WASHINGTON -- What the New York Times did to Hillary
Rodham Clinton the other day was very naughty, and the
Times did it ON THE FRONT PAGE. It published a picture
of her from 1969, in all her 1960s funkiness, smirking out at us
all. There she was seated, leaning forward, her knees spread, her
nose much wider than it is today, her hair long, split ends, and
decidedly unblonde. She wore glasses, each lens the size of a small
fish bowl. Her widespread legs were swaddled in day-glo striped
bellbottom pants, and propped on her day-glo knees were her elbows
with her palms open and tilted towards all of us. The gesture was
clear: "That's the way the world is, stupid. Dig it." Along with
this ghastly picture there was an excruciatingly long article,
interviewing her classmates from late 1960s Wellesley College.
Hillary's "quest" of the presidency is, the Times
explained, "a generational mirror. Some like what they see; others
are less certain." Even her 1960s classmates are divided on
Hillary.
Another person who surely did not like what he saw, at least in
the Times, is Harold Ickes, senior political adviser to
the Clinton presidential campaign. He too is a 1960s radical with a
middle-aged makeover. Back in the bellbottom days doubtless he too
would have been looking out at America saying, palms open and
tilted outward, "That's the way the world is stupid. Dig it." But
now his job is to get Hillary through the Democratic primaries and
into the 2008 presidential race. Surely he winced when the
Times quoted Hillary's "fiery commencement speech" from
1969 wherein she maundered on about her classmates' search for a
"more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living." Get
that, she said "penetrating."
Ickes must have done a lot more wincing as Hillary's middle-aged
former classmates unburdened themselves on Hillary's post-Wellesley
years. Presumable these are the "more immediate, ecstatic, and
penetrating mode of living" years she prophesied in 1969. Today her
classmates give her mixed reviews. One proudly told the
Times of Hillary's "boldness, her boundrylessness."
Another lamented that she may have compromised her "goals" and
possibly her "ideals." "It's incredibly upsetting," the woman, a
university "scientist," concluded. Had I been asked I would have
spoken wistfully of those day-glo bellbottoms.
The premise of the Times article was that "the 1960s
still loom large in American politics, providing the underlying
text" for much of the 2004 presidential debates. The article went
on to mention Hillary's absorption with the ideas of radical
theorist Saul Alinsky when she wrote her senior thesis. Doubtless,
Ickes and Hillary's other advisers are hoping that the 1960s can be
kept out of the 2008 race, though the upper echelons of the
Democratic Party are populated by 1960s wunderkinds. The 1960s was
the decade of the Black Panthers and bombs going off on college
campuses, blowing up libraries and ROTC Centers. Hillary actually
did legal work in defense of the Panthers. Her husband Bill,
Senator John Kerry, Dr. Howard Dean, all could have been among the
pompous poseurs that Tom Wolfe captured in Radical
Chic.
Of course the Times' premise is accurate. The 1960s
generation does "loom large," but it is not the only generation in
American politics. There is a younger generation. In the Democratic
Party, that younger generation has become impatient with 40 years
of blah originating in the 1960s. Now a man some two decades
younger than the Clintons has emerged to challenge Hillary's run
for the White House. That gives Ickes another reason to cringe.
From the Times piece he can see that Hillary's support
even among her peers is wavering. A new generation has arisen to
challenge her. And over there in the Republican Party at least
Senator John McCain and former mayor Rudy Giuliani could be
formidable candidates, particularly during a time when national
security is the major issue. Even now opposition research teams
from the Obama campaign and among the Republican candidates are
probably researching Hillary's life in the late 1960s. They are
going to come up with hilarious material.
topics:
John McCain, NATO
