I don’t care about what the Republicans think of Hillary. What should matter to American voters is what those who know best Hillary have said about her. Bill and Chelsea talk of Hillary in superlatives. It is the same thing with most of her staff at the State Department. President Obama, her political rival, trusted her enough to appoint her Secretary of State, a job which has added more feathers to her cap and given her impressive credentials to become the first woman President of the United States.
For any Republican to describe Hillary as unworthy and out of touch is disingenuous and unfair because, if the truth must be told, all politicians - as a rule in America - are no better than Hillary. They all play up to the gallery and say what they think the voters want to hear. Jeb Bush says he will be his own man when he is President. That is one big lie. The very nature of the job hardly permits such neutrality and independence. They all make these pronouncements because that is what the voters want to hear.
The list of Presidents who have played up to the gallery in America is as long as the Mississippi River. Abe Lincoln did it when, at the risk of being unpopular and disloyal to his political base, he metamorphosed from a slave owner to the foundational pillar and architect of the great Emancipation Proclamation.
FDR performed the same balancing act during his career as the longest serving President in America and the mastermind of the Social Security program that has survived in America for almost to a century. You could say the same thing for Harry Truman who said “I told the Republicans the truth but they thought I was giving them hell.” Ronald Reagan a former democrat-turned Republican did the same after becoming President in the Iran Contra scandal. Richard Nixon, the Republican President who opened up China, acknowledged his playing the same game when he admitted, “You campaign in prose but you govern in poetry.” You start your campaign by pleasing your base, but quickly move to the fluidity and abstract actions after winning the nomination.
How could the world’s greatest capitalist country ever distance herself from Wall Street? It is just not possible. They might say it to please the voters. It is not a promise they’ll be happy to keep once they are in the White House. You don’t become President in America if you are not favored or accepted by Wall Street; money talks in America.
Furthermore, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama played the same game with many of their policies. I can tell you that Jeb Bush and Hillary are going to modify their position and views just like Mitt Romney and John McCain would have done if they had been lucky enough to be President. All I am saying is that they all have to respond to what they all think the voters want to hear.
Hillary would be right to put the same label on either Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or even Scott Walker or Ted Cruz. That she has not yet done that makes her a star in my book. She is more honest and trustworthy than any Republican running for President today. You can bet that Hillary is going to adjust her position if she finds that those labels are hurting her chances in the election.
Harold Wilson got it right when he said that “Survival is the art of politics.” Nobody understands that prism better than American politicians. Only the wise, extremely smart, and lucky ones among them ever make it to the presidency because America is a nation with staggering conflict concerning the expectations they have for their President. Americans want their Presidents to be all things to all men. They expect him or her to be a magician or something close to God. They forget that whoever is President is a human and there is a limit to how much he or she can do.
In their efforts to respond to those expectations, all of those politicians can sometimes appear dishonest and untrustworthy because they often have to promise more than they are able to deliver. If the voters understand this observation, they would be less concerned about what the Republicans are saying about Hillary. By now they should have realized that like Margaret Thatcher was in Britain, like Golda Meir was in Israel, or like Dlema Youseff was in Brazil Hillary is a rising star in American politics.
Like her husband, Hillary is an extraordinary politician. The power couple is going to give America another two for the price of one just like they did from 1993 to 2001. Hillary is so lucky to be married to Bill and Bill is so lucky to be married to a Hillary. If you see what I see, they both complement each other and they have been a great blessing to America.
In a special interview yesterday, Bill Clinton told Jake Tapper of the CNN that Hillary is the most trustworthy individual he has ever met. The former President of the United States highlights the qualities of the woman he loves and the woman who has been there for him through thick, thin, and every step of the way.
I don’t care about what the Republicans think of Hillary. What should matter to American voters is what those who know best Hillary have said about her. Bill and Chelsea talk of Hillary in superlatives. It is the same thing with most of her staff at the State Department. President Obama, her political rival, trusted her enough to appoint her Secretary of State, a job which has added more feathers to her cap and given her impressive credentials to become the first woman President of the United States.
Many men came to this world to marry another man’s wife and many women came to the world hooked to another man’s husband. When you are lucky to find the spouse chosen for you by God, the statement “for better for worse, in sickness and in health, and yours till death do us part” assumes a different meaning and dimension because nothing is more beautiful than a marriage made from Heaven. That is not to say that all things are going to be hunky-dory for the two individuals in any marriage, but what it means is that they would never allow any external forces to come between them and to put asunder what God has joined. They may encounter problems, but those problems will not overcome the unity in them. They will laugh last and laugh best like Bill and Hillary.
