
Also,
with the possible exception of one speech given to Deutsche Bank, all of
Hillary’s 8 speeches to Wall Street were for a speaking fee of $225,000. That
does not even break the top 20 of her highest paid speeches. For example she
received over $275,000 each in three speeches she gave to The Vancouver Board
of Trade, the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, and Canada 2020. So
apparently Canadians also “own” her. And I don’t know what those nefarious
Canadians are up to, but it probably has something to do with goddamn poutine.
Which would really piss me off except I just remembered that I kind of like
poutine so never mind.
Listen,
does Wall Street have influence with Hillary? Grow up, of course they do. Wall
Street is one of the key engines of the American economy, and as such has
enormous influence with everyone. EVERYONE. Don’t kid yourself on that point.
And aside from anything else, she was a 2-term Senator of New York, and this
made Wall Street an important corporate member of her constituency. The issue
is not influence. The issue is whether or not paid speeches and campaign
donations alone are proof of corruption. And they’re not. And the last time I
checked there was an important difference between association and guilt,
between proof and slander.
And
again: why is Hillary being held to a standard that never appears to be applied
to her male counterparts? Am I not supposed to notice that a media frenzy has
been aimed at Hillary Clinton for accepting speaking fees of $225,000 while
Donald Trump has been paid $1.5 MILLION on numerous occasions with hardly a
word said about it? Am I supposed to not notice that we are now in an election
season in which Donald Trump, a proud scam artist whose involvement in “Trump
University” alone is being defined by the New York Attorney General as
“straight-up fraud”, is regularly calling Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary” and
getting away with it?
What
the actual fuck is going on here? What’s going on is what we all know, but
mostly don’t want to admit: presidential campaigns favor men, and the men who
campaign in them are rewarded for those traits perceived as being
“manly” — physical size, charisma, forceful personality, assertiveness,
boldness and volume. Women who evince those same traits however are usually
punished rather than rewarded, and a lot of the negativity aimed at Hillary
over the years, especially when she is seeking office, has been due to these
underlying biases. There is simply no question that Hillary has for years been
on the business end of an unrelenting double standard. And her battle with
societal sexism isn’t going to stop because of her success anymore than Obama’s
battle with racism stopped once he was elected. These are generational issues,
and we are who we are.
And
actually, this only makes her victory all the more amazing. And maybe it’s OK
if we pause for a moment from the accusations and paranoia and just acknowledge
her enormous accomplishments. In the entire history of our nation, only 6
Presidents have also served as Secretary of State. Only 3 have served both as
Secretary of State and in Congress. By any objective measure Hillary Clinton is
not just the most qualified candidate this season, she’s one of the most
qualified people to ever seek the office. The New York Times in endorsing her
stated that, “voters have the chance to choose one of the most broadly and
deeply qualified presidential candidates in history.” Jonathan Bernstein at
Bloomberg stated that, “she is probably the best qualified presidential
candidate ever.” Even Marco Rubio, one-time choice of the GOP establishment
(and tea-party love-child) stated in a Republican debate that, “If this is a resume
contest, Hillary Clinton is going to be the new President of the United
States.”
Hillary
is nobody’s idea of perfect. Fine. But in my view if a man with her
qualifications were running in the Democratic primary, Bernie would have been
done before he even started. And if a man with her qualifications had been
running for the Republicans, they’d be anointing him the next Reagan while
trying to sneak his face onto Mount Rushmore.
Most
of the people who hate Hillary when she’s running for office end up liking her
just fine once she’s won. And I have every confidence that history will repeat
itself again this November. As for myself, I have been watching Presidential
elections since Nixon. And never in my life has there been an easier or more
obvious choice than now. Trump is not merely a bad choice, he is (as many
leading Republicans have already admitted) a catastrophic choice, unfit in
every possible way for the office of the Presidency.
As
such, I happily voted for Hillary in my primary. And I will proudly vote for
her in November. Yes she will disappoint us all on occasion. Who doesn’t? But I
think she’s also going to surprise a lot of people. She will fear neither
consensus when possible nor ass-kicking when necessary. She will safeguard us
from the damage a right-wing Supreme Court would inflict on the nation. She
will stand for the rights of women, LGBT Americans, and minorities. She will
maintain critical global relationships, and she will react to dangerous
situations with the temperament of a seasoned and experienced professional. And
in a nation that didn’t even allow women to vote until 1920, she will make
history by shattering the very highest glass ceiling, and in doing so forever
change the way a generation of young women view their place in our Republic.
She’s
going to be a fine President.
I’m
with her.
