2008: THE BATTLE FOR A GENERATION
jr., r. emmett tyrrell
1 4 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 ILLARY CLINTON is about the last major Democrat from the left-wing of her generation capable of taking on her generation's...
...ThisbecameaTruthevenintheKultursmog.Thefragmentation within the party might have become too bitter even for such masters of mob psychology as the Clintons.OnJuly25,whenHillaryagreedtotheDLC's offertosetoffonher"nationalconversation"aspartof its "American Dream Initiative," she let the Republicans have it: "After four years of Republican control,ourcountryhasnotonlygoneofftrack,ithasreversed course...
...The sarcastic rhetoric is raw meat for theAngryLeft...
...Here is where her hucksterfromHotSpringswasdoubtlessinvaluable.Dayin and day out through the decades she could watch his moves, and though she was ungainly at hers he was always supportive...
...Precisely when the Clintons decided Hillary would enter politics once Bill's career had run its course might never be known...
...Who knows...
...On the other hand, the Clintons have had no life beyond politics...
...Though in the Clintons' hands that liberalism has been disfigured, Hillary embodies an Old Order that is desperate for victory...
...In the Kultursmog, once again, they were presented as the true representative voices of the 1960s, an idealistic and progressive generation that rendered conventionalAmericapasse...
...Their weaknesspermitshertogrow...
...They fear the power of the Republican "smear machine" as deeply as Republicans fear the power of theKultursmog...
...Noteveryonedemonstrated,droppedout,tookdrugs, joinedinthesexualrevolutionordodgedthedraft.Not everyoneconcludedthatAmericansocietywassobad that it had to be radically remade by social revolution...
...John Edwards looking "pretty...
...respondent, John F. Harris, published his reassessment of the Clinton presidency, The Survivor: Bill ClintonintheWhiteHouse.Thoughheisyoungerthan the Clintons, Harris's appraisal of them puts him on their side in the 1960s intragenerational rivalry...
...Then in 2004 Bush beat another of the Coat andTieRadicals'prodigies,Jean-FrancoisKerry,theantiVietnam War Vietnam War hero...
...On the other hand, she fretted that a "unilateral" attack on Saddam would prompt Russia to attack Chechen rebels in Georgia, China to attack Taiwan, and India to attack Pakistan...
...Forthreedecades,the1960sCoatandTieRadicals have been the dominant influence in the Kultursmog and an influence in the Democratic Party disproportionatetotheirnumbers.Nowtherearesignsthatarisinggenerationmightbereadytoreplacethisinfluence...
...Is it even imaginable that their cogenerationist from the right, George W. Bush, would allow himself to be photographedinalavatory?Possibly,ifHillarywinsin 2008,thispioneeringpicturewillbehungintheWhiteHouse waiting room...
...SO ARE THE CLINTONS abouttocometogether,unite their party, and lead the youthful idealists of the late 1960s in a return to the White House and a vindicationoftheirclaimtobeingthetruerepresentative voice of their generation...
...Her vote was to enable the President to go to war, but her conclusion was that doing so "on the present facts is not a goodoption...
...She is also a reliable opponentoftaxcuts,insistingthattheyareaschemetoenrich the wealthy and take money from government's assistancetotheneedy...
...It reported her "espousing homespun values and with a fondness for prayer...
...They are an epiphenomenon of their generation...
...He may have been unfaithful, but rarely has Hillary's husband failed to be a booster of Hillary.Inthesocialskillsofpolitics--theoneareashe surely lacked confidence--Bill served as both exemplarandcoach...
...2 0 0 8 : FOR ATHE century...
...The majority of my generation lived by the credo our parents taught us...
...Other people at the caucus were not happy about it...
...Gore has his handonthesink,BillandIckestheirbackstothestalls...
...Hillary got herself elected to the Senate...
...The other senators resent her...
...giousleft-wingnewspapers,noted,"Herlistofconservative credentials is growing...
...As the Senate deliberated Bill's fate, Hillary was conferring with Harold R .E M M E T TT Y R R E L L ,J R . M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 1 7 Perhapsitiswithaneyetotheschizoid natureofherparty,dividedasitisbetween itsAngryLeftanditsEstablishment,that shehasdevisedanambiguousapproach:in policysheiscentrist;inrhetoricsheiscaustic...
