For all the flirtation Hillary Clinton has done with the news media over whether she intends to run for president in 2016, you’d think she would have performed better on her book tour/campaign dress rehearsal. Before the tour and the bad reviews that "Hard Choices" was news-less settled in, Hillary, former First Lady and Secretary of State, sat down with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer for an interview.
During her chat with Sawyer, Hillary came off as anything but seasoned. She looked like a celebrity out of touch with the American people and a politician ill prepared to take responsibility to lead.
When Sawyer asked if she thought being paid $200,000 for a speech—six times the salary of the average American was too much, Hillary said she and Bill have worked hard and left the White House “dead broke.” I’m certain millions of Americans struggling to find work today would love to live Hillary’s version of dead broke. Now Hillary and Bill are comfortably ensconced in the echelons of America’s 1% club. Their net worth is about $50 million. Hillary reportedly was paid $14 million for her 600-page tome. Then there’s Chelsea Clinton, who earned $600,000 a year working for NBC News as a special correspondent. Oh, the life of the rich and Clintons!
What’s going to be Hillary’s 2016 campaign message? That she’s a man of people, fighting hard for the little guy to get ahead in a jobless economy where people like her haven’t struggled? When Sawyer asked Hillary if she would have done anything differently in handling the Benghazi attack, in which four Americans were killed due to poor security at the consulate, Hillary coolly replied, “No.” Sounding like Marie Antoinette, she told Sawyer her job wasn’t to review blueprints for all US embassies and posts and “decide what should be done.”
As Victoria Toensing points out in the Wall Street Journal, in 1999 Accountability Review Boards were conducted for the 1998 twin embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Both ARB reports recommended, “first and foremost, the Secretary should take a personal and active role in carrying out the responsibility of ensuring the security of U.S. diplomatic personnel abroad.”
The 1999 Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act included those recommendations and mandates the Secretary of State is the only person who can waiver security requirements at US posts abroad. But according to Hillary, the security at “270 posts abroad” just wasn’t her job. In fact, she told Sawyer, “it would have been a mistake” for her to concern herself with such trivial details.
Another priceless moment was when Sawyer asked Hillary if she ever thought about Monica Lewinsky with whom President Clinton had a very infamous affair. Hillary said she never thinks of Monica. If Hillary plans to run to become the Democrat nominee for president in 2016 and run on a platform that’s dedicated to women’s issues, she better come up with a more believable answer than that. Hillary stood by her philandering husband all these years so she could seize political power. A potential Ready for Hillary presidential campaign sends the message to women that you need a man to gain status and power in life. And even if he’s a cheater you stick with him.
Moving onto other interviews, Hillary became the pit-bull we remember from her husband’s presidency. She attacked NPR's Terry Gross, who questioned her flip-flop in her position on gay marriage, kinda like her flip in support of the Iraq war, which she was for before she was against. How dare Gross have the nerve to conduct an objective interview with Queen Bee Clinton, heir, in her own mind, to America’s presidential crown? Hillary got indignant like she did in the 1990s, only this time she looked like an angry old lady.
Former Democrat governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell described Hillary’s performance on her book tour as being “a little rusty” and unable to “say all the right things” like her husband. After spending over 30 years working in politics and running for president in 2008, Hillary shouldn’t be rusty at politicking.
She told Sawyer she knows the job of president very well! But Hillary didn’t come off like she’s anywhere close to being capable of assuming it. What Hillary’s book tour revealed is a hackneyed politician that’s run past her expiration date.