A Facebook Friend Asks Why I Like Hillary Clinton

A Facebook friend from high school recently asked, “How many of my friends feel the way I do? I am interested in learning on FB why my friends like certain candidates. I have no interest in learning on FB how snarky they can be about the ones they don't like. Just wondering...”  Here is my response:

           I start with the premise that I want to have a President who agrees with me on the most basic important issues, most importantly, the need:

** To respond aggressively to climate change;

** For government to protect us (and capitalism) from the excesses of capitalism (for example, toxic pollution, income inequality in which those at the top skim or ladle off obscene amounts of money at the expense of everyone else, outright fraudulent activities)

** For government to perform communal tasks that the private sector is not equipped to handle, and that there a number of such tasks;

** To maximize equal opportunity in a world in which some are born on third base, while others start out at not even on first base;

** To respect people and protect civil rights regardless of one's race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity;

** To recognize that international trade agreements are an essential part of economic health in a globalized economy and that we can do a bit better regarding the terms of those agreements, but that, at bottom, the best way to deal with the displacement caused by such agreements and technological change is to act aggressively to help those negatively impacted to find new careers and cushion the transitions;

** To carefully navigate our foreign policy in a very messy and dangerous world while trying to maintain ethical standards of behavior.

            Hillary Clinton's long-standing views fit my own, and that, obviously, is very important to me. 

            Secretary Clinton has proven herself to be committed, worthy, and usually trustworthy over the course of her entire life. She has a wealth of relevant experience and knowledge, beginning with her work as a field organizer in Texas for the McGovern Campaign and her work for the Children’s Defense Fund, continuing with her work on education in Arkansas, health care and women’s rights issues while First Lady, the full range of issues while in the Senate, and international affairs as Secretary of State. 

            Criticism of her regarding (a) the decision to withdraw troops from Iraq in 2011 rather than to continue to be the target of the contending Shia and Sunni factions there, and (b) the 2012 decisions regarding Libya are way overblown.  It was never clear, even in hindsight, how to handle those awful situations; no one can say with any certainty that a different course of action would, on balance, have been better.  As for her apparent internal disagreements with President Obama on our response in Syria, I would say the same thing.  People who state with assurance (and in good faith, which is not always the case) that continuing a significant military “presence” in (really, an occupation of) Iraq would not have led to the same sad outcome we see now – perhaps worse, with thousands of dead Americans – are, I think, being blinded by their own predispositions of what they wish were the case.  Ditto regarding Libya: Had we done nothing, we would be faulted for allowing Qadafi to slaughter tens of thousands of people; had we gone in full force, we could have been in another Iraq quagmire. As for Syria, President Obama may have been correct in his assessment that there were no credible non-terrorist groups in Syria that we could have joined forces with to stop Assad’s mass murder, and that any attempt to do so would have only led to more American weapons in the hands of terrorists, whether Al Qaeda or ISIL.  That Hillary Clinton would have been more aggressive is not necessarily a good thing; we simply do not, and cannot, know.

            Hillary Clinton is not perfect. Her 2002 vote on the Iraq War – which seemed to be a close call at the time (even Paul Wellstone, who voted against authorization, said it was the toughest vote he ever had to make) – appears to me to have been based more on political caution than a clear-eyed assessment of the situation. And her ham-handed attempt to keep control over the confidentiality of all her e-mails, notwithstanding the Freedom of Information Act, was foolish – even though paranoids do, in fact, sometimes have venal enemies.  (Lord knows, she does).  She should have known that any risks involved in just using the State Department server for work e-mails were far less than the sh--storm caused by the virtually inevitable reveal of her use of personal e-mail. 

          Her shortcomings do not, in my opinion, interfere with her ability to be an excellent President.  I have heard enough of her speeches, and know enough of her record, to be confident that, at bottom, she is still the idealistic woman who first came on the national scene with her Wellesley graduation speech when she took on the pretenses of pro-Viet Nam War Senator Ed Brooke. (FWIW, two of my best friends from high school were good friends of hers at Yale, and before that during college, and always had nothing but praise for her.)  I have no reservations about supporting her and voting for her this Novedmber. 

           But even if she has been so scarred by experience that she is not as honest as we would wish –- a fault which, at worst, goes to trimming on the issues at times (an occupational hazard of being in politics) and being overly protective of her private life and communications – she would still be preferable to any conceivable Republican candidate, since the entire 2015-16 field proclaimed views that I find very ill-conceived:

** They either reject the fact of climate change altogether or say there is nothing we can do about it.

** They mostly reject the idea that the government can or should protect us (and capitalism) from the excesses of capitalism, instead taking an Ayn Rand view of the economic world, in which the race is to the swift (or corrupt) and the devil take the hindmost.

** They believe that there are few communal tasks that the private sector is not equipped to handle -- that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" -- the market place -- will take care of virtually everything.

