Hillary and Indira (updated again)
So she’s in, and in to win. There are many solid reasons to oppose Hillary Clinton for president: her tortured flip-flopping on Iraq, her bloodless triangulation between upstate New York and true-blue Dems, her ties to the Dem establishment against young Turks like Kos and Howard Dean.
But the reason I oppose her is simpler: the cautionary example of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv. Hillary’s purported namesake was Sir Edmund, Himalayan strider. But her true predecessor had socialist and authoritarian streaks wider than the silver swirl in her coiffure. Indira was just the latest in a long line of princelings to obtained power through nepotism and celebrity. Last name worship and brand-fixated tunnel vision are a damn poor way to choose a leader.
Both the Adams and Bush père presidencies churned out anemic sequels. With Hillary we’d be repeating the same mistake ad infinitum. We need another Clinton like we need another Bush, though admittedly an ineffectual presidency is preferable to one aggressively unconstitutional and un-American.
The burning Bush has spoken: America is about new blood, not blue blood; innovation, not repetition. America is the kind of place that ought to have no room for dynasties.
Update: A Talking Points Memo reader agreed:
It makes my stomach hurt to think that in twenty or thirty years I could look back at a list of presidents that includes “Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton.” This country is far too great to have to rely on two families for so much presidential leadership. Think about it: a two-term Hillary would be TWENTY-EIGHT years of Bush and Clinton. [Link]
Update 2: The Atlantic profiled Hillary’s Senate career:
This has come at the cost of some of her most deeply held values. However flawed Clinton’s health-care plan was in execution, it was undergirded by an element of sincere idealism that is all but absent from her Senate record. Clinton has chosen systematic caution as the path to power. [Link]
Update 3: Andrew Sullivan agrees:
No developed country in the world actually bestows political office on women because they were once the wives of presidents. It has tended to happen in South Asia - Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines - but certainly not in modern, developed, Western societies…
Geoffrey Wheatcroft compares the nepotistic path used by Hillary Rodham Clinton to achieve power with the meritocratic efforts of a Thatcher or a Meir or a Merkel, actual rather than phony feminists, who never tried to wield power by marrying it. [Link]
on Sunday, January 21st, 2007, 2:58 pm in Politics › 
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This comparison seems a bit much, doesn’t it? Comparing Hillary to someone responsible for both the Emergency and Bluestar?
Besides, look on the bright side. If Hillary gets elected president, we may get RFK Jr. as our next Senator. ;)
No way should Hillary win.. even if she is a good person and all that, as far as the ‘dynasty syndrome’ goes, india can tell the US - been there done that don’t wanna go back.
Barack Obama for Prez! If he doesnt deserve it, I don’t know who does. Cumon voters - some sense, some sense please!!
People may gravitate towards Hillary as Obama far too left for comfort. Not sure which is worse personally.
I do not think that Obama is ready for the limelight yet, he will face the same obstacles that John Edwards did the last time around.
He is an intelligent, well-educated, brilliant man. He speaks his mind for issues that matter. He has worked hard to get where he is today. It will take some time for him to figure out how to go about his presidential campaign but whatever happened to exploring better options.
Do the leaders of the United States have to be old, pseudo-intellectual and have former Presidents as relatives or husbands and wives!
Whatever happened to reality and young blood doing what it takes to get the country in shape!!
I think of Obama as the next Nehru, dazzling people with his inarguable charisma and deep faith in some flawed fiscal policies. You know trouble is coming when economists gush that they don’t like his policies but can’t help loving him. How can one counter a charismatic man who believes passionately in policies that also have populist approval?
Ok, and I compare Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to another conservative female leader, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who earned her way as leader of the Tory Party rather than having a title handed to her because of nepotism or celebrity. Right now, Secretary Rice is at Camp David in a meeting with our ONLY President, helping him prepare for his State of the Union speech. If the Republican party want to have a strong leader to follow in the footsteps of President Bush, they will support Condi for 2008. She has successful brought Olmert and Abbas to agree to meet in Feb. 2007 along with financial aide for Abbas. She has also spent the past week in various meetings with Arab leaders from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Quatar, Bahrain and other Gulf nations.
