February 5, 2007

For Hillary’s Sake, Bring the Troops Home!

There has always been something transparently self-serving about Hillary Clinton. But if you engage in blatantly self-serving behavior often enough, and everyone acts like you were justified in doing so, perhaps you or I would make it a habit as well.

The woman who wants to be president – and whose every move for at least the better part of a decade has been designed to make herself president – now wants more. She is not only entitled to the presidency. She is entitled to an easy presidency.

Sen. Clinton, who voted in 2002 to authorize the war in Iraq, now makes the astonishing demand that President Bush withdraw all troops from Iraq by 2009. Why 2009? What’s magical about that particular point in time? How does such a timetable serve the interests of the United States of America?

Oh. Wait. Silly. Wrong question. It serves the interests of incoming President Hillary Clinton.

"We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office," future President Clinton astonishingly told a campaign rally in Iowa on January 28. Here’s how it is for the Senator from Arkansas, I mean New York: When she becomes president, she shouldn’t have to fix any problems left by her predecessor. That wouldn’t be fair.

And just in case you thought maybe she meant something else – a botched joke, perhaps? – she said more: "I am going to level with you. The president has said this is going to be left to his successor. I think it is the height of irresponsibility, and I really resent it."

Ah. Level with us indeed, but not in the way she thinks. Bush believes the quest to promote democracy in the Middle East should outlive his presidency. He is correct. It should. If Sen. Clinton thinks she has caught Bush admitting something nefarious here, she should brush up on the job description of the president before she applies for the position. You deal with the challenges of the nation – the ones that were there before you as well as the ones that crop up while you are in office.

Where Sen. Clinton has really leveled with us is in her expression of resentment. Resentment is a very personal emotion. Resentment is about you. Sen. Clinton “resents” the prospect of taking office and having to deal with the question of troops still in Iraq.

How could you do this to me, George?

Bush has never wavered in his belief that we need to successfully finish the job in Iraq. He has always rejected timetables for doing so, insisting that we stay until we have achieved success. This is what he believes is in the best interests of our country.

Sen. Clinton’s expression of personal resentment demonstrates that she is mainly concerned about her own interests. If she is elected, she does not want to be the president who makes the decision to pull the troops out. Saigon became a bloodbath after U.S. troops withdrew in 1975, and Baghdad may follow the same path. The problem with a Baghdad bloodbath? None at all, in Sen. Clinton’s mind, provided she cannot be blamed for it.

How lovely it would be to become president without having any problems left for you. George W. Bush would surely have been delighted if, prior to January 20, 2001, Osama bin Laden had been killed, Social Security had been addressed, taxes had been cut and the collapse of the tech bubble had been dealt with. Oh, and if the stated policy of the Clinton Administration regarding Iraq, which was “regime change,” had actually been undertaken. All this would have made for a smooth ride for Bush. Dare to dream.

Ever since Hillary Clinton decided to run for the U.S. Senate from a state where she had never lived, everyone has understood she did so only to position herself to run for president. Everything she has done as a senator has been designed to make her president. What’s more, everyone has known this, and few have found it objectionable. Indeed, analyses of Sen. Clinton’s actions are usually offered in the context of how cleverly she is serving her presidential ambitions, not how she is serving her constituents or the nation.

So it should come as no surprise that she takes her self-serving demands to the next level. Make her president, she demands, and don’t leave any problems that might be inconvenient for her to have to address.

Some of us are looking for a candidate who has the courage to take on the nation’s problems, which stems from an understanding of the fact that it’s the president who serves the nation, not the other way around. That candidate is clearly not Hillary Clinton.