The bogus "Clinton people" narrative

I wrote some pretty harsh things about the Clintons during the primary, most of which I stand by. But, I always thought it was true that there is a particular sort of political animal, whose habitat spans the political range, that is just utterly infuriated by the Clintons, and wants them to fall of the face of the earth. One way people vent their prejudice is they find the most polarizing member of a group, and they hurl all the worse sort of venom at them. So things a white guy might never say about blacks, in the form of Barack Obama, they say about Pacman Jones. And things a man would never say about, say...damn my analogy broke down--men will say fucked-up shit about any woman, in my experience.

Anyway my point is that a particular brand of white male was utterly repelled by Hillary, and to an extenet Bill, in a manner which I never understood. I thought Ricky Ray Rector was slimy. I thought Sista Souljah was cowardly. I thought Hillary's inability to say "I was wrong" was an act of extraordinary political and moral weakness--the kind we'd just been treated to for eight years. That is possibly indefinsibly harsh. Maybe that would have been suicide for a woman. Maybe John Edwards had wiggle-room that she just didn't.

Meh I'm rambling again. My real point is that I don't get people who are utterly incensed by the fact that many of Obama's appointments have ties to the Clintons. By that line of thinking, we should have been pissed that Susan Rice was always on television during the campaign. Hendrik Hertzberg brings us some historical perspective:

What is a "Clinton person"? Apparently, it's any Democrat under about fifty or fifty-five years of age who has had work experience in the executive branch of the federal government.

The theory seems to be that a "Clinton person" would be inclined, at best, to reproduce the policies and actions of the Clinton Administration, including the accompanying mistakes, or, at worst, to serve the interests of "the Clintons" should they prove divergent from those of the Obama Administration and the nation.

This is the sort of reasoning that led to needless unhappiness the last two times Democrats were in power. Jimmy Carter's circle regarded Johnson, who mired the nation in Vietnam and then handed the White House to Nixon, as a failure. They weren't about to have any "Johnson people" in their White House. Clinton's circle regarded Carter, who allowed himself to be paralyzed by a few hundred Iranian "students" and then handed the White House to Reagan, as a failure. They weren't about to have any "Carter people" in their White House.

It didn't seem to occur to either crowd, Carter's or Clinton's, that old hands, far from being eager to repeat the errors of the Administrations of which they had been a part, would be especially keen to avoid them. Also, they would know in detail what those errors were.

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I guess there are people out there who thought change meant a complete break from the past. I don't know. But I've said before I voted for Obama because I thought he was the anti-Bush--he had a supple mind, a nuanced way of seeing the world, and a uncanny ability to communicate that to people. This idea that a foolish stubborness was somehow equal to strength, this penchant for confusing inflexibility with toughness was repellent to me. I get pissed thinking about it now. I always believed that a true confidence, allows for flexibility, it allows for one to fall back on common sense as opposed to personal prejudice, or anger.

I don't have a vendetta against "Clinton people." It strikes me that the "anti-Clinton people" theory is the exact sort of rigidity I wanted us to move away from. Like I said before, I just want shit to work again. I don't much care who you get to make that happen, as long as it happens. I don't so much worry about the fact that some of the folks who screwed-up in the past may be given second chances. I more worry about people who can't correct for that sort of thing, who have no interest in examining where they might have gone wrong. I just don't see an Obama administration doing that.