First and foremost, the trustworthiness of Hillary ought to be determined by how well she has managed her marriage to one of the most eligible bachelors in the world who became President at 43. The Republicans were bent on putting asunder what God had joined but they failed because of God and the resilience of Hillary who stood by her husband to weather the storm of their enemies. She did give Bill a black eye for having an affair with Monica Lewinsky and the other women who regularly. Bill once admitted having to sleep on the sofa in the living room of the White House during his interactions and issues with Monica. His closest friend at the time was his dog. Yes, Hillary did get under his skin to show him pepper, but that was behind closed doors. I respect Hillary for that. She stood her ground and did not allow the Republicans to ruin her marriage.
She later went on to be the Senator of New York and from there Secretary of State and now in the Democratic Party she is the frontrunner for President. For any candidate who will be President of the greatest nation on Earth, It doesn’t get any better than that.
If Hillary is judged strictly by that yardstick and her other life experiences from her childhood, it will be clear to all that Hillary is not only trustworthy, she is also an extraordinary woman of substance and an embodiment of grace, courage and integrity. She will surely make a great President and thus, I am predicting she will go on to win in 2016.
The last time I checked, no less than 20 Republicans want to be President in 2016. The Grand old Party has become the Tower of Babel as they all now fall over one another in their race to become the nominee that runs against Hillary. The Republicans are almost as desperate as the PDP in Nigeria who deliberately planted some moles to bring the APC Party down in the hope that Nigerians will have no choice than to turn back to PDP in 2019 or earlier. The major difference between the PDP and the Republicans is the fact that criminal impunity is not tolerated in America like it is in Nigeria.
The Law is no respecter of any person in America. If you break the law and you get caught, you pay the price regardless of who you are. The law enforcement agencies like the Military, the Police, and State Security do not brazenly lend their support to the Party in power to oppress, victimize, and undermine the opposition like they do in Nigeria.
Americans don’t stage the kind of coup or stunt that Senator Saraki and his fellow conspirators in the PDP have just pulled on the APC in the legislative branch. Out of respect for separation of powers, President Buhari does not want to be seen as meddling in the affairs of the Legislature. Though he knows that his change agenda is now dead on arrival with the current leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives, he has not intervened. The APC won the election fair and square, but the PDP will be the ones calling the shots in both Houses of the Legislature, so much so that Saraki has to make a pledge to assure Nigerians he is not going to return to the PDP any time soon... If I knew this was going to be what I got by voting for APC and Buhari, I would simply have stayed at home. I could never allow myself to vote for the PDP knowing what I knew about them and Jonathan.
I deceive you if I tell you the APC has started on the right footing. I don’t know how Buhari and the APC leaders are going to dig themselves out of the hole they are in in Nigeria. Change for Saraki and the PDP is nothing short of suicide at this point in time because they fully understand that survival is the art of politics. Buhari will be violating the Constitution and committing an abomination if he now wants to try and convict his Party’s new Senate President. The APC is all but dead right now and I am not going to deceive myself. Anybody can deceive me. I only have a problem when I deceive myself. It should be the same for APC.
The APC must now embrace the supremacy of the Party and use it to correct the anomaly that has just occurred in the Nigerian Senate and the House of Representatives in the fullness of time. It cannot be done immediately. They have got to live with the monster Saraki has created for them. Whoever emerges as Senate President, Majority Leader, and Minority Leader is at a serious advantage. Even Chairmen of Committees are usually settled in America before the House convenes. They don’t leave the selection to the whim and caprices of the Senate Chamber. This is unlike Nigeria where Saraki, because of the enormous powers vested on the Legislature all in the name of separation of powers, has more or less created an alternate Government.
The only thing the Republican Party could do to ensure that the Democrats do not earn 4 or 8 more years in the White House is to blackmail and demonize Hillary Clinton who appears to be the frontrunner in the Democratic Party. For obvious reasons, America is like no other country in the whole Universe. I have seen a dead Senator in this country beat a living Senator and the Chief Law Enforcement officer of the whole nation. I have seen an ace commercial pilot safely land a plane on the Hudson River in a city of no less than 15 million people. The whole world has seen America put the first man on the Moon and safely bring the man and his crew back to Earth. Nothing is impossible in America. Like I have predicted in one of my previous Hillary articles which can be found on the Sahara and the ChatAfrik web sites, the world is going to see America elect its first woman President in 2016.
I don’t care how many candidates come out of the Republican Party to vie for President; when all is said and done, the final duel is going to come down to a choice between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. There will be several twists and turns, but in the end, I can assure you the race is going to be between Jeb and Hillary.
Since George and Barbara Bush have more or less adopted Bill Clinton as their third son, we can all expect the contest to be a battle royal between the two political dynasties of America that follow the Kennedy Dynasty. I am predicting that the outcome is going to be the same as it was in November 1992 when Bill Clinton the youngest American Governor came from behind to unseat the sitting President George Bush Senior.
