Is Hillary the one? Is Hillary Rodham Clinton the one? Is she? If she is, what makes her the one?
Ever since losing a bruising political campaign to Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination in 2008, Hillary has been running for president. Her husband Bill, the 42nd President of the United States, secured her intentions to seek a place on the 2016 ticket by campaigning for President Obama in 2012.
Bill Clinton was a dynamo on the campaign trail. He shored up Obama’s support among liberal and progressive voters who were not sure they had been betrayed by Obama’s unwillingness to be more assertive against the backlash he had received from a do nothing Congress.
But is Hillary the one? Her service at the State Department was rocking along at a remarkable clip. She flew across the globe at a record pace, while performing her job with superb diplomacy. Then the embassy outpost in Benghazi went up in flames. One of America’s brightest young diplomats, J. Christopher Stevens, was shot and paraded in the streets of Benghazi. He died from his wounds. Three other embassy staff members died in the attack.
This attack and those deaths are not to be casually dismissed. If you do not understand the reason why, just ask any American who has lost a loved one in combat.
Now we learn, that Hillary used her own email account to conduct official State Department business. She dismisses it by saying maybe she should have used a State Department account, but that emails to her associates at the State Department were backed up and preserved on the State Department computer. An assertion that the State Department says did not happen.
Beyond the question of national security, the questions becomes: Do the American people have the right to know how the Department of State is conducting business? If records are kept secret from congress, how can congress maintain its oversight responsibility over the State Department?
Hillary came to the State Department after being the First Lady in the statehouse in Arkansas and the First Lady in the White House. Both tenures were racked with personal scandals involving her husband that the couple wanted to keep private. She is no spring chicken when it comes to keeping private matters private.
The best argument that I have heard from early supporters is that Hillary is the one because the nation has never had a woman president. Granted that it is centuries past time for a women head of state. The question becomes, should the election come down to political correctness? A political correctness that seeks to rectify centuries of discrimination when it comes to having a woman seated behind that vaulted desk in the oval office?
Should a president bring more to the oval office than high heels and the sagaciousness of Richard Nixon?
Obviously, I have more questions than answers. It is time for Democrats to start thinking about these things before they find themselves in the dilemma that Georgia Democrats faced after giving their nomination, without benefit of a vigorous primary campaign, to the anointed Michelle Nunn for an open Senate seat in 2014. Nunn lost miserably and Georgia Democrats failed to pick up a seat that was theirs for the picking.