Last Friday, Hillary Clinton received an award (or a consolation prize, if you will) from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. It was a sort of “you-lost-but-you-were-right-all-along-and-we-love-you” citation. As the Boston Globe put it, “after losing a presidential campaign that, while historic, was widely viewed as uninspired, Clinton basked in a fairly fawning reception from fans.”
What’s wrong with this honor? Only the unhappy fact that although the award was given for her having been a “transformer,” it is hard to think of anything that Hillary Clinton has ever transformed. She was a “different kind of First Lady,” but she did not change the office, as her successors have shown no interest whatever in running the country. She didn’t transform the Department of State, and wasn’t even the first woman to head it — Madeleine Albright was the first woman, Colin Powell had been the first black man, and Condoleezza Rice was the first black woman. There was no glass ceiling at State and little in the way transforming to be done.
Since identity is accomplishment in the eyes of most liberals, this is bad news for her, and her standing in history. But I’ll go further: Whatever transforming she has done has always been negative, and consisted of changing a positive prospect for herself or her party into a disaster for either or both.
In 1993-94, Democrats had a brief golden moment of unified power under Bill Clinton, a situation that ended when the indebted and dutiful husband gave total control of his signature issue — the healthcare reform portfolio — to his untried and ambitious wife. Chaos ensued.
“People thought the idea — the whole system Hillary was setting up — was crazy,” Donna Shalala told Carl Bernstein for his unexpectedly candid book about Clinton, called A Woman in Charge. “The core of it was her self-righteousness,” Bob Boorstin told him. “We did give the right kind of advice. She just didn’t take it,” Shalala maintained. The public rebelled, her poll numbers tanked, and the bill was withdrawn on Sept. 26, 1994, without being voted on. Six weeks later, for reasons not unrelated, Democrats lost both houses of Congress.
All by herself, Hillary “transformed” a liberal Congress into a conservative one, which would bedevil her husband until he left office. Later, in 2007/08 and 2015/16, she made two runs for president, and her magic touch struck again.
“Right out of the gate, there was nothing quite like the aimlessness and dysfunction of Hillary Clinton’s second campaign for the presidency — except maybe those of the first,” Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes write in their book, Shattered. They explain how, despite everything seemingly working in her favor, it was Clinton and not her famous glass ceiling that ended in shards on the floor.
No one could blame her for the loss to Barack Obama — a phenomenon, with a “first” claim of far greater significance — but to barely hang on against Bernie Sanders — a wild-eyed, wild-haired socialist whom no one had heard of? And then to lose it all to a shock-jock manqué with a Page Six reputation, a fifth of whose voters said he wasn’t fit to be president? A man who, on the day that he was elected, most of the voters disliked?
This could be done by none but a woman of consequence, one whose powers were huge, if hugely negative, and effective against her own side.
Or perhaps “transformative” does really describe it after all. Perhaps Radcliffe was right.
