I think I’m starting to get into this whole idea that we need to thoroughly vet the candidates running for President this year, as well as their families and close associates, in order to assure they pass muster. Without this kind of digging, would America have ever learned about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and what his long-time relationship as friend, mentor, and pastor to Barack Obama says about that candidate’s character and judgement?
Yet this is only a start. I say we have not gone far enough. There is a person in this race who is getting a complete pass from the media, a person who has gotten by on their smile for too long, a person with whom all of us are familiar and many of us like strongly but about whom we know almost next to nothing.
I’m speaking, of course, about . . . Chelsea Clinton.
Sure, she’s enjoyed quasi-celebrity status, paling around with Gweneth Paltrow and Madonna, but any press coverage of her, let alone a critical vetting, is likely to land its author in hot water. Sources divergent as Rush Limbaugh to Saturday Night Live to the New York Post have apologized to her parents and the White House for writing unflatering things about her.
A Stanford senior and journalism major was fired in 1997 when he wrote a profile about Chelsea as an incoming freshman for the the Stanford Daily. When John McCain made an off-color joke riddiculing Chelsea at a 1998 Republican fundraiser, he was largely let off the hook by a mainstream media that did not want to hurt the First Daughter’s feeling by reprinting his words.
Even her own mother apologized when remarks she made during her 2006 Senate re-election run, regarding a perceived lack of work ethic in young people, hurt Chelsea’s feelings.
But apparently all gloves are indeed off in this year’s Democratic battle. Yesterday, Chelsea was speaking on her mother’s behalf at Butler University in Indiana. While taking questions from the audience, a student asked her if she believed her mother's credibility had been hurt during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Chelsea’s response was quick and angry.
“Wow, you're the first person actually that's ever asked me that question, in the, maybe seventy college campuses that I've been to. And I don't think that's any of your business.”
Her refusal to answer is troubling. After all, we know by now that a Clinton White House – any Clinton White House – is one where apparently all family members are purportedly involved with important policy formulation and decision-making. Part of Chelsea’s whole campaign is that she will be ready to be First Daughter from day one, in no small part based on her past time in the White House. Her supporters have suggested that, in comparison, Malia and Natasha Obama, ages ten and seven, are too young, inexperienced, immature, and even woefully naïve – Natasha is reported to actually still believe in Santa Claus.
So what is the real deal? Is Chelsea ready to lead shock troops in Iraq or is she just an empty Versace designer outfit getting a free ride from an indulgent media? Inquiring minds want to know!
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Seriously, I’d join those applauding Chelsea for a quick and “classy” putdown of an intrusion into her privacy if that was what the Indiana student’s question really consisted. This is simply not the case.
Chelsea is no longer the twelve-year-old little girl she was when Bill Clinton moved his family into the White House. She is a twenty-eight year old woman with a degree in History from Stanford and a Masters in International Relations from Oxford. She’s worked as a New York consultant and investment analyst.
Nor is she the hapless daughter caught in the middle of her father’s scandal. She was speaking, by choice, as an official representative of her mother’s Presidential campaign.
Nor did the student ask her if she was personally upset by Bill’s philandering. He asked her if she thought ii impacted her mother’s credibility and that, in my opinion, is a very fair question indeed.
The best arguments I have heard against Barack Obama’s recent flap regarding racism are not that he is a bigot himself or that he is “guilty by association” with Reverend Wright’s remarks. Rather, the logic runs that by voluntarily sitting in Wright’s church for twenty years and listening to him preach a confrontational style regarding race relations, and sometimes pure hate speech, Obama displayed poor judgment and a hypocrisy that stands starkly against his run for President on a “Kumbaya, hands across the aisles” message.
Fair enough. But if, by refusing to leave Wright’s church, Obama was effectively enabling Wright’s hate speech and striking a blow to race relations, then how is Hillary Clinton’s refusal to leave Bill despite his serial philandering anything other than enabling his infidelity and striking a blow to feminism?
If Obama should be condemned for allowing his two daughters to sit in the pews every Sunday morning and listen to Wright spew racism, why shouldn’t Clinton be condemned with equal vigor for allowing her daughter to remain in a home, twenty-four seven, with a man who demonstrated no respect for his marriage or family?
Why should Clinton’s decision to stick by her husband be “a private matter” when Obama’s decision to stick by his pastor is viewed as only too appropriate for public scorn by so many? Because Bill’s infidelity hurt only her? Right or wrong, the Lewinski affair absorbed and tore apart this entire country from the time the story broke until Clinton finally left office.
Clinton weighed in on the Wright controversy yesterday, saying that if he had been her pastor, she would have left the church. “You don't choose your family but you choose what church you want to attend,” she explained. Maybe you don’t choose your mother’s crazy old Uncle but you most certainly choose your spouse and choose to remain with them despite their actions.
In her remarks about Wright, Clinton went on to say that when you strongly believe something to be wrong, “I just think you have to speak out against that. You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving.” We’re still all waiting for Hillary’s big move.
By voluntarily remaining married to Bill, whether for political expediency or something as selfless as “for Chelsea’s sake,” Clinton has long displayed poor judgment and a hypocrisy that stands starkly against her run for President on an “I’m the grown-up with seasoned judgment” message.
Some argue the Wright flap proves Obama is just another politician, that he is no better than the other candidates. If so, the flip side is also true and Clinton is no better than Obama. With all things even, are we better off taking our chances with the guy who sat and left his pastor get away with claiming that all white men are out to hurt black people or the woman who stood by and let a white man get away with hurting her and their daughter over and over again?
Stop playing the victim card and answer the damn question, Chelsea.
