Hillary Can't Find Leadership Under Her Upturned Nose
By Captain Ed on National Politics
Hillary Clinton told a Florida audience that America's leaders lack vision, scant days after one of the most inspiring and visionary inaugural speeches in decades. Laughably, she turned to her husband as an example of what America needs:
palmbeachpost.com
"I don't see that thoughtful, visionary direction that got us where we are today," she told the crowd of hundreds. "The history of America is... to make sacrifices today for a better tomorrow. The progress that then occurred moved everyone forward.
"That progress is at risk today," she said.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower left a legacy of highways, John F. Kennedy the excitement over space exploration, and Lyndon B. Johnson created the legal framework for civil rights, Clinton said. "What are we investing in today?"
"I believe that on both political and substantive grounds, my husband did it just right," she said, referring to former President Clinton. "The deficit reduction act didn't get one single Republican vote. He took on the gun lobby with the Brady Bill. He took on health care. He took on hard issues that we pay a president for. Frankly, it is not that hard cutting people's taxes."
Oh, where to start with Hillary? The deficit-reduction act from Clinton didn't address the real issues, and it wasn't until the Democrats lost control of Congress during Bill's first term that he even addressed the deficit. The Republican Congress balanced the budget, chiefly by driving a stake through the heart of the Clinton single-payor health-care system. That beast, Hillary's pet project, threatened to add trillions of dollars in debt to the federal budget.
Worse yet, Clinton failed to lead in the primary purpose of the executive branch: keeping America safe, at home and abroad. Despite several terrorist attacks overseas and in the US (the first World Trade Center), Clinton refused to lead the world by unleashing American power against those who want to kill us by the millions. He had several opportunities to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, all of which came after WTC 1; Sudan even offered to hand him over. The Clinton response? His administration questioned whether a jury could convict bin Laden and passed.
When he did commit American troops, in the Balkans, he hardly provided leadership. He allowed a White House intern to sexually service him while on the phone to members of Congress discussing the mission and objectives of the American servicemen in harm's way. He allowed the American military to serve the political ends of his European friends and eventually the UN, which led to a years-long stalemate, especially in Kosovo. We're almost six years into the intervention there, and no one has a clue what the political solution will be. Clinton didn't even insist on free elections; he just sent in our forces and gave it a big shrug.
As far as taxes go, Hillary would love to have people think that "anyone" can cut them, but Democrats have proved that false. In order to get Congress to allow Americans to keep more of the money they earn, it took silly sunset-legislation compromises that still have not been removed, even though the tax cuts have fueled the strongest recovery in a generation. Democrats want to keep increasing taxes, in part to pay for the nationalization of entire industries, like HillaryCare in 1993.
If this is the leadership that Hillary misses and the Democrats offer, they should plan on working from the minority for many years to come. Ignoring security threats, oral sex from interns in the Oval Office, and confiscating more of our private property sounds like a recipe for bloated self-indulgence, not leadership.
I'll take Bush's vision of America's mission to spread democracy and human liberty over the Clintonian self-indulgence any day. Good luck to Hillary selling that historical revisionism. |
