What Do You Think of Hillary Clinton?
Hillary Clinton is somewhat unusual — a polarizing figure with a studiously moderate voting record. In order to find out more about why Americans are so divided about her, I pose this question: what do you think about Hillary?
I’ll start. I think Hillary Clinton is very smart and very shrewd. I think she is unquestionably ambitious. She may well view her post in the Senate as a stepping stone to the presidency, but lots of senators dream of being president. Whether or not Hillary’s ambitions were presidential in scope from the beginning isn’t particularly important — we should care what she’d do with the Presidency, not how much she wants it.
I think she is a liberal who has moved right in hopes of appealing to the middle. I think her efforts to court pro-life voters (calling abortion “a sad, even tragic choice”) are probably futile, but don’t in themselves constitute a betrayal of her pro-choice base. Her quiet support of a bill to criminalize flag-burning is more of a betrayal. The way she toes the Bush administration’s line on Iraq certainly shows a lack of courage.
If she wants my vote, she’ll have to come up with a plan for Iraq and foreign policy in general that reverses this administration’s unilateralism. If she can do that, I’ll overlook her opportunism and give her my support.
What about you?