Parry writes: "Hillary Clinton's defenders object to the widespread public
view that she is a liar by noting she scores reasonably well on the accuracy
of her policy statements, but that is missing the point."
Hillary Clinton. (photo: AP)
Is Hillary Clinton 'Honest'?
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
26 April 16
Hillary Clinton's defenders object to the widespread public view that she is
a liar by noting she scores reasonably well on the accuracy of her policy
statements, but that is missing the point, says Robert Parry.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has offered a curious defense of
Hillary Clinton's "honesty," refuting the public's widespread view that she
is a liar by narrowly defining what it means to be "honest" and arguing that
she is less dishonest than she is a calculating and corner-cutting
politician.
Kristof writes, "as we head toward the general election showdown, by all
means denounce Hillary Clinton's judgment and policy positions, but let's
focus on the real issues. She's not a saint but a politician, and to me this
notion that she's fundamentally dishonest is a bogus narrative."
Kristof cites, for instance, that half of her campaign statements, as
evaluated by PolitiFact, were rated either true or mostly true, comparable
to how the group assessed statements by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Ted
Cruz and much better than Donald Trump's 22 percent. Leaving aside the
"conventional wisdom" bias of this mainstream media organization, Kristof
does seem to have a point. In a narrow definition of "honesty," former
Secretary of State Clinton may be "truthful" or kind of truthful half the
time.
But Kristof misses the larger point that the American people are making when
56 percent of them rate her negatively and many call "crooked" and
"dishonest." They seem to be commenting on her lack of authenticity and
perhaps her resistance to sincerely acknowledging major errors in judgment.
She only grudgingly apologized for her pro-Iraq War vote and still insists
that her bloody "regime change" scheme for Libya was a good idea, even as
the once-prosperous North African nation slides into anarchy and deprivation
- with the chief beneficiary the head-choppers of the Islamic State.
A Nixonian Quality
Many Americans sense that there is a Nixonian quality to Hillary Clinton -
her excessive secrecy, her defensiveness, her rigidity, her unwillingness to
acknowledge or learn from mistakes. Even when she is forced into admitting a
"mistake," such as her violation of State Department rules when she
maintained a private email server for official correspondence, she acts as
if she's just "apologizing" to close off further debate or examination. As
with Richard Nixon, there's a feeling that Clinton's apologies and
rationales are self-serving, not forthcoming.
Yet, while it's true that Nixon was a deceitful character - his most famous
lie being when he declared "I am not a crook" - I would argue that he had
some clear advantages over Clinton as President. He was a much more
strategic thinker than she is - and sometimes went against the grain of
expectations as encapsulated in the phrase "Nixon goes to China," meaning
that Nixon could open up to communist China precisely because he was viewed
as such a hardliner who would never do such a thing but who finally judged
that the move was in America's interests.
While it's impossible to say whether Clinton would seize unexpected openings
as President, she showed none of that creativity, subtlety and courage as
Secretary of State. She marched down a straightforward neocon line, doing
precisely what Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted in the
Middle East.
Clinton tried to sabotage President Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach to
Iran and favored military solutions to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. She
also followed a rightist approach in backing the 2009 coup in Honduras that
ousted an elected progressive president who had offended some of the
Honduran oligarchs and outside corporate interests.
Lack of Self-Criticism
In addition, Clinton appears to have learned nothing from her support for
the catastrophic Iraq War and has argued against "conflating" her Iraq
decision with her Libya decision. But that suggests that she is incapable of
learning a lesson from one mistake and applying it to a similar situation,
an almost disqualifying characteristic for someone who hopes to become
President.
Being a successful President requires extracting painful lessons from one
mistake and making sure you don't make the same mistake again. But Clinton's
personal arrogance or defensiveness (it's hard to figure out which is
dominant) prevents her from that sort of self-criticism.