Condoleezza Rice is a self-made success story. Most of the Republicans see her as a strong voice for our President on foreign policy and diplomacy; therefore, if there is success in the coming year, she will get the full credit.
On the matter of 2008, watch the others who are so busy running for president rather than allow our ONLY president to do his job. VP Cheney was correct, we do not run wars by committee, and the nation elected our Commander in Chief.
The 2008 race has already heated up and it is only January 2007 with over 26 presidential contenders seeking to raise money and their profile.
But at http://www.thinkcondi.net, we are keeping the fires warm to Condi Rice to step into the race. IF Newt Gingrich can enter the race late in 2007, so can Condi.
Debbie, after Iraq it’s going to be hard for any Republican to win this cycle, especially one so strongly ID’d with foreign policy.
THAT’s the Republican goal? Wow, things are looking better for the Democrats than I thought.
“the cautionary example of Indira Gandhi and her son”
Do you think She was not a great leader. She was one of the finest example (not cautionary example) of how nepotism can be good. Bush is also came because of nepotism.
Indira Gandhi was a powerful, powerful leader and woman. She set a standard for Indian women - Getting places and getting ahead without compromising any dignity. International leaders would come to kiss her on both cheeks but because she believed strongly in her indian-ness, she would risk being rude and instead offer her hand or say namaste from a distance.
She never forgot her roots, even after all the power and monopoly she had over the entire country.
That isn’t to say she was a great politician. She caused one of the worst calamities (in the form of the Amritsar shooting) ever seen in India. And she was bad news for the country..to put it lightly.
She was nevertheless a very strong woman.
She was execrable.
I respect your right to your opinion, but this is like saying Benazir was not qualified to be PM, or that Aung San Suu Kyi wouldn’t be a good leader. True, Benazir was ultimately not successful, but that had more to do with military thuggery than her leadership.
And yes, comparing Indira and Hillary seems a bit much. By talking about Indira’s “authoritarian streak” and thus invoking the Emergency is definitely an exaggeration if not irresponsible if you’re trying to draw potential comparisons with Mrs. Clinton.
I don’t think Hillary is the new Messiah; I’d be just as happy with Obama or even Edwards. But opposing her for purely anti-dynastic reasons is a total red herring. A dynasty for its own sake is nothing to cheer for, but neither should coming from a political family be a total liability.
Not at all. Indira was never properly vetted by a democratic process because of the family in which she happened to be born. Hillary’s celebrity comes from who she married, not her unremarkable term as senator.
It goes against the very concept of America. Similarly, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have said they will not leave the vast bulk of their wealth to the kids.
Please define THE concept of America for me, and how this goes against it, and I’m sure you will find 100 examples where the reverse is true, thus negating your “concept.”
My question is why only Obama or only Edwards? What about the republican candidates in the fray like Guiliani or McCain? Why is it a foregone conclusion that only a democrat should take the top spot?
I was joking the other day that two terms of Hillary should be followed by two terms of Jeb Bush. Then we can have an uninterrupted thirty-six years of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton-Bush. Maybe Chelsea can take over from Jeb.
Schwarzenegger. Obama.
Iraq.
Maybe we can call ouselves Bushi America, like Saudi Arabia.
Interesting comparison Manish…Gandhi vs Hillary…
Gandhi family name still works in India even today…
In news channels they talked a lot about clinton factor, if it will be negative or positive influence on Hillary….Her hubby’s democratic connections are good for fundraising and votes but his personal life and others things question about integrity and reliability..when I read her biography on wikepedia , its like both the couple are grooming to be politicians/in power since they were young …we have see how everything plays in 2009…She has worthy opponents in the same party too like Obama who has a charisma , he seems to be everywhere doing well, even writing books too…making himself a worthy opponent
I think that you’re being somewhat obsessively and irrationally anti- here. And perhaps a bit sexist, to boot — she won election to the Senate in her own right after a high visibility media campaign in which she was scrutinized very intensely.
Therefore, we should expect Hillary to implement mass preventive detention and a Bluestar-like invasion, and to groom Chelsea to take over? C’mon, Manish, it’s a ridiculous comparison. You’re demagoguing this one — it’s no better drawing attention to Obama’s middle name.