...Republicans are fearful of a Clinton victory...
...Though the historians are filing increasingly restrained evaluations of the Clintons' political achievements, the journalists continue to inflate the Clintons' importance...
...Now, gearing up behind Hillary, they are readying themselves for one final shot at the White House...
...but they were basically only the normal losses that a two-term president can expect to suffer in his second off-year election, and many of the newly elected Democratswerespoutingconservativelines:prolife, anti-gun control, no new taxes...
...How far to the left Hillary might be in her heart of hearts is unknown...
...Democrats, at least Democrats with their antennae to Middle America, fear she is a sure loser...
...Further, Hillary set her sights on Moynihan's Senate seat much earlier thansheadmitsinhermemoir.TheFirstLadyhadher eye on the seat prior to February 12, 1999, when the Senate acquitted her husband...
...but she has no legislation to show for it, only presidential preference polls, some of which show that nearly half of the American electorate would "definitely not vote for her...
...1 4 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 ILLARY CLINTON is about the last major Democrat from the left-wing of her generation capable of taking on her generation's rightwing for the presidency...
...She put in such long hours that in 2002 she became one of only six Democrats to earn a Golden Gavel awardforpresidingovertheSenateformorethan100 hours,admittedlymostlytoemptyseats.Shecultivatedsenatorsonbothsidesoftheaisle,particularlysenior senators such as the West Virginia DemocratRobert Byrd and the Arizona Republican John McCain, but also such conservatives as then House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, with whom she worked on foster-care legislation...
...THE CLINTON-GORE TEAM made its debut in 1992 with these two lovable narcissists jogging through Washington, D.C.in what appeared to be their undershorts...
...Or is another child of Goldwater conservatism going to sweep past them, reminding the world that Ronald Reagan's 1980s and the administrations of Bush 41 and Bush 43 were not flukes...
...Now its left and right are squaring off for one last battle to claim title to their generation.Whoevertriumphs,itwillbeas memorable a victory as Franklin Roosevelt'sdefeatofPresidentHerbertHooveror as Ronald Reagan's victory over President JimmyCarter.Whatwillmakeitevenmore momentous is that Hillary now represents the political heritage of liberalism that Roosevelt began...
...Broder quotes Vice President Dan Quayle's wife Marilyn (Purdue University '71) at the 1992 Republican National Conventiondeclaiming:"DanandI are members of the baby boom generation, too...
...PoliticalhistorianswilltellyouthatthoughHillaryhas been the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination since her first year in the Senate, no modern-day Democratwhohasbeenafrontrunnersosteadilyinthe yearsbeforetheelectionhaswonthenomination,with theloneexceptionofWalterMondale...
...Rick Santorum to introduce legislationtoprobesexualandviolentimagesin media...
...As politicians, the Clintons' main achievement has been raw survival, at a cost that has been enormous in terms of destructive legal precedents, eroded ethics, and infringements on the rule of law...
...She also worried that an unchecked Saddam could endanger the entire Middle East...
...That is the modest assessment of a widening number of professional historians, most of whom note that the Clintons' main preoccupations were to batten down scandals and hold off various independent counsels while important initiatives were delayed--for instance, Social Security reform and the war against terrorism...
...By2005anewsstoryhadcreptintothe media,remaininglongenoughtotakeon thecharacterofTruth,towit,thatherparty isfragmentedandwithoutdirection...
...Though we knew some changes needed to be made, we did not believe in destroyingAmericatosaveit...
...But she also said something that got her into dreadful trouble hours after she uttered it...
...TheyknowthepoweroftheKultursmogcanovercome the Clintons' scandalous past and engaud their paltry record...
...Many adults thought that bizarre, but the oblivious Harris displays many other bizarreinterludesfromtheClintonyearsinhisbook's photographs, unaware of what they reveal about his hero...
...They donned bourgeois attire when appropriate, or when advantageous they affected leftist fashions...
...Perhaps he will be remembered as one offlowerpower'sfellowtravelers...