Indeed, her ritualistic (and politically timed) apology for her Iraq War
vote in 2006 came across less as an honest recognition that she had done
something horribly wrong than that she had to say something to appease a
furious Democratic electorate as she mounted her first run for President
against anti-Iraq War candidate Obama.
After losing to Obama and becoming his Secretary of State, she privately
hedged her Iraq War apology by saying privately that she thought that
President George W. Bush's "surge" in Iraq was successful and admitting that
she had only opposed it in 2007 for political reasons, according to former
Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his memoir, Duty.
On Oct. 26, 2009, as Gates - a holdover from the Bush administration - and
Clinton joined forces to pressure Obama into approving a similar "surge" for
Afghanistan, Gates recalled a meeting in which Clinton made what he regarded
as a stunning admission, writing:
"The exchange that followed was remarkable. In strongly supporting the surge
in Afghanistan, Hillary told the president that her opposition to the surge
in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary
[in 2008]. She went on to say, 'The Iraq surge worked.'
"The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been
political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of
me, was as surprising as it was dismaying." (Obama's aides disputed Gates's
suggestion that the President indicated that his opposition to the Iraq
"surge" was political, noting that he had always opposed the Iraq War. The
Clinton team has not challenged Gates's account.)
But the exchange, as recounted by Gates, indicates that Clinton not only let
her political needs dictate her position on an important national security
issue, but that she accepts as true the superficial conventional wisdom
about the "successful surge" in Iraq, which claimed the lives of about 1,000
American soldiers and a much larger number of Iraqis but failed its
principal mission of buying time for the Iraqis to resolve their sectarian
differences.
So, when one considers Hillary Clinton's "honesty" more should be in play
than simply whether she accurately describes her policy positions half the
time. Honesty, as most people would perceive it, relates to a person's
fundamental integrity, strength of character, readiness to acknowledge
mistakes and ability to learn from them. On that measure, the American
people seem to have sized up Hillary Clinton pretty well.
[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com's "Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a
Neocon."]
________________________________________
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on
the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for
only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Hillary Clinton. (photo: AP)
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/24/is-hillary-clinton-honest/https://cons
ortiumnews.com/2016/04/24/is-hillary-clinton-honest/
Is Hillary Clinton 'Honest'?
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
26 April 16
Hillary Clinton's defenders object to the widespread public view that she is
a liar by noting she scores reasonably well on the accuracy of her policy
statements, but that is missing the point, says Robert Parry.
ew York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has offered a curious defense of
Hillary Clinton's "honesty," refuting the public's widespread view that she
is a liar by narrowly defining what it means to be "honest" and arguing that
she is less dishonest than she is a calculating and corner-cutting
politician.
Kristof writes, "as we head toward the general election showdown, by all
means denounce Hillary Clinton's judgment and policy positions, but let's
focus on the real issues. She's not a saint but a politician, and to me this
notion that she's fundamentally dishonest is a bogus narrative."
Kristof cites, for instance, that half of her campaign statements, as
evaluated by PolitiFact, were rated either true or mostly true, comparable
to how the group assessed statements by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Ted
Cruz and much better than Donald Trump's 22 percent. Leaving aside the
"conventional wisdom" bias of this mainstream media organization, Kristof
does seem to have a point. In a narrow definition of "honesty," former
Secretary of State Clinton may be "truthful" or kind of truthful half the
time.
But Kristof misses the larger point that the American people are making when
56 percent of them rate her negatively and many call "crooked" and
"dishonest." They seem to be commenting on her lack of authenticity and
perhaps her resistance to sincerely acknowledging major errors in judgment.
She only grudgingly apologized for her pro-Iraq War vote and still insists
that her bloody "regime change" scheme for Libya was a good idea, even as
the once-prosperous North African nation slides into anarchy and deprivation
- with the chief beneficiary the head-choppers of the Islamic State.
