Big Nurse or Bush III

The media are already making preemptive strikes against any and all potential Republican candidates for president – because, after all, 2016 is just around the corner – on Hillary's behalf. First it was Big Boy, i.e. Chris Christie, who was sent to the principal's office for practicing New Jersey politics as usual. Now it's Jeb Bush's turn – and I admit I know absolutely nothing about the guy except that he's a Bush, and that's apparently enough for the media, the Democrats, and everyone else (including me, BTW). One wonders how many other clay pigeons will be put up for swift and certain destruction even before the 2016 primaries get off the ground. In any case, the conventional wisdom is that Hillary is not only the “inevitable” candidate (the way she was in 2008, ahem) but the inevitable next (and first woman) president. (Let's overlook, for now, the fact that she advertised herself as “co-president” during Bill's time in office. This could actually be turned into a Constitutional issue if anyone were interested.)

I can only compare it to Attila the Hun – everyone knew he was coming, it was only a matter of time, and all agreed that he couldn't be stopped. And it is curious in a way. The most common “feeling tone” (a little psychotherapy lingo, there) about Hillary is that she's scary as hell. Does anyone really like her? I mean, anybody? And yet there she is – Godzilla, rising out of the depths of the sea and making a bee-line for Tokyo.

And, let's admit, Hillary does have one strength that other potential candidates don't have – namely, that all the possible “dirt” on her has, as far as we know, already been thoroughly revealed, exposed, discussed, and dealt with. She is the ultimate political survivor – more so than her husband, even. She has survived Whitewater, cattle futures, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Waco, “borrowing” furniture from the White House on the way out the door... and any number of other annoyances. She has survived a spotty, at best, time as senator and secretary of state. She has even survived that “vast right-wing conspiracy” that threatened to do her in, even though all she ever wanted was to serve the American people, and “the children”, etc. Oh, and let's not forget her less-than-hospitable reception in Tuzla, where she was racing around on the tarmac dodging sniper fire like a character in some action movie. And how about narrowly missing being knocked out cold by an airborne shoe? She is, truly, Superwoman – in the, dare I say it, Margaret Thatcher mode... or, stretching the metaphor a bit, in the Vladimir Putin mode. She's indestructible, and maybe that's the key to her appeal.

See, we have passed the point (assuming we ever were at that point) where we want the president to be the leader of a free people. It's a sign of our deterioration as a nation and as a culture... it's the reductio ad absurdum, if you will, of the American Experiment. We have now become like pretty much every other nation, society, or empire in history – we crave a strong hand... a tyrant, a dictator... someone who will set things right. The Russians came around to that point quite readily after the Soviet Empire broke up; they had enough insight into their own national character to put Putin in charge.

Ah yes – the masochistic craving for “discipline” -- for being taught a damn good lesson at every turn. (Is it really so hard to imagine Hillary in black leather wielding a riding crop? Be honest, now.) This is what characterizes most societies most of the time. The American Experiment was, conceptually, a noble venture, except that it ignored the primary need of people in groups, which is to have a leader – not just someone who is vaguely in charge, like a committee chairman, but someone who “takes names and kicks ass”. And thus we have Hillary, who is the woman of our collective dreams – the ultimate Big Nurse, cold and ruthless, but at least you know where you stand. It is this craving which is overlooked by the commentariat, which is still enchanted by this vision of a “free people”. (After all, didn't the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 do it because they hated our “freedoms”? I rest my case.) Well... given that we are all dependent on the government now... all entitlement junkies... all scared of our own shadows owing to political correctness... it's no surprise that we would naturally fly, as a moth to the flame, into the arms of the female version of Big Brother. This will be the subtext of the next presidential election, and I promise you that the media will continue to do battle with viable Republican candidates, unlikely Republican candidates, and downright straw men right up to Election Day.

And yet... if Hillary is so “inevitable”, why do they even bother? The Democrat base is secure, and she has scared away all the known competition (unless there comes an Obama clone). But you have to remember that if there is truly a “paranoid style in American politics”, the Democrats/liberals exemplify it as readily as anyone else. If there is perceived to be even the ghost of a chance that she might be seriously threatened, it has to be nipped in the bud... slain in the cradle... and the sooner the better. As pathetic as the Republicans are, they are still perceived as a threat, because who knows? They might actually succeed in implementing voter I.D. laws, or in keeping illegals from voting, or in “suppressing the black vote”, or even in stealing votes (a process with which the Democrats are all too familiar). So, better safe than sorry. What Hillary needs is not just a “close election” in 2016, or a “squeaker”, or some farce that has to be settled by the Supreme Court, but an overwhelming victory – a “mandate” that will allow her to do pretty much anything she wants (kind of like Obama, for that matter). The great presidential tyrants of the past – Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, LBJ – will stand in awe when they behold what Hillary will have wrought (on behalf of her higher-up handlers in the Regime, of course). And it will all be richly deserved.