...A frat boy, George W. Bush (Delta Kappa Epsilon '64), beat Al Gore, a veteran of every 1960s New Age enthusiasm, flower power included...
...He even adduced an example of this bitterness, citing the outburst of a 1960s conservative against the 1960s leftists...
...R .E M M E T TT Y R R E L L ,J R . M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 1 9 Hillaryhasatremendouschallengeahead...
...On another occasion, at a closed-door meeting with fellow Democrats she assailed her colleague Sen...
...Harris's insularityisnowcharacteristicofliberaljournalists.One sees it even on the jacket of his book, where another Washington Post writer, the early Clinton biographer David Maraniss, claims that Harris "is the most lucid writer in American political journalism...
...Hillary has been collegial,butshecanalsobebrutal.Senatorsstillrecall her insulting remarks about Sen...
...Kaboom...
...But on internationalrelationsandeconomicssheiswitheringlycritical of the Bush administration...
...So far as I have been able to establish,itisthefirstpictureeverpublishedofapresidentconferringinamen'sroom--thoughpossiblyitis awomen'sroom.Onlystalls,nourinals,arevisible...
...That is why, since college days, we on the right have called them Coat and Tie Radicals...
...maybe these Republicans, too, think Hillary a rock star...
...As a candidate and as a senator she has been, as she herself has said, "a New Democrat," working with the moderateliberalorganizationthatherhusbandworked with from the 1980s, the Democratic Leadership Council(DLC).Asthe2008presidentialracebeckons, she has taken prominent positions in the DLC...
...With her aides bringing in the latest reports on the impeachment vote, the First Lady questioned her old political adviser on her prospectsforaNewYorksenatorialcampaign...
...For the past three decades, with only the respitesofBoyClinton's1992and1996victories,the left-wingwunderkindsofthe1960shavebeensufferingdeclineamongtheAmericanelectorate.Among the elites who shape the political culture, however, they have remained preponderant--for instance, in the media...
...So effective has she been in repositioning herself that in 2005, the Observer, one of Britain's most presti2 0 0 8 : T H E B A T T L E F O R A G E N E R A T I O N 1 8 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 SoaretheClintonsabouttocometogether, unitetheirparty,andleadtheyouthful idealistsofthelate1960sinareturnto theWhiteHouseandavindicationof theirclaimtobeingthetruerepresentative voiceoftheirgeneration...
...SENATOR CLINTON'S FIRST TWO YEARS in the Senate wereyearsofquietindustriousnessthatremindedpoliticalobserversofLBJ'searlySenateyears...
...In characteristic 1960s petulance, Gore's people claimed that they won the 2000 election but were denied their victory because of skullduggery in the Florida vote count...
...The year 2008 will witness Hillary and her fellow opportunistic 1960s student protesters known as the Coat and Tie Radicals campaigning against theyoung conservatives who in the late 1960s were dismissed as negligible but a decade later manned the ReaganRevolution.Itisgoingtobeanepochalmatchupandaverybitterone...
...She warned of Saddam's ambitions for weapons of mass destruction: "It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacitytowagebiologicalandchemicalwarfare,andwill keep trying to develop nuclear weapons...
...It will be the last battle between the Coat and Tie Radicals of the 1960s and their hated rivals, the conservatives who took a pass on student protests for leisuretimespentbythebeerkegandthebarbecuepit...
...in rhetoric she is caustic--especially toward President Bush, whom the Angry Left detests...
...In their long politically besotted marriage the understanding doubtless simply grew...
...We do know that at some point in the last years of the Boy President's tumultuous presidency, probably in gratitude for Hillary's services during the Lewinsky hullabaloo and his impeachment, he promised her his political assistance...
...We are all shaped by the times in which we live...
...I came of age in a time of turbulent social change...
...Perhaps it is with an eye to the schizoid nature of herparty,dividedasitisbetweenitsAngryLeftandits Establishment, that she has devised an ambiguous approach: in policy she is centrist...
...She also is on the Democrats' powerful Steering and Coordination Committee, thus giving her influence in setting the Democrats' agenda.By2004nosenatorsinceJohnson had amassed so much power so fast...
