Hillary the Healer?

I attended the Hillary Clinton rally at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem this past Saturday. All the New York Democratic bigwigs were there, but fortunately I missed all of their speeches and arrived just in time to catch the President's introduction of Hillary. His introduction was vintage Bill Clinton, particularly the parts where he rhapsodized about how promoting alternative energy sources would not just reduce carbon emissions and dependence on Arab autocracies, but also create jobs immune to outsourcing, since "somebody's gotta go put up those wind mills and solar panels, and that kinda work can't be done from China or India." Hardly a slam-dunk in itself, but an interesting observation.

The most noteworthy part of Bill's stump speech, however, is that he touts Hillary as the candidate most likely to enact needed reforms because she will be best able to achieve compromise with Republicans. The need for compromise is uncontroversial; unless the Democrats find 60 seats in the Senate (a remote possibility), they will need Republican support to pass anything beyond a budget. The striking part is that Hillary is now the candidate who will best be able to reach across party lines. For anyone familiar with the depths of conservative hatred for Hillary (or for anyone who has watched five minutes or more of Fox News), the idea of Hillary as the most bipartisan of Democratic candidates requires some reflection to accept.

Not that Bill is necessarily wrong. Hillary by all accounts has won grudging respect from conservatives in the senate, probably because of her hawkish foreign policy stances (Iraq, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard terrorist Resolution) and support for select "moral values" resolutions (namely federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case). She has also largely dropped the self-righteous rhetoric that distinguished her early public profile, most notably in the 1993 health care fight. But being a Senator is different from being President; facing a President Hillary Clinton, it seems to me the Republican strategy would be to attack mercilessly and not concede an inch.

Perhaps Hillary could engender fervid opposition and still find a way to work with Congressional Republicans. As Trent Lott recounts in his memoir, after the 1995 government shutdown Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress produced a shocking number of legislative compromises considering how viciously Limbaugh and co. were attacking Clinton in public (I don't share Lott's enthusiasm for all of the laws passed). Maybe Hillary could repeat this feat. But I'm not yet quite ready to rule out the possibility that someone without Hillary's baggage would have an easy time crossing party lines. To me Hillary is undoubtedly qualified, but her decision to tout her bipartisan credentials in particular still strikes me as a bit peculiar and premature.

As for Hillary's speech, it was solid but unremarkable. Iraq, education, housing, healthcare - the expected fare. Following Bill Clinton is not an easy task, but she sounds convincing enough and I would certainly vote for her over any Republican.

For you non-New Yorkers, the location of the rally held special importance because of Abyssinian's hallowed place in Harlem history. Consider Big L's lines from the 95 Stretch Armstrong Freestyle:

And every time a mack eleven bucks/ I'm killing at least seven ducks/I never was a follower of Reverend Butts.

Here Big L is referring to Calvin O. Butts, Reverend of Abyssinian Baptist. Big L's home block of "139 and Lenox" is about two streets away from the church. Just to put the event in context.

Argentine First Lady Becomes President. - a Peek into America's Future?

Supporters of Hillary Clinton may take heart from the recent Presidential election in Argentina, where voters have elected current senator and first lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to succeed her husband Nestor as President. Will American voters in 2008 follow the lead of their Argentine brethren in selecting a first-lady to be President?

In both Argentina and America, any democrat (small d) ought to greet the election of a President's wife with mixed emotions. A woman President represents the ascendancy of a historically disenfranchised minority into the nation's highest office, and this shows welcome success in dismantling unjust barriers to political participation. In one of her most effective anecdotes, Hillary Clinton describes meeting 95 year old women who proudly recount that "they were born before women could vote, and now they'll live to see a woman President."

On the other hand, that free and competitive elections simply produce a transfer of power from one spouse to another (either immediately or with a lag) suggests dynastic dominance of a nation's political system. To the extent that dynastic succession centralizes political power along blood lines, the cause of popular sovereignty is erosion. Americans' attitudes toward the political dynasties which dot our nation's history - slightly embarrassed acknowledgment rather than celebration of the Adamses, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Bushes, and now perhaps the Clintons - reflects unease over this erosion. I have been somewhat surprised at Barack Obama's reluctance to attack Senator Clinton by framing dynasties as damaging to democracy. If I were him, I would simply repeat George Will's observation that "change in America is not represented by Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton."

Lest I be accused of sexism in writing on the Argentine-American parallel, let me note that the men in question also share an interesting similarity. Both Bill Clinton and Nestor Kirchner entered office confronting by major challenges of national indebtedness. In Clinton's case, the tax cuts and spending increases of the Reagan years had created large federal budget deficits and a skyrocketing national debt. Clinton's first major policy initiative was a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts known as the 1993 Budget Reconciliation Act (predictably pilloried by Republicans as "the largest tax increase in history); implementation of this legislation contributed mightily to restoring fiscal soundness in America (alas, at least temporarily).

Ten years later, President Kirchner entered office to a fiscal situation far more dire than the one Clinton had faced in 1993. Argentina was burdened with $178 billion in public debt and largely unable to access international capital markets. In an act of considerable courage, Kirchner refused to adopt policies of budget austerity prescribed by the IMF and insisted that the IMF as well as private creditors must agree to a restructuring and rescheduling of debt payments if they hoped to be repaid any of the $93 billion in loans that Argentina had defaulted on in 2001. Though at the time many commentators warned that Kirchner's defiance would consign Argentina to economic ruin, his government in fact succeeded in persuading private creditors to accept repayment on terms far more lenient to Argentina. In 2005 Kirchner canceled completely Argentine repayments to the IMF. Kirchner's willingness to negotiate firmly with the IMF saved his country billions in loan payments, and was just on account of the IMF's bad policy advice in insisting that Argentina continue peso-dollar convertibility (a fixed exchange rate) even at the cost of crippling Argentina's export industries, mandating cuts in sorely needed social programs, and precluding a currency devaluation that could have averted a default and the ensuing disruptions. Since the IMF was partly to blame for Argentina's troubles, Kirchner was right to force the IMF to sacrifice some repayment in the interest of Argentine welfare.

Though the situations differed in severity and complexity, both Clinton and Kirchner responded to their nation's political distress with far-sightedness and courage. Clinton raised on the wealthy while also cutting spending, in the process gaining enemies on both the left and right. Kirchner defied the orthodoxy of international finance and showed that a nation could endure the largest national default in financial history and, with the right policies in place, still enjoy strong economic recovery. The electability of both men's wives is due in no small part to the salutary consequences of their husband's fiscal prudence.

Lesson? Anyone President seeking for his wife to someday succeed him should strive to make his nation less indebted, rather than more. This, among other reasons, is why I don't expect to see a "Draft Laura Bush" campaign anytime soon.