The insufferable Hillary Clinton

Someone said that one could form a "Hillary Clinton Book of the Month Club." Maybe it should be Book of the Week. I don't plan to read any of them, but enough information is now on hand to make clear why the Clintonessa is infuriating.

She is bpth self-righteous and opportunistic. There is a place for both in our political system. but not combined in one person. Among others, Woodrow Wilson and Ralph Nader have been consistently self-righteous. Ever reluctant to grant the cogency of any opposing political view, these individuals stick to their guns. The are not trimmers.

Then there are the pragmatists in politics, of whom Franklin Roosevelt was the supreme example. A story (possibly apocryphal) says that one morning he was visited by a group of Protestant pastors, who compained about growing Catholic influence. "You're absolutely right!" the president exclamed. "I'll exert every effort to curb this menace." An hour later, a Catholic group came calling. They complained that Catholics were ignored and discriminated against. "Right you are," said Roosevelt. "I will do everything I can to correct this great wrong."

Despite this opportunism, Roosevelt was a very effective president.

Because of she combines two incompatibles, self-righteousness and opportunism, a Hillary presidency would be a disaster. A political cartoon was telling. In one panel Hillary says "If I had known then what I know now I would not have voted to authorize the Iraq war." "What is it that you didn't know then?" says the interviewer. "I didn't know that the war would be unpopular."

Hillary's self-righteousness was again on display the other day when she vehemently refused to answer a question about how she would vote on the current war authorization bill. In the end she voted against it, a safe vote since she knew the bill would pass and "our troops would be supported." I don't believe for a moment that Hillary would end the Iraq war if she became president. She admits that she would keep 50,000 troups there--a number easily revised upwards.

And all of her prevarications she serves up with liberal helpings of self-righteousness.

Winston Churchill observed that one can always trust the Americans to do the right thing--after they have exhausted every other alternative. I am hoping that we will do the right thing and reject Hillary for the Democratic nomination. Nut alas there may not be enough time for the slow-witted American public to come to this realization.