For Fear of Finding Something Worse

If Hillary Clinton does manage to get elected, it will be because enough voters can’t endure the idea or the reality of dictator Donald Trump.

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John R MacArthur

‘Why is Hillary Clinton so unpopular?’ David Brooks, a columnist at the New York Times, asked in May. Rather than looking at her political record, he examined her psyche: ‘Can you tell me what Hillary Clinton does for fun?’ If Hillary lacks appeal, he suggested, it is because of her temperament: she is completely absorbed in her career. Her unpopularity ‘is akin to the unpopularity of a workaholic,’ and her ‘formal, career-oriented persona puts her in direct contrast with the mores of the social media age, which is intimate, personal, revealing, trusting and vulnerable.’ This goodwill is surprising in a columnist who is usually close to the Republican Party. But rejection of Donald Trump is such that strange alliances are being formed.

According to Brooks, Hillary seems like a new arrival on the political scene, though she has been first lady, a US senator and secretary of state. Have people forgotten her support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, her three speeches to bankers at Goldman Sachs (for each of which she was paid $225,000), her backing of free trade agreements, and her support for the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi? What of her conflict of interest with the Clinton Foundation – a familyowned philanthropic multinational – when she was part of the Obama administration? According to the New York Times, Foundation directors managed, after lobbying secretary of state Clinton, to have money earmarked for a US federal programme to combat AIDS in Rwanda transferred to a training programme set up by the Foundation.