I’ve often compared Hillary Clinton to Richard Nixon, at least with regards to ethics. She is far closer to George W. Bush ideologically. Walker Bragman has an article at Paste on Clinton and Nixon. Walker mentions some (but not all) of the comparisons I’ve made in the past, and comes up with at least one I had not thought of before.
There are many similarities between Nixon and Clinton, but I think the biggest is their views on secrecy to the point of paranoia. There’s also the comparison between the gap in Nixon’s tapes and Clinton’s destroyed email. Plus both are admirers of Henry Kissinger.
I did like Nixon’s campaign unofficial campaign slogan better, at least when running for reelection: Don’t Change Dicks In The Middle Of A Screw–Reelect Nixon in ’72. That beats Clinton’s campaign de facto slogans: It’s My Turn and No We Can’t.
Walker’s most interesting addition is to show an analogy between Nixon’s silent majority and how Clinton campaigned against Sanders and the left, even if the comparison isn’t exact:
In a way, Clinton claimed to speak for her own “Silent Majority”—older, more “responsible” (economically conservative) Democrats who don’t necessarily turn up at rallies, or want sweeping changes to the status quo, but who vote. Like her, these older voters remembered Nixon, and the decades in which liberal candidates and their ‘radical’ movements driven by young, naive voters, lost to older, more experienced, ‘pragmatic’ conservatism. Clinton and her allies did their best to tie Sanders’ progressives into that long tradition by drawing a contrast between their platform and his lofty goals and most radical fringe supporters—mostly online fringe…
This is why, throughout the primary, Clinton provoked Sanders’ movement by implying they were merely naive and lazy, and why her surrogates like Sen. Barbara Boxer, played up the aggressive, sexist “Bernie Bro” meme. It is also why former President Bill Clinton accused Sanders progressives of wanting to shoot “every third person on Wall Street.”
The dismissive and incendiary rhetoric was designed to generate exactly the outrage (or even violence) needed to sell these narratives, and ultimately distract from the staggering economic and political inequality that Clinton herself played a role in creating. In other words, use familiar tropes to social liberals to sell a candidate whose record would make her right at home in the ‘80s or ‘90s GOP.
Even after she became the presumptive nominee, Clinton’s camp has been continued to alienate Sanders’ supporters. Rather than make peace, Clinton’s appointees to the Democratic Platform Committee (who, as I’ve mentioned in previous pieces, but bears repeating now, include “influence peddlers”) have voted down basic progressive proposals like supporting a ban on fracking, opposing the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and pushing for single-payer health care. In defense of her position, one Clinton appointee accused Sanders’ side of having a “litmus test” for caring about the environment.
Not an exact comparison, but I see his point.
Most significantly, while Richard Nixon could never escape his nickname of Tricky Dick, no matter how awful Donald Trump is, his nickname of Crooked Hillary will also likely stick to her.
It has been over a year since the email scandal broke, with no end in sight. Last week we had the revelations of additional examples of non-personal email having been destroyed. Both this email, and the testimony from Huma Abedin, debunk her claims of acting out of convenience–demonstrating she used the private server in a deliberate effort to keep her email secret. The State Department Inspector General report also demonstrated her efforts to cover-up her actions. It is impossible to hear the term cover-up without thinking of Nixon.
This week there is more adverse news for Hillary Milhouse Clinton following the rather inappropriate meeting between her husband and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, which has resulted in bipartisan disapproval, even if Democrats are more trusting of Bill’s motives:
I take @LorettaLynch & @billclinton at their word that their convo in Phoenix didn’t touch on probe. But foolish to create such optics.
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) June 30, 2016
Clinton’s denials on her email, which have been throughly debunked both by fact checkers and the Inspector General report, have a ring of “I am not a crook” to them. I’m still waiting to hear Hillary slip and promise that Chelsea will be allowed to keep Checkers.
