The career of Hillary Clinton has been described by far too many as a rise in power until the Clinton political machine established dominion over one of the two most powerful political parties in the United States. This is incorrect in three important points.
First, the early years Clinton spent at Yale up through the 1974 Watergate trial, on which she assisted acclaimed lawyer and future member of the Council to the President of the United States under her husband’s tenure in office, were governed by an apparently sincere dedication to helping the underprivileged, minorities, children—an issue she would carry with her for the rest of her life—and most of all, hard work. Through Watergate she was a thoroughly independent woman clawing her way up through the ranks of a male-dominated legal culture.
During 1971, Hillary met Bill Clinton, whose later multiple failed marriage proposals were largely due to Hillary’s fear that the connection would ultimately hinder her goals. That she loved him, at least in the beginning, is an honest assessment, and, obviously, assented to marry him just before returning to Arkansas to begin his political career.
It is her association with Bill, a man who had unambiguous political aims at the time, that seems to have caused her to skew off down a path that would lead her away from her early idealism and principled engagement of the world. This was no rise from the womb to the podium—she was made. How exactly is a matter of fact and speculation, but undoubtedly the political environment into which her husband’s career would drop her triggered something latent inside of her that turned her intelligence and connections towards consolidating the supreme political control she would always lack on some front in her personal life.
Finally, perhaps a smaller issue but of no lack of import to her future career scandals and political successes, she is more than a leading figure in the single party with which she is associated. Her influence extends through high society, social enclaves in which votes can be bought in blocks either through bribery or social coercion, the use of humans as political and disposable capital, and, of course, many, many financial and business interests.
To view Hillary Clinton as a political icon of the Democratic Party is perhaps the greatest misstep for the explorer. Much like a mentalist magic act, most of the time success and evasion has appeared complex when it is simple, and even more commonly, incredibly simple when conspiracy is on the lips. Perhaps her political genius—if one’s criteria is the gaining of maximum advantage rather than profound force of opinion and rhetoric—is combinatory. Make no mistake, this is neither a preemptive judgement nor an attempt at bias rhetoric. Simply an exposition. The most fascinating and perplexing question is therefore this:
How much of her youth remains at the core whereby politics is ultimately, although perhaps convoluted, a means to an end? Does some idealism remain, or has she ultimately succumbed to the oldest and most destructive human vice: the love of power and politics for their own sake?
These will be explored through her an in-depth analysis of her achievements and her scandals, the ends of which one must judge the value for themselves. With that aim, and true of most things Hillary, the beginning is not the place to begin. The next installment will be a very curious event during her successful and controversial 2000 New York Senate bid, involving a very small Hasidic enclave called New Square in Rockland Country, NY., just north of Long Island. New Square is a small, highly insular Skver Hasidic community controlled in totalitarian fashion at the time by Grand Rabbi David Twersky. by Of all the inconsistencies in her career, it is, although relatively minor and unknown, the most striking, unusual, and nebulous—a trait that pervades her entire political career.
Politics, Current Events: State of Affairs—The Rise and Run of Hillary Clinton: The Early Years
Politics, Current Events: State of Affairs—The Rise and Run of Hillary Clinton: Prologue