OPINION:
Hillary Clinton says she wasn’t interested in the Republican debate last Thursday night. She had something more important to do. She got together with her Hollywood pals to collect money — the Clintons are never too busy to pick the pockets of their friends — and trade weighty thoughts with the intellectual heavyweights of Hollywood.
The fundraising festivities were held at the home of Justin Bieber’s producer, and the conversations around the tables sparkled with domestic and foreign policy insights from the likes of Tom Hanks, Kim Kardashian and Mary Steenburgen. Presidential candidates are always willing to listen to such heavy intellectual traffic if there’s a million dollars in it.
Hillary tweeted to her friends as the Republican candidates took the stage in Cleveland that “I’m not watching and don’t need to be.” She assigned aides to invite reporters to her campaign headquarters to feed them slices of pizza — “pepperoni and mushrooms with extra spin and hold the anchovies” — and to listen again to the message that Republicans hate the middle class, and want only to make war on women and turn back the clock to the happy days of Chester Alan Arthur and Rutherford B. Hayes.
Her pals joined the chorus of hoots and jeers for Donald Trump, as if he were already the Republican nominee. Hillary knows the Donald well. He has contributed some of his wealth to the Clintons and he went to Bubba not long ago for tips on how to run for president. Bubba encouraged him to “get more active in Republican politics.” He obviously took the advice.
Hillary, who has no native gift for politics, should listen to Bubba herself. He would tell her that ignoring your opponent is never a good idea, a lesson he learned long ago in Arkansas. Ignorance encourages a candidate to run against the image of the opponent he has in mind rather than the actual opponent the public sees. Mrs. Clinton seems so sure of herself, and who she thinks her opponent will be, that she feels no need to watch or listen to what he says. She dispatched an email to her followers as the debate closed with a fundraising plea: “Right this minute, ten Republican men are on national TV, arguing over which one will do the best job of dragging our country backwards.” Send money at once.
She and her managers/consultants/advisers think victory next year depends on her ability to portray whoever emerges as the Republican nominee as a heartless, mean-spirited Neanderthal bereft of vision, imagination and ideas, out of touch with the average American and representative of nothing but a dark past. Had she watched the cut and thrust of the debates, enlivened with occasional wit and humor, she would have seen “ten Republican men” with more experience and accomplishment than she, candidates looking not to the past but to the future.
Hillary doesn’t like to think about debates, because she is haunted by the memory of what happened when she, as “the inevitable president,” stepped on to a stage in 2008 to debate Barack Obama. He left her all asplutter, and the prospect of meeting the likes of Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley and good ol’ Joe looks daunting, indeed.
If she forgot to tape the proceedings in Cleveland, she may reconsider her political priorities and watch the next one. Bubba could tell her that it’s a good idea to bone up on who she might have to run against if she emerges as her party’s nominee. Even if the prospect of watching with her own eyes is scary.
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