All politicians in the world will double-speak at some point, if not all the time. Hillary and Jeb are no exceptions. I don’t care if the politician is a Winston Churchill, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Ben Gurion, Nikita Khruchov, Vladimir Putin, Pandit Kneru, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Ayatollah Khomeini, Kwame Nkrumah, Obafemi Awolowo, Ogbuefi Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balewa, or Barack Hussein Obama.
You cannot be a politician anywhere in the world and be said to be totally trustworthy. You probably have some conflict of interest, or some skeletons in your cupboard that you don’t want the world to know about. Arguably, the only one to survive such scrutiny is Barrack Hussein Obama who has not been found guilty of any scandal that could have derailed his presidential ambition. He did promise on the campaign trail to unite America and to make peace in the world by moving in a different direction. He instead had constructive engagement with those perceived to be traditional enemies of America. You could argue that Obama has not been trustworthy because he has not delivered what he has promised. The nation remains more polarized today than it was before Obama showed up; however, it’s not a result of lack of effort from Obama, it is because of the nature of American politics.
The Republicans have totally refused to cooperate with Obama because they realize that if they do, the man will go down as one of the best American Presidents and if that happens, as it has, Republicans would be forced to kiss goodbye their ambition to recapture the White House. The Republicans are still the first to tell you that Obama is untrustworthy and out of touch with mainstream America. What they say are blatant lies. And they are doing the exact same to Hillary because they are aware that given her profile and track record she is unbeatable.
I am not going to waste time comparing Hillary with each of the 22 candidates now running for President in the Republican Party. They do not match up to Hillary. Because of that, Republicans are throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at Hillary in the hope that something will stick.
It is as if God Almighty, through his perfect and permissive will, has charted Hillary’s pathway to the presidency of America. I am only going to talk about Hillary and Jeb Bush because the two of them are going end up as the nominees of their two parties. Before I do that, let me briefly talk about past Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.
Was Newt Gingrich trustworthy when he a gang to impeach Bill Clinton for his sexual escapade with Monica Luwenski? Newt who threw the first stone himself was found guilty of a more egregious sexual offense a year later. So was Livingston who later resigned in disgrace. Mitt Romney who became Governor of Massachusetts using the Affordable Health Care Reform as a launch pad was quick to condemn Obama for trying the same program at the national level. Was he trustworthy at this time? Hell no. What of the former speaker of the House, Mr. Hastert and how he rushed to judge Clinton on the intricacies of impeachment? Was he trustworthy? What about the great communicator himself, Ronald Reagan who traded arms for hostages at one point in his presidency? What of George Bush Senior when he told Americans, “Read my lips, no new Taxes?” Was George Bush trustworthy at the time? Hell no. So, the Republicans calling Hillary untrustworthy are like the kettle calling the pot black. It cannot stand.
When a democrat is their target trustworthiness means a different thing to Republicans. That is what they are doing to Hillary. They have to demonize and stigmatize her to decimate her presidential ambition. They are crying wolf about Benghazi where there is none.
Hillary was a great First lady of Arkansas for 12 years, a good first lady of the United States for 8 years, a great Senator of New York State for 6 years, a distinguished Secretary of State for 4 years, a great fighter for women's and children’s issues, and a staunch defender of the poor and the deprived in the American society. If you believe the cheap blackmail of the Republicans you will believe anything. It is “much ado about nothing.”
Jeb Bush was aware that his brother George lost the popular vote to Al Gore by a few millions in 2001, but he as Governor of Florida helped his brother to steal the election from Al Gore by coerce the Florida vote. Was that trustworthiness or subterfuge? Asked whether he would still support going to war in Iraq if he knew what he knows now, his first answer was, “I would have.” But when he saw where the American pendulum of opinion was moving he buckled under pressure to say he would not have gone to war. Is he trustworthy or not for shifting his ground so quickly? Your guess is as good as mine. The Republican candidates are all guilty of what they are accusing Hillary. They all want to say things they believe the voters want to hear just to get their votes.
Hillary grew up a conservative Goldwater Republican place like her father and she was a socially liberal Rockefeller Republican when she entered Wellesley College. Hillary gradually came to the conclusion that the GOP was on the wrong side of the contention issues that roiled America like civil rights and Vietnam War. That was long before she met Bill Clinton at Yale. But once her opinion changed because of her husband, she has never wavered. Who says Hillary is not trustworthy? They should go tell that to the mountains. Republicans wanted Hillary to divorce her husband because of Monica Luwenski. Hillary stood by her man to the very end. Hillary is one hell of a woman and I would support for President any day.
Both Hillary and Bill would have been thrown out of the White House with ignominy had Hillary fallen for the Republican bait. She went on to serve as US Senator for 6 years and Secretary of State for 4 years and she is now on her way to being elected the first female President of the greatest country on Earth. I take off my hat for Hillary.
It doesn’t get any better than that for any American who wants to be President. Who says Hillary is out of touch and untrustworthy? You will believe anything if you believe that crap.
I rest my case.