A Nixonian Quality
Many Americans sense that there is a Nixonian quality to Hillary Clinton -
her excessive secrecy, her defensiveness, her rigidity, her unwillingness to
acknowledge or learn from mistakes. Even when she is forced into admitting a
"mistake," such as her violation of State Department rules when she
maintained a private email server for official correspondence, she acts as
if she's just "apologizing" to close off further debate or examination. As
with Richard Nixon, there's a feeling that Clinton's apologies and
rationales are self-serving, not forthcoming.
Yet, while it's true that Nixon was a deceitful character - his most famous
lie being when he declared "I am not a crook" - I would argue that he had
some clear advantages over Clinton as President. He was a much more
strategic thinker than she is - and sometimes went against the grain of
expectations as encapsulated in the phrase "Nixon goes to China," meaning
that Nixon could open up to communist China precisely because he was viewed
as such a hardliner who would never do such a thing but who finally judged
that the move was in America's interests.
While it's impossible to say whether Clinton would seize unexpected openings
as President, she showed none of that creativity, subtlety and courage as
Secretary of State. She marched down a straightforward neocon line, doing
precisely what Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted in the
Middle East.
Clinton tried to sabotage President Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach to
Iran and favored military solutions to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. She
also followed a rightist approach in backing the 2009 coup in Honduras that
ousted an elected progressive president who had offended some of the
Honduran oligarchs and outside corporate interests.
Lack of Self-Criticism
In addition, Clinton appears to have learned nothing from her support for
the catastrophic Iraq War and has argued against "conflating" her Iraq
decision with her Libya decision. But that suggests that she is incapable of
learning a lesson from one mistake and applying it to a similar situation,
an almost disqualifying characteristic for someone who hopes to become
President.
Being a successful President requires extracting painful lessons from one
mistake and making sure you don't make the same mistake again. But Clinton's
personal arrogance or defensiveness (it's hard to figure out which is
dominant) prevents her from that sort of self-criticism.
Indeed, her ritualistic (and politically timed) apology for her Iraq War
vote in 2006 came across less as an honest recognition that she had done
something horribly wrong than that she had to say something to appease a
furious Democratic electorate as she mounted her first run for President
against anti-Iraq War candidate Obama.
After losing to Obama and becoming his Secretary of State, she privately
hedged her Iraq War apology by saying privately that she thought that
President George W. Bush's "surge" in Iraq was successful and admitting that
she had only opposed it in 2007 for political reasons, according to former
Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his memoir, Duty.
On Oct. 26, 2009, as Gates - a holdover from the Bush administration - and
Clinton joined forces to pressure Obama into approving a similar "surge" for
Afghanistan, Gates recalled a meeting in which Clinton made what he regarded
as a stunning admission, writing:
"The exchange that followed was remarkable. In strongly supporting the surge
in Afghanistan, Hillary told the president that her opposition to the surge
in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary
[in 2008]. She went on to say, 'The Iraq surge worked.'
"The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been
political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of
me, was as surprising as it was dismaying." (Obama's aides disputed Gates's
suggestion that the President indicated that his opposition to the Iraq
"surge" was political, noting that he had always opposed the Iraq War. The
Clinton team has not challenged Gates's account.)
But the exchange, as recounted by Gates, indicates that Clinton not only let
her political needs dictate her position on an important national security
issue, but that she accepts as true the superficial conventional wisdom
about the "successful surge" in Iraq, which claimed the lives of about 1,000
American soldiers and a much larger number of Iraqis but failed its
principal mission of buying time for the Iraqis to resolve their sectarian
differences.
So, when one considers Hillary Clinton's "honesty" more should be in play
than simply whether she accurately describes her policy positions half the
time. Honesty, as most people would perceive it, relates to a person's
fundamental integrity, strength of character, readiness to acknowledge
mistakes and ability to learn from them. On that measure, the American
people seem to have sized up Hillary Clinton pretty well.
[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com's "Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a
Neocon."]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on
the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for
only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
