Hillary Clinton : Long on Words, Short on Achievements

Hillary Clinton launched her memoir, Hard Choices, on Tuesday, but the universal consensus is that the book is her de facto announcement that she will run for president in 2016. The book is a carefully arranged self-portrait that depicts Clinton as a battle-hardened politician who has bounced back from her bruising defeat in 2008 by creating a clear vision for America's future. The former secretary of state, senator and first lady kicked off a gruelling nationwide book tour in New York in a blaze of primetime TV coverage. Clinton's tour for "Hard Choices" began in the best possible place : a sold out autographing event at a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan's Union Square, where 1,000 people, some of whom slept on the sidewalk the night before, lined up for an autograph and the chance to shake her hand and say hello. The crowd, a politician's dream of young and old, male and female, white and nonwhite, with many wearing "Ready for Hillary" buttons or stickers and counting down the hours and minutes until she arrived and briefly told the crowd about her book, which she said was meant for anyone wanting to know what is happening in the world today - "why America matters, and why the world matters to America," she said. "And we have a lot of hard choices ahead of us in our country to make it as brave and as strong as it should be." Hard Choices tries to position Clinton for a 2016 presidential bid. Its 656 pages reportedly earned Clinton an $8m advance. In those pages, Hillary Clinton seeks to remove remaining liberal doubts over her 2002 vote in favour of the Iraq war, and to bat away conservative attacks over her handling of the Benghazi affair, in which US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were assassinated. It also emphasizes that as secretary of state between 2009 and 2013 she spoke her own mind to a President whom she came to respect and like, but with whom she did not always agree. ~~~~~ The book finishes with a question -- “Will I run for President in 2016? The answer is, I haven’t decided yet.” That ambiguous statement allows Clinton to sweep skeletons out of her closet. She said "no" when asked if she would have to distance herself from some of President Barack Obama's foreign policy decisions if she runs for the White House. Clinton said she makes clear in the book there were areas where she and Obama disagreed. In a campaign scenario, she said, "I will be clear" where she disagrees with Obama. She also addresses her vote in favor of President George W Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, the vote that cost her support from the liberal wing of the Democrat Party during the 2008 presidential primary. She writes that her hawkish vote had been “wrong. Plain and simple.” Then she tries to turn that admission to her advantage : “In our political culture, saying you made a mistake is often taken as weakness when in fact it can be a sign of strength and growth for people and nations. That’s another lesson I’ve learned.” The skeleton that is likely to be more difficult to sweep away is her role in the Benghazi attack. Clinton cited the Benghazi probe as an example of a dysfunctional Congress. "We should not be playing minor league ball. We ought to be in the majors," Clinton said, leaning forward in her chair during her interview with Diane Sawyer that aired Monday on ABC. "I view this as really apart from, even a diversion from, the hard work that the Congress should be doing about the problems facing our country and the world." She said that she believed "there were some systemic problems within the State Department. And if we had known that earlier, perhaps we could have done some changes." But she also said, "You can't always sit in an office in Washington and say this and that will happen." She writes about the “crushing blow” of losing the four American officials to the attack on the US Benghazi compound, but also lashes out against her conservative detractors. She doesn’t go quite as far as the “vast right-wing conspiracy” she berated when her husband was impeached in 1998, but she does lament the “regrettable amount of misinformation speculation, and flat-out deceit by some in politics and the media.” She accuses some members of Congress of being “fixated on chasing after conspiracy theories” and others of only showing up at hearings “because of the cameras.” She said Republican inquiries over the 2012 attack on Americans in Benghazi gave her "more of a reason" to run. ~~~~~ Hillary Clinton also tried to position her husband and herself as people who have suffered and felt the lack of money, saying that she and former President Bill Clinton "fully appreciate how hard life is for so many Americans," playing on prior remarks she made about the pair being "dead broke" when they left the White House. In an interview Monday with ABC News, Clinton said she and husband Bill had legal bills that dwarfed their income. In reality,Clinton's Senate financial disclosure forms, filed for 2000, show assets between $781,000 and almost $1.8 million. The same form showed that the Clintons owed between $2.3 million and $10.6 million in legal bills to four firms for work performed on investigations into the couple's financial dealings during Bill Clinton's two presidential terms. Republicans called her out-of-touch with average Americans who struggle with personal finances. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, pointing to Clinton's estimated $200,000-per-speech speaking fees and million-dollar book advances, said : "Whether she was flat broke or not is not the issue. It's tone deaf to average people." ~~~~~ In an attempt to shut down recurring questions about her health, Clinton said she has no lingering issues from a concussion she suffered last year. And in another very personal issue that will follow Hillary Clinton into her candidacy, she refused to discuss Monica Lewinsky, saying that Lewinsky is free to say whatever she wants to, but that Hillary is moving on. ~~~~~ Dear readers, while she said she's still undecided about her political future, Hillary Clinton is clearly preparing the way for an announcement in early 2015. Perhaps a crushing Democratic defeat in the November mid-term elections would cause her to reconsider. But that seems unlikely. Syndicated political columnist and Fox News analyst Charles Krauthammer addressed Clinton's campaign strategy yesterday in relation to her book launch, saying she is trying to get certain issues out and resolved before the 2014 mid-term elections : "What she's trying to do is to insulate herself against certain charges," he said. "That's why the Benghazi story chapter was released last week. It's a way to say, 'this is what they're always going to do...I'm not going to stoop to answer such a question." However, Krauthammer said he believes this strategy will be unsuccessful. "It's not going to work on Benghazi because the hearings, if there are hearings...are going to happen next year when the campaign starts," he said. And back in March, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cast doubts on whether a potential Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would be successful."She is very famous for being famous," said Gingrich. "As long as she can continue being famous she'll be famous." Gingrich said : "as secretary of state, she reset our relationship with Russia so well, you currently have the occupation of Crimea and the potential occupation of Ukraine." And while Clinton is famous now, "the morning this race becomes about substance, she will start losing support overnight." That is the clear-eyed truth about Hillary Clinton. She has a political CV that is lightweight, at best -- one term as a US Senator, one losing campaign to become the Democrat presidential candidate in 2008, four years as a secretary of state whose achievements are non-existent and whose blunders include Benghazi, a Syria civil war with 1/4 of the population displaced, and a withdrawal from Iraq that has led, as has the Syria conflict, to rapidly growing Islamist-jihadist control in the Middle East. And then there are the Israel-Palestine negotiations that Mrs. Clinton largely ignored. America has thus far barely survived the presidency of another junior Senator with presidential ambitions. Another disastrous presidency could be terminal. It is time to put a tested leader in the White House - a former first lady selling books does not qualify.