My Turn is Doug Henwood’s heavily footnoted broadside against Hillary Clinton’s premature inauguration. It is a criticism of Clinton from the Left, by a writer with progressive bona fides. Henwood founded and for over 20 years published the Left Business Observer newsletter. He has written at length criticizing Wall Street and the American financial system. Henwood corresponded with the Washington Examiner this weekend about Clinton’s chances, strained friendships and what kind of change might be around the corner. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Many people have judged this book by its striking, in-your-face cover. Can you tall us about it and how it’s been misunderstood?
DOUG HENWOOD: The painting was done by Sarah Sole, who has created scores of paintings and collages with Hillary as the star. She loves her; I don’t. But I’m a big fan of Sarah’s work — her passion around this problematic figure, so strikingly executed — and when it came time for a cover I pointed my first publisher, Colin Robinson of OR Books, in her direction. He chose the painting and the title (I’d originally suggested Her Turn).
A number of Hillary fans found it misogynistic. I thought it brought out her ruthlessness. As much as I dislike her, I do admire her strength and understanding of power — those aren’t my issues with her. It’s how she uses those talents. A minority found it a selling point for her — makes her look like a badass, as one commentator said.
And now David Duke has appropriated it for a collage. I hate David Duke, of course, and this is outrageous. I’m contacting my publisher to see what we can do about it.
EXAMINER: How would Hillary Clinton govern domestically?
HENWOOD: On domestic policy, rather like Obama. It’s funny how much the right hates Obamacare — it’s perfect neoliberal social policy. Subsidies at the low end (that’s what makes it the left wing of neoliberalism, though that would have passed muster at Heritage 25 years ago) and creation of new markets (the exchanges) for everyone else. Vast freedom remains for the private sector. Hillary would probably follow that model — small, targeted subsidies with lots of participation by the private sector.
It’s funny — with every proposal he made, Sanders was confronted with a belligerent “How will you get this through Congress?” None of Hillary’s proposals — and she does love proposals, she must have hundreds of them — would get through a Congress unless both houses were controlled by Dems.
The actual content of those proposals is pretty thin. Her college plan is incomprehensibly complex, and the child care scheme would still have people paying 10 percent of their income for something that in a civilized society would be free. I don’t read them or take them seriously because she has to pander to the progressive base in her party even as she’s trying to lure conservatives put off by Trump.
EXAMINER: As senator, Hillary voted for Iraq. As secretary of state, she was perhaps the most important player in America’s intervention in Libya. How hawkish would she be as president?
HENWOOD: On foreign policy, I fear she’d be far more aggressive than Obama, who is probably the least bellicose president the current U.S. system could produce. She’s itching to jack up tensions with Russia, China, and Iran. She was always the most aggressive member of Obama’s first cabinet. Her hawkishness goes back along way, to when she was a teenage anti-communist in suburban Chicago.
Something else that’s funny is watching Democrats swallow her endorsements by neocons like Paul Wolfowitz and Robert Kagan, names that were poison to mainstream Dems back in the Bush years. I suppose they explain it to themselves as canny pragmatism, the sort of bipartisanship that high-minded elitists always crave, but to me it says she’s got an itchy trigger finger. Just like on the cover of my book.
Her secretiveness and duplicity are also bad problems. Obama has been vigorous in prosecuting leakers, but I think she’ll run an even more secretive administration, and one likely to intensify the surveillance state. She will try to keep decisions to a tight inner circle, and many of them could turn out badly. Which would provoke a classic Clinton crisis — right-wing paranoia and unquestioning liberal defensiveness. If she wins, which I still think is likely, her government is almost certain to be characterized by scandal, obstruction, Congressional investigations both warranted and wacko, and low approval ratings. More will come out about emails, the Foundation, and god knows what else. It could be awful.
EXAMINER: How much influence would Bill have in a second Clinton administration?
HENWOOD: No idea. He’s looking rather weak and volatile, a shadow of his 90s self.
EXAMINER: What is the most important myth about Hillary that you tried to drive a stake through?
HENWOOD: That there’s something seriously “progressive” about her. She’s a centrist, status quo candidate. She’s gotten a lot of mileage out of that statement about women’s rights being human rights (something I totally agree with, I should say) over 20 years ago. She’s gotten lots of additional mileage out of work she did at the Children’s Defense Fund 40 years ago.
It’s hard to find anything in her record that begins to compensate for the material damage to women and children done by the welfare reform she supported. Some of her supporters claim that she had to keep her inner Eleanor Roosevelt under wraps while Bill was in the spotlight, and now that he’s become a mere supporting player, she can let Eleanor run free. I just don’t believe there’s such a creature. She’s now most comfortable with the plutocrats whom she spent August wooing for six-figure checks.
EXAMINER: You are criticizing the Democratic nominee from her progressive left in a presidential election year. Lost any friends yet?
HENWOOD: Lost? Not sure about lost, but it’s certainly created tensions with some, yes. What galls me is that my (perhaps former?) liberal pals wouldn’t listen when I said HRC is a very vulnerable candidate. Her political history aside, she’s always a scandal waiting to blow up. She’s devious and secretive. People don’t trust her or like her — some of it for crude sexist reasons, some of it entirely justified. She’s a terrible campaigner, prone to saying stupid things because she’s just not a natural at public performance.
I said that if you want to elect a Dem, you’re making a mistake by putting all your money on her. They reacted fiercely to this — I was working for Cruz (at first) or Trump (now). I hate Cruz and Trump, so I have no idea what they’re talking about. But if they’re so scared of Trump — and I’m not sure I buy the argument that he’s unprecedentedly bad, American history is full of bad, but he is bad — they should confront the problems of their nominee. She should be 10 points ahead of him, not 2 or 3. And blame for that narrow lead goes not to a delinquent media, but to HRC herself.
EXAMINER: Do you think Bernie Sanders would be doing better?
HENWOOD: He polled better against Trump during the primaries for sure. Who knows how he’d be doing in an actual general election campaign, though? All those Dems who tell Sanders supporters to swallow their objections to HRC in order to defeat Trump — I wonder if they’d be saying the same thing were Sanders the nominee.
It’s easy to imagine them giving Sanders the same chilly treatment that McGovern got in 1972. The suffering among elites if it were Sanders vs. Trump is pleasing to contemplate though. They’d feel like they’d lose either way, and they would.
