loyalty
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008Recently, I’ve spoken with a few mentors and friends, especially women, who have expressed their support for Hillary. They never use her last name or “Senator.” She is like Madonna or Prince or Cher. Their jaws tend to tighten a little during our conversations, perhaps because they know I support her competitor, Barack Obama.
These are tricky situations for me, because I want to be supportive of these people I respect and care for, because I am thrilled they are engaged in the process, because I myself voted for Mrs. Clinton in 2000 and was thankful to finally have two Democratic Senators from my home state of New York. However, I do want to express to them why I now support Mr. Obama and ask about their views of the two candidates policy differences on issues such as the War in Iraq, health care, lobbyists and special interests, and NAFTA. I want to point out how many Clinton advisors and employees now support Barack Obama from cabinet members to the armed forces to the justice department.
When these discussions arise, I have usually received responses that fit into three categories: “it’s time for a woman,” “Hillary is smart,” and the most-oft-spoken “experience.” As you can see in many recent editorials, Senator Clinton’s experience claim has been dissected. Both Barack and Hillary have community advocacy experience, both are lawyers, both are Junior Senators, and Senator Clinton has 7 years in public office to Senator Obama’s 11. Mirrored in their policies, Hillary more often defended wealthy and white clients while Barack tended to support working class people and people of color. The experience argument often tends to boil down to Hillary’s experience living in the White House, which brings up the issue I heard many New Hampshire voters express explicitly, “We want Bill back.”
This, to me, is troubling. President Clinton certainly was much better than either George Bush. He balanced the budget and spoke for the underprivileged. He brought in our first female secretary of state. He resisted a conservative coalition that would have made abortion illegal, immigrants further ostracized, and war permanent. However, US society and media tends to look on President Clinton’s time in office with rose-colored glasses. He signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which wrote discrimination against GLBT people into law. He cut welfare, further impoverishing the poor and disproportionately affecting people-of-color negatively. He brought NAFTA to life, sending thousands of American jobs overseas, encouraging poor, inhumane working environments on foreign soil and helping to further widen the income gap in the US.
What President Clinton had was great charisma and ability to communicate what he saw as the needs of our time. Much has been made of Barack Obama’s recent comments on President Reagan, usually taken out of context. Senator Obama, although he disagrees deeply with Reagan’s assault on the poor, spoke to Reagan’s ability to build a majority (he won 49 states) by communicating a clear, inspiring message. President Clinton had that same quality. However, after losing badly in the 1994 mid-term elections, he realized he would have to fight tooth-and-nail to maintain his position.
That is what he is doing now. Lying about Barack Obama to give voters a false impression. Attacking Obama’s youth, positivity, and vision as inexperience and naïveté. Articles that were running just before the Iowa caucuses, which now seem to have disappeared, all spoke to the fact that President Clinton’s criticisms, were, in essence, self-effacing. By his logic, we should not have voted for him in 1992.
We cannot vote for him now. Senator Hillary Clinton is running for President, although it might not seem like that in Nevada, or Missouri, or on national TV, where President Clinton clips and quotes dominate news coverage. Instead of focusing on coalition-building and hope Senator Obama has had to focus on rebutting President Clinton’s slander. I have talked to folks about this issue who shrug and say, “That’s politics” or who seem disgusted by the arguing, or worst of all, use Obama’s responses to say, “See, he’s just like the rest of them.”
We have a choice today. We can choose fearful tactics or hopeful ones. We can choose a candidate who wants to bring everyone into the fold, or someone who says Republicans need to “see the light.” We can choose to fight, or to unite. However, we cannot choose Bill Clinton. I, for one, would not if I could.
“It’s time for a woman” speaks not only to Hillary’s gender identity, but also to her advocacy on behalf of women and children internationally. This past work is her greatest strength, promoting women’s rights wherever she’s gone, both through words and example. As a woman and a mother, First Lady Clinton identified with the minority (of power) status experience by women and children around the world. She sought to spread literacy, economic development, child care support, and a host of other issues to those in need. However, her imperialist tendencies overshadowed some of her advocacy, usually pushing for the Western definition of women’s rights and ignoring culture-specific mores (e.g. female genital operations and polygamy, practiced by the vast majority of cultures in Africa). If asked Susan Okin’s question, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?”, Mrs. Clinton’s clear answer would be, “Yes.”
“Hillary is smart.” I am befuddled when I hear this rationale. She’s brilliant! The need to defend Senator Clinton’s intelligence is odd…perhaps it is an implicit comparison to our current President? Hillary Clinton is wise, shrewd, ingenious. The word “calculating” is often used to refer to her derogatorily, but the comeback I’ve heard multiple times, “she needs to be, because she’s a woman,” rings true to my ears. However, whether changing her opinions on issues as important as war, outsourcing, the death penalty, immigrants’ rights, and health care, based on shifting public opinion, is a calculation that we as a country can afford, is a difficult question to answer.
That question becomes easier to answer because we have Barack Obama. Barack Obama’s appeal is incredible, in at least two senses of the word. It is massive; people throughout the world are amazed by this person who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, often shunned by both blacks and whites, who left a six-figure job for a $12000/year one, who defeated a primary opponent in Illinois when outspent by a ratio of six to one, who shunned corporate firms accustomed to hiring the President of the Harvard Law Review in order to become a civil rights lawyer and advocate for inner city, low-income people. However, his appeal is incredible, too, because he has no political machine. The man with whom Obama is most often compared, John F. Kennedy, had a political machine. His grandfathers ran Boston politics long before he was born. Barack’s grandfathers both struggle to make a living in rural Kenya, and rural Kansas, Oklahoma, and the big city of Honolulu, in a low-income apartment. How did this man gain such an intense following so quickly? See him speak, read his books, or march in a parade with him…you’ll know.
The phrases “it’s time for a woman” and “Hillary is smart” both imply a particular message, one that a few people have been quick to remedy in an aside. The first phrase says that gender is more important than race. The second insinuates that Barack, is not as smart as Hillary. I don’t think any of the folks saying these two phrases actually think these things. As Audre Lorde said, “there is no hierarchy of oppression.” Both women and black Americans have been discriminated against as long as America has existed. Both have been portrayed as stupid and less than. When I speak with people whose views more closely resemble Obama’s than Clinton’s but who are supporting Clinton, I realized that alliance boils down to loyalty.
Loyalty is a quality that I have long appreciated, but not greatly esteemed. I have always interpreted it as a virtue people hold in the face of evidence that should suggest otherwise. Loyal to a husband that cheats. Loyal to a law-breaking friend. Loyal to a corrupt baseball franchise. Loyal to an imperialist nation.
I am learning though, that people who take pride in their loyalty, do not see it that way. They seek deep connection or identification in life, and use those affiliations to inform their vision of the world. Loyalists hate their friends’ ex’s. Loyalists help each other get jobs. Loyalists defend friends’ when they are accused. Loyalists feel in debt to those who have helped them. Loyalists tie their own identity to the identity of those to whom they have sworn loyalty. They don’t see these decisions as inappropriate or negative, but in fact, the opposite.
Such is the case with many Hillary supporters. In fact, I read an article about women staffers for the Senator who spoke fiercely of their to devotion to her. When I talk with people who say they think Barack Obama would make a great VP candidate, and cannot even imagine him winning the nomination no matter what speech he makes, what poor family he defends, what foreign policy vision he states, what way he elevates and influences the debate and nature of politics, I learn what loyalty means. At this point, I imagine, reading this, you have already been thinking what I have finally realized. I know what loyalty means. It is how I feel about Barack Obama.