...WritingintheaftermathofPardongate and the other scandals attending the Clintons' White House departure, and despite growing evidence of Clinton'slaxterrorpolicies,Harrisappraises theClintonsas"thetwomostimportant political figures of their generation...
...It's time for all Democrats to work together," and "Let's start by uniting againstthehard-rightideology...
...The left-wing blogs such as Daily Kos were gravely disappointed...
...As a senator she favors the death penalty and more money for firefighters and other first responders...
...But they're so weak...
...By 2005anewsstoryhadcreptintothemedia,remaining long enough to take on the character of Truth, to wit, that her party is fragmented and without direction...
...From the Armed Services Committeeshehassupportedincreasedveteransbenefits and--unlike Senator Kerry--she voted for the $87 billion legislation to fight the Iraq war...
...Raise enormous sums of money regardless of its provenance...
...To be sure, in the 2006 off-year elections Bush suffered losses...
...In truth, neither of the Clintons is the Political Genius that the Kultursmog beholds...
...In the 1980s, they were driven to the peripheries of politics by the surging forces of Goldwater conservatism then led by Reagan...
...She sympathized with a faith-based charity led by a clergyman opposed to homosexual marriage and appeared with "ultra-conservative" Sen...
...Russ Feingold for the mischief his campaign finance reform bill had caused her fundraising...
...Ickes in the White House...
...ClintonAngersLeftwithCallforUnity," read the headline in the next day's Washington Post...
...Adhere to policies that are centrist left--the press will report them as centrist...
...We believed in God, in M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 1 5 hard work and personal discipline, in our nation's essentialgoodness,andintheopportunityitpromised those willing to work for it...
...InherSenatefloorspeechbeforevotingforBush's optiontogotowarwithSaddamHussein,sheemployedherambiguousapproachrelentlessly.Shecriticized the United Nations for limiting inspection sites...
...She tore into Feingold," a Senate aide says...
...Nor is Harris apparently impressed by another of the Clintons' cogenerationists, George W. Bush, who won the presidency twice and commenced America's war on terror...
...Yet whereas Bill was a natural pol, Hillary had to acquireatleastthesocialskillsofpoliticsmuchashad another charmless, calculating, and relentless political creature, Richard Nixon...
...One showsClintonconferringwithaidesinapubliclavatory.Thereisnohintofirony...
...This sempiternal politicking is another innovation of the CoatandTieRadical.BillandHillaryhavebeendoing politicsalltheirlives.GeorgeW.Bush,thoughraisedin a political dynasty, has spent more of his life in business than in politics...
...Following the Johnson model, she landed choice committee seats, including a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee that in time of war might protect her from her antimilitary past...
...Hillary's husband returned them to power in 1992.Havingthroughthe1970sbeenbilledasthetrue voicesofthe1960sgeneration,theynowfeltvindicated...
...The looming battle betweenthetwowingsofthe1960sgeneration--one championing the Roosevelt heritage,theOldOrder,theotherchampioning the Reagan heritage, a New Order--explains much of thebitternessofcontemporarypolitics...
...If so, the intragenerational war between the 1960s left and right might not have its anticipated last battle...
...The Boy President got himself elected and re-elected while the Democratic Party's dominance in the country shrank...
...A particularly egregious example of this inflation came in the first years of Clinton's retirement when the Washington Post's national cor2 0 0 8 : T H E B A T T L E F O R A G E N E R A T I O N 1 6 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 Thoughthehistoriansarefiling increasinglyrestrainedevaluationsof theClintons'politicalachievements, thejournalistscontinuetoinflatethe Clintons'importance...
...There has been an activist resurgence in the Democratic Party in recent years," the Post noted, "and Hillary risks ensuring that there's a candidate to her left appealing to those activists who don'tmuchliketheDLC...
...Those who want Hillary to be famous are for the most part the members of her 1960s generation who shared her Coat and Tie Radicalism and were the targetsofMrs.Quayle'scomprehensiveire.Theyareleftistsofvariousdegrees,thoughyearsagotheylostsight of Marx or for that matter of any other systematic thinker on the left...
...They are political creatures to the utmost, as are Gore and Kerry and mostoftheCoatandTieRadicals.Gingrichistherare conservative whose life has been wholly devoted to politics, but then in his college days he was at least a mildCoatandTieRadical...
