Now that Super Tuesday is in the books, I want to get to a topic that’s been on my mind not only in this election campaign, but really for many years. What, exactly, is so compelling about Hillary Clinton? Frankly, I just don’t get it.  Never have, and probably never will.  This isn’t to say that I’m a rabid Clinton-hater, or that I think she’s the devil incarnate.  I just don’t understand why fully half of the Democratic electorate is so determined – and sometimes vehemently so – that she, out of all people, ought to be the next President of the United States.   

First, a couple of points.  I think that Clinton is extremely intelligent and is certainly competent.  She has a gift for policy detail and is a master campaigner.  I also believe that her passion for children’s issues is heartfelt.  I don’t doubt her sincerity in that regard.  Otherwise, I just don’t see her appeal.  

An agent of change?  Please.  She’s been in Washington for fifteen years.  She lived in the White House, for god’s sake.  You can’t get any more Establishment than that. 

Experience?  Outside of Mitt Romney, Clinton has less experience in elected office than any of the remaining candidates.  I’ll give her some credit for her years as First Lady, but I think those years give her perspective more than actual “experience.” 

“Thirty-five years of fighting for children and families”?  Only if you believe in puffing your resume… or you’re Mother Theresa.  She’s worked on children’s issues over the years, sure, but her actual job was corporate lawyer, not missionary or social worker.   

“Ready on Day One”?  Again, sure, but who isn’t?  This a presidential race; the candidates are all well-qualified.  Just because she knows how to get from the White House residence to the Oval Office doesn’t mean she’s more qualified to serve than any of the other candidates.  And what about Day Two? 

A woman?  I’ll admit, I’d be more than happy to see a woman elected president, but it ought to be the right woman, not just any woman who shows up for the party.  There’s a reason why we’re not talking about President Carol Mosley Braun. 

So how about the issues: 

On Iraq, for me, Clinton was wrong any way you slice it.  If she thought that attacking, invading and occupying a sovereign Muslim nation that posed no immediate threat to the United States was a good idea, she’s a dunce.  If she thought that voting to authorize force was politically expedient and would suit her well in her run for the presidency, she’s a cynical hack.  The same is true with her vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment on Iran.  In both cases, her votes demonstrated either poor judgment or political calculation, or both.  That hardly inspires confidence.  

On economic issues, she’s taken a much more protectionist approach than her free-trading husband.  I disagree with this from a policy perspective, but what I find really galling is that the primary argument for her candidacy seems to be her husband’s record of economic prosperity in the 1990s.  She’s effectively running against his economic policies but on his record of economic growth.  That seems hypocritical.  (Also hypocritical: agreeing last fall that Michigan and Florida primary delegates would not be sat at the Democratic convention, then turning around after she “won” both primaries and pledging to fight to seat those very delegates.)   

On healthcare, if you’re going to mandate coverage, as Clinton proposes, you’ve got to say how you’re going to enforce the mandate.  A mandate without an enforcement mechanism is not a mandate.  Clinton continues to slam Obama for not having a mandate in his plan – therefore, she argues, it’s not “universal coverage” – but her mandate is, at present, as unenforceable as his is absent, which makes her arguments hypocritical.  Clearly she doesn’t want to tell people in the middle of an election campaign that she’s going to fine them for not buying health insurance, but the refusal to do so reeks of political cowardice. She needs to either take a stand for her own plan or stop criticizing her opponent’s for similiar deficiencies.  She can’t have it both ways. 

Hillary is also divisive.  This is an objective fact, and whether she is more or less to blame for it is immaterial.  It is what it is.  More troubling, she seems to revel in her divisiveness, bragging repeatedly about how she can take on and go toe-to-toe with the Republicans, and how political gamesmanship is “fun.”  To be honest, I don’t want a presidential candidate whose best talking point is that she’s a battle-hardened campaigner.  Running the country isn’t the same as campaigning (just ask George W. Bush).  Leadership is not – or shouldn’t be – a perpetual battle over small victories around the edges.  Leadership isn’t about playing to one’s base, or governing only in the interest of one’s political party.  It certainly isn’t about triangulation, or a 50-plus-1 strategy. 

Further, the United States is not Argentina.  What kind of country do we live in where two families keep trading the presidency back and forth for decades at a time?  Where the spouse of a former president is deemed the best possible candidate – in a country of 300 million people – to lead the country?  Even if I agreed with Clinton on every issue, I would still have trouble voting for her, because I refuse to perpetuate the dynastic politics that has taken over our system.  I’m sure I’m not the only person more than a little tired of seeing the names “Bush” and “Clinton” on the ballot in every single presidential election of my adult life.  What sort of banana republic are we living in?  What sort of entitlement does Hillary Clinton think she has to the presidency? 

Which leads to me to my last issue with the former First Lady, which is that I just don’t see what she’s ever done to earn her status as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination.  Clinton’s position is derived from her name recognition.  Her name recognition, in turn, is derived from the fact that her husband is the former President of the United States.  Who knows what Hillary Rodham might have done without Bill Clinton in her life.  Probably many great things.  But the undisputable reality is that she achieved prominence because of Bill’s accomplishments, not her own.  Bill ran for attorney general of Arkansas.  Bill ran for governor.  Bill ran for President.  This isn’t meant as a critique of the role she played in supporting her family as a wife and a mother.  It’s just the reality of the situation.  Regardless of her own talents, her profile was elevated because her husband was winning elections.  (This also isn’t meant to suggest that she has no “record,” or that she lacks experience.  She certainly has accomplishments to her name.  The point is that those accomplishments, on their own – like working for the Children’s Defense Fund, practicing law, serving on corporate boards and giving speeches – aren’t necessarily those that would ordinarily qualify one to be the leader of the free world.)  

Moreover, Hillary rose to the only elective office she has ever held not because she worked her way through the ranks, as most politicians do, but because it was effectively bequeathed to her in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment.  Does anyone really think that that any carpetbagger named “Hillary” (or, for that matter, “Jim” or “Joe” or “Jack”) – a political neophyte from Chicago, via Wellesley, Yale, Little Rock and Washington, D.C. – would ever have won a U.S. Senate seat in New York if her last name hadn’t been Clinton and she hadn’t spent the previous eight years living in the White House?   

None of this is meant to knock Hillary Clinton.  I’m just being honest about what I see as her fundamental weaknesses as a candidate.  I just don’t understand the appeal of her candidacy.  This is meant to start a discussion, and maybe someone can convince me to change my mind.  I’ve already voted in the primary, but the election, of course, is far from over.