** They mostly ignore the fact that there is unequal opportunity, or that the government should do anything to try to make the playing field more level.

**  At best, they give lip service to respecting people’s civil rights, but are not willing to do anything to effectuate such respect – even to the point of approving state action to interfere with the right of those at the bottom of the economic ladder to vote.

** They either mindlessly argue that all of our international trade agreements have no value, or, at the other extreme, argue that “free trade” means trade utterly unfettered by communal concerns.  All of them rejected any significant governmental action to help those hurt by trade agreement to transition to the inevitable new world.;

** They either wished to return to the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld policies of military intervention, even when the downstream impacts are far worse than the problems such interventions seek to remedy; or they were isolationist in their assertions.  (One candidate, the presumptive nominee tried to take both positions!).

            So, for me, even if Hillary Clinton were more flawed than I believe, I would, on policy grounds, favor her over a Jeb Bush, a Lindsay Graham, a Marco Rubio, or a John Kasich.  And, in addition to policy grounds, I certainly would favor her over like Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Rick Santorum, whose policies and allies would, with “moral certitude,” force gay people back into the closet and make them permanent second class citizens. 

            Thus far, I think I have satisfied my Facebook friend’s admonition to not be “snarky.”  But I find it impossible to discuss the additional problems I have with Donald Trump without sounding snarky.  But I must say that Donald Trump, as the presumptive Republican nominee, makes my choice even clearer – if that were possible.  Mr. Trump has shown himself to be an ignorant and cruel bully, an egotistical demagogue with no record of public spiritedness, a man whose lies are so outrageous and numerous that one’s head spins keeping track of them.  He is the embodiment of Joe McCarthy, without a drinking problem – although in fairness to the late, but not lamented Senator from Wisconsin, McCarthy might have actually believed he was doing the best thing for the country. (Note that Mr. Trump chose McCarthy’s top henchman, Roy Cohn, to be his mentor when he (Trump) entered the world of Manhattan maneuvering.  See, e.g., http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-virus-dark-age-unreason/)

Donald Trump has proven a very important thing, a thing that in my mind puts him beyond the pale, regardless of policy positions: That, throughout his life, he only wants what is best for Donald Trump.

Governor Cuomo's Executive Order on BDS

Today, my younger son Dan posted this on Facebook, in response to Gov. Cuomo’s announcement of an executive order by which the State of New York would boycott those who support the BDS Movement, which is aimed at the Israeli Government and Israeli businesses :

When I was growing up, I was constantly told that if Palestinians created a mass non-  violent movement against the Occupation, that they would win their struggle easily. 

Well, we've had a massive, international, non-violent movement for Palestinian human rights for the past 11 years, and not only is it being trampled at every turn, but our own state governments are participating in this repression.

I was the one who “constantly told” this to him.  I still believe that if a non-violent civil disobedience movement had emerged in the 1980s or even the 1990s, it might well have worked.  But every year that the Israeli government keeps and expands settlements on the West Bank, the harder it is for such a movement to succeed.  This is a tragedy for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Nevertheless, I oppose blanket BDS (as opposed to a boycott of Israeli goods produced in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, which might make sense to me).  I do not think that blanket BDS will influence this Israeli government, or any likely future government, to change its West Bank policies. I applaud efforts of BDS supporters to resist the flat-out anti-Semitism of other BDS supporters, for whom BDS is a front for a general desire to throw the Israeli Jews into the sea, or worse. But I fear that may be a losing struggle.

Still, I am very troubled by Gov. Cuomo’s executive order.  Activists in New York should consider the impact of a 1995 Supreme Court case, Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819,  829 et. seq. (1995). There, the Supreme Court ruled that where a state government establishes a public forum for discussion of public issues, the state may not condition participation based on the viewpoint of a group. 

In that case, the University of Virginia (UVA) funded student publications, provided the student applicants met certain standards.  Students wishing to secure funding for a magazine with a religious viewpoint met all those standards, but UVA denied their application based on the proposition that it should not, under the First Amendment, fund religious magazines.  The Supreme Court disagreed, concluding that when a governmental institution creates a public forum, it may not discriminate based on viewpoint.

One of the questions raised by Gov. Cuomo’s executive order is whether, with respect to arts groups which get state funding, the state may condition continued funding on the groups’ commitment not to provide a forum for those opposing BDS.  We need more debate on BDS issues, not less.  It seems to me that Rosenberger may well preclude such conditions.

A way to look at this would be to work through the following hypothetical:  Suppose that, during the South African Apartheid period, a state chose to divest from companies doing business with the Apartheid Regime and to defund any group, otherwise receiving state funds, which provided a forum to those supporting Apartheid.  If a defunding of such groups participating in state-supported public forums would have been unconstitutional, the same reasoning would apply here.