...The Washington Post's David Broder is the only majorpoliticalcommentatortotakenoteofthisintragenerational contest...
...That is typical of conservatives from his generation...
...especially whenhewritesaboutBillClinton...
...No political duo caught lying, cheating, and breaking the law so many times would remain politically aloft if there were not supportfortheirpubliclyexposedmisbehaviorwithin theculture.ThatsupportcomesfromtheCoatandTie Radicals, whose standards are much different from those of their rivals on the right and from those of the American majority, if recent political trends mean anything.YetiftheClintonsarenotPoliticalGeniuses they are political automatons, ceaselessly politicking back and forth, back and forth across America...
...R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.isthefounderandeditorinchief of TheAmericanSpectator.Thisessayisadaptedfrom his new book, The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House, which will be publishednextmonthbyThomasNelson...
...The election set the stage for a colossal intragenerational match-upin2008...
...There are pictures of a soused Boris Yeltsin, a contrite and blubbering Webb Hubbell, and a stupendously self-satisfied Monica Lewinsky...
...Observing from a vantage point a generation older than the 1960s generation, Broder wrote that the 2004 dispute over John Kerry's Vietnam record "confirms my fears that my generationmay never [live to] see the day when the baby boomers who came of age in that troubled decade are reconciled sufficiently with each other to lead a united country...
...Remember, not everyone joined in the counterculture...
...announcing in the summer of 2005 that she would travelthecountry,engagingitina"nationalconversation," an effort that, perhaps, brings to mind her New York "listeningtour"beforeherSenaterace...
...Thentragedystrucktheseleft-wingers,anditwas worsethanthetragedyofReagan's1980victory.Inthe electionof2000theothersideoftheirgenerationrose toaprominencethatthemediacouldnotignore.That is to say, the side of the 1960s generation that had not protestedandstupefieditselfinwhatwascalled"flower power" defeated its old rival...
...Then there is the Lavatory Scene: Clinton, Gore, and White House aideHaroldIckes(describedinthecaptionas"toughminded") conferring in a men's lavatory...
...She said, "It's high time for a ceasefire...
...Fromheryearsofacrimoniouscohabitationwith Bill she has taken with her two great lessons...
...Hillary has a tremendous challenge ahead...
...Beyondproducing such stupid observations, this insularity produces delightfulmomentsofcomedy,forinstance,theselection of photographs Harris includes in his book...
...THE CLINTONS ARE THE TWO mostexaggeratedfigures in modern American political history, moreoverblownbytheirsupportersthanReaganandFranklinRooseveltwerebytheirs.Ofcourse, the Clintons got some minor legislation through in the 1990s...
...He renders that judgment despite their contemporary, Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America," used by Gingrich in 1994 to end four decades of Democratic control of the House of Representatives...
...Long a revered figure by many in the party's liberal wing, Clinton (D-NY) unexpectedly found herself under attack after calling Monday for a cease-fire among the party's quarreling factions and for agreeing toassumetheleadershipofaDLC-sponsoredinitiative aimed at developing a more positive policy agenda for the party," went the story, whose import echoed in most of the nation's major media...
...They fear that her past will not be forgotten...
...The centrism is catnip for the Establishment...
...Despite her vaunted feminism, she has sympathized with opponents of abortion...
...ThoughthegenerationthatfoughtWorldWarIIis calledthe"GreatestGeneration,"the1960sgeneration isthemostmomentouspoliticalgenerationofthe20th H B YR .E M M E T TT Y R R E L L ,J R . BATTLE GENERATION HillaryClinton'spresidentialcandidacywillbeanepicstrugglebetween conservativebabyboomersandherfellowCoatandTieRadicals...
...Then Bush beat them handily in the 2002 off-year elections, elections in which an incumbent president usually suffers congressional losses.BushactuallyincreasedhismarginsonCapitol Hill...
...In their twenties they went into politics, social work, the media, and the corporate world...
...SpokespersonsfortheAngryLeft'sneworganizations,suchas the Campaign for America's Future and MoveOn.org, were also antagonistic...
Vol. 40 • March 2007 • No. 2