Care to substantiate that one? She actually has gotten high marks as a senator from a lot of people. For example:
That doesn’t mean she should run for president — in fact, it might mean that she shouldn’t — and I certainly don’t yet know who I will support. But to disqualify someone solely based on what family they come from — and with such flimsy arguments, to boot — is no better than blindly putting them on a pedestal for it.
(And by the way, running for office isn’t even remotely like inheriting wealth from Papa Gates or Buffett — for one thing, you still actually have to get elected.)
Nevertheless she gets a pass on many things on name recognition, which is exactly why she’s the likely front-runner.
Feel free to beat your strawman.
See the Atlantic profile in the post.
That Dubya was ever electable proves again that it’s much like a brand launch. $50M and a surname people recognize will get you everywhere.
Hey, it was your comparison, not mine — complete with the use of the word “authoritarian” — and therefore your strawman.
As for the Atlantic profile, it gave a much more nuanced picture than you do. Here, for example, is the very passage you selectively quote, placed in context:
I actually understand and share some of your more general concerns about recognizable surnames, brand launches, and the rest of it. And as I mentioned before, I’m not even sure that I’m a Hillary supporter. I just think you are overselling and distorting your case way too much, and in a way that seems overly fixated on her — and in doing so you are undermining the really strong arguments about oligarchy and elitism in American politics, which of course aren’t limited to family dynasties at all. Fixating on Hillary’s membership in a political family is a sideshow and distraction from the real structural barriers to more broad-based participation in American politics, which have more to do with money and celebrity more generally. At this point, people like McCain and Giuliani get as much of a pass as Hillary for reasons which aren’t — structurally — really all that different.
And come to think of it, that pathology at its very core also includes Schwarzenegger, who you laud as embodying the real “concept of America.” Why should his movie stardom and massive wealth have any legitimate role in facilitating his political career? How is that any better than having a husband elected to the highest office in the country? If anything, it seems to me much worse — especially given the deep, longstanding barriers for women seeking to win election to high public office in this country.
If you re-read the post, you’ll find that’s not the case. The analogy is nepotism, not Hillary’s hypothetical future invasion of Amritsar. Though I’d enjoy you arguing that– please carry on :)
In 11 pages, it damn well better.
I think we’ve found our disagreement.
I don’t think much of them as candidates, but they didn’t get in by blood AFAIK.
I laud Schwarzenegger the immigrant hustler, not the snigger-inducing sight of him as governor. The united colonies were founded on an ideal of social mobility, fleeing hereditary cartels.
Yes, I think that was clear a while ago :)
But your arguments for why that’s an appropriate fixation seem rather weak — especially when you do things to support your argument like gratuitously throwing in the word “authoritarian” and relying on an isolated quote about her Senate career that is more neutral in its immediate context than you imply (and from an article that is actually by and large quite laudatory of her years in the Senate in many ways).
I think our disagreement boils down to these questions: (1) why are the privileges that accrue from membership in a political family any worse than other ways in which our celebrity- and biography-driven politics more generally, of which membership in a political family is just a subset, confer privileges upon some political candidates who don’t deserve them? For example, if McCain and Giuliani (and certainly Schwarzenegger) are getting a pass because of their celebrity, how is that any better than getting a pass because of one’s family membership? and (2) why should it be an almost automatic disqualification in your eyes that someone comes from a political family — how is that any more appropriate than automatically giving them a pass for it? Given the ideal of social mobility which you note, I would think that one should end up with a position in the middle somewhere — if someone from a political family is a worthy candidate for office on the merits, and of course in a functioning democracy we have the capacity to assess that, why should their lineage automatically disqualify them?
(I was mostly trying to be funny when I referred to RFK Jr, but take him as another example — he’s spent most of his career as a bona fide policy wonk, especially on environmental issues. Should we be automatically disqualifying him from office as well, even if he’s qualified on the merits, simply because he’s a Kennedy? What sense does that make?)
And of course, none of this precludes your opposing Hillary on the merits — but if that’s what’s really going on, I think it’s better to just argue about that directly.