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America’s Not Ready for Hillary

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Before the release, American Secretary of Stat...
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hillary Rodham Clinton will not be the next president of the United States. She won’t even be the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nominee. Risky as it is to place one’s bets 18 months ahead of an election, I’m confident in those two predictions.

Why?

Well, the scandals, real and imagined, that have dogged her and her husband’s heels at every turn since the 1992 election cycle — from Whitewater to Vince Foster’s death to “bimbo eruptions” — don’t help.  Her handling of them helps even less, and the fuse is burning down on a big one: A forthcoming book by Peter Schweizer on the Clinton family foundation’s finances.

The charity is hard at work right now, massaging its old tax returns to correct “errors in reporting donations from foreign governments.” Good luck “correcting” what looks a lot like a straightforward $2.3 million bribe from Russia (with love) to then Secretary of State Clinton for approval of a sensitive uranium deal.

But it’s not financial hijinks, tall tales about Bosnian sniper fire, shrugging deflections of responsibility for American deaths in Benghazi, or even her Nixonian, and undeniably criminal, actions in controlling, concealing and destroying official emails as Secretary of State that sound the death knell for her presidential aspirations.

The real problem is that nobody seems to be able to think of any good reason why she should be elected president. Even among those Americans who are okay with politicians running their lives, there’s no great stampede on to let THIS politician run their lives. Maybe that’s because she so clearly relishes the idea.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is famous for being famous. “Power behind the throne” talk aside, she married a future president, rode his coattails to a safe Democrat US Senate seat in which she served without distinction (other than voting for the USA PATRIOT ACT and the invasion of Iraq, neither of which are exactly high points on a presidential resume these days), lost her “inevitable” 2008 Democratic presidential nomination to a freshman US Senator virtually unknown four years before, and kept the needle on her tenure as Secretary of State floating between lackluster and embarrassing.

America has a bad case of Hillary fatigue. And where her presidential ambitions are concerned, the affliction is terminal.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the alternatives, Democrat and Republican alike, aren’t any better. Even the most allegedly “libertarian” of the pack, US Senator Rand Paul, seems a lot more interested in power than in freedom.

If we all write in “None of the Above” a year from this coming November, will the politicians leave us alone for four years? Of course they won’t. But we can daydream, can’t we?

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

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RGBStock White House

Presidential candidates work hard to convince ordinary Americans that they’re just like us. Regular folks. Put their pants on one leg at a time, you betcha.

But nobody clears the airspace for me when I fly into a city.

Nor, I bet, do federal agents cordon off several blocks around venues in which you’re scheduled to speak, restricting  people who don’t like you to “free speech zones” for the duration of your visit.

And if either of us puts the pedal to the metal and flies down Interstate 89 at more than 90 miles per hour to keep appointments in Keene, Claremont and Concord, New Hampshire, we’ll be lucky if we get off with stern lectures and expensive tickets.

Hillary Clinton gets a Secret Service escort. The police don’t even consider pulling her over for a ticket. They’re there to make sure all us regular people — you know, the ones she’s just like — keep ourselves out of her way.

No, I’m not picking on Hillary. It’s all of them. I can cite experiences, my own and those of friends, going back to 1992 revealing the same disregard for the rules that bind everyone else.

In 1992, the Secret Service searched the apartment of a friend of mine for no other reason than that it happened to overlook president George H.W. Bush’s motorcade route. Later that fall, my future wife was ordered to finish her meal and clear out of a restaurant immediately. Because Bush wanted to eat there.

In 2000, police ordered me to walk about three miles out of my way to reach a “free speech zone.” Mere mortals were excluded from the streets surrounding the building where vice president Al Gore and presidential candidate George W. Bush were scheduled to “debate” (read: Tell us how much like us they are, just regular folks, folks).

In 2008, US Highway 65 between Springfield and Branson, Missouri was cleared of mere mundanes so presidential candidate John McCain’s motorcade could pass through. The local newspaper dutifully noted its police-escorted speed of 100 miles per hour.

These things aren’t the exceptions. They’re the rule. The political class is not like the rest of us. They’re not regular folks.

And I guess that’s OK. It would be a shame for any of them to be late to the microphones from which they lecture us on the importance of the rule of law.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Note to Media: Please Stop Calling Rand Paul a Libertarian

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English: United States Senate candidate , at a...
Rand Paul at a town hall meeting in Louisville, Kentucky during his 2010 campaign for US Senate. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/Wikipedia)

“They thought all along that they could call me a libertarian and hang that label around my neck like an albatross,” Rand Paul said in 2010 during his Republican primary campaign for US Senate, “but I’m not a libertarian.”

Paul prevailed, beating GOP establishment favorite Trey Grayson in the Republican primary and Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway in the general election. Now he’s preparing a 2016 presidential campaign and everyone, Paul included, seems to want to forget that disclaimer.

But it was true then and it’s true now. Rand Paul is no libertarian.

What is he? Among other things, the poster child for adopting a strict “no backsies” rule in American presidential politics.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com puts his finger on the problem with Paul: “For the life of me, I can’t figure out what he really believes — where he really stands, especially when it comes to foreign policy.”

Paul wants to avoid war with Iran. No, wait, he’s for wrecking any chance of avoiding war with Iran. No, wait, he just wants to “negotiate from a position of strength” with Iran — by signing a letter telling the Iranians that the US can’t be trusted to stick to its agreements.

Paul supports “respectful” relations with Russia, because unlike other politicians he understands that the Cold War is over. No, wait, maybe it isn’t over after all. We need to “isolate” Russia and “punish” Vladimir Putin.

Paul supports eliminating foreign aid, including aid to Israel (because strings attached to that aid tie Benjamin Netanyahu’s hands). No, wait, let’s just freeze foreign aid at current levels. No, wait, let’s increase foreign aid to Israel.

Paul opposes US airstrikes on Islamic State forces. No, wait, he supports airstrikes on Islamic State forces.

Paul opposes abortion, except when he doesn’t. Paul opposes same-sex marriage, except maybe not. Paul opposes marijuana legalization, except when he thinks it might be OK.

Libertarians argue constantly over what it means to be a libertarian. I bet I’ve heard a hundred definitions. All of those definitions describe consistent defenders of liberty. None of them describes someone who always says whatever he thinks the crowd he’s talking to wants to hear.

Some of Paul’s defenders claim he’s a “stealth libertarian,” pretending to be a conservative — but that once he’s in White House, he’ll reveal his true principles. They’re selling a pig in a poke. Buyer beware!

What is Rand Paul? A politician. A chameleon. A pander bear. The 2016 edition of Mitt Romney (you may remember how that turned out for Republicans).

Rand Paul is many things, but one thing he’s consistently not is a libertarian. Please stop calling him that.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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