It's a New World, Baby (The Hidden Brooks)

David Brooks has seen a favorable face to Hillary Clinton's potential bid for the presidency in the past, but now he sees the fog of hypocrisy (stemming from the Dubai Ports World brouhaha) clouding any real prospects (in Sunday's Hillary and the Ports, fully available to Times Select subscribers):

She's also got a key voting bloc disposed in her favor. Ten percent of the electorate are what Pew Research Center pollsters call pro-government conservatives: mostly white, working-class women who attend church weekly but support government welfare programs. Only 12 percent of these voters supported John Kerry in 2004, but 51 percent say they have a positive view of Clinton. These voters alone could put her over the top.

But campaigns reveal character, and force us to adjust our views. The Dubai ports deal — a politically unpopular measure that almost all experts agree was justified on the merits — was a test of character. John McCain and Chuck Hagel passed. Clinton, though, joined the ranks of the nakedly ambitious demagogues.

Clinton didn't seem to mind when officials of the United Arab Emirates kicked in up to a million dollars into her husband's presidential library. She didn't seem alarmed when Dubai poured at least $450,000 into her family bank accounts through her husband's speaking business. She didn't object when the Clinton administration approved a deal for a Chinese government firm to run the Port of Long Beach. But when the Dubai ports deal set off Know-Nothing mobs, she made sure she had the biggest pitchfork.

"The White House is trying to hand over U.S. ports," Clinton charged.

"We cannot afford to surrender our port operations to foreign governments," she roared.

"We cannot cede sovereignty over critical infrastructure like our ports," she insisted.

All of these statements were deliberately misleading, since there was never any question of ceding sovereignty or security. They played to the rawest form of xenophobia.

[...]

This episode — which combines buckraking with pandering — brings back the Clinton years at their worst: the me-me-me selfishness, the occasional presumption that humanity exists to serve Team Clinton.

It also shows Clinton doesn't understand her political weaknesses. First, nobody, not even among her friends, is totally sure she actually believes in anything, or whether she just coldly calculates political advantage. This episode reinforces that sense.

Second, Clinton is the only presidential candidate who does not offer a break from the current polarization and bitter partisanship. A McCain or Mark Warner presidency would shuffle the political deck. But if Clinton is elected, American politics over the next years will be as brutal and stagnant as now. The 1960's Bush-Clinton psychodrama would go on and on.

I'm not fully buying into Brooks' cry of "can't we all get along?" meme. But I was certainly troubled by H. Clinton's posturing over the now seemingly dead DPW deal, which seemed more than just a little calculated (as did much of the anti-DPW posturing coming from the Democrats). The Dems have fallen into into what my Mom (in an email the other day) noted as:

[The] xenophobia of the BushCo world view based on the Huntington model of a clash of civilizations. If our civilizations are clashing, and the terrorists all come from that world, why would we trust any country with “Arab” in its name?
[...]
I don’t think there was any way to avoid the outrage that was created in the US since our world view is now shaped by the intentional creation of a world populated by them-and-us and driven by fear. In that world, reconciliation equals defeat in a war of clashing civilizations.

And that is indeed sad to see coming from my party.

[Soundtrack to this post: Paul Weller's "It's a New Day, Baby" from the delux-i-fied, re-released version of Stanley Road]