If Hillary was a man she would be the overwhelming favorite of everyone except the extreme left and right. People would be cheering that, at last, we have a candidate who speaks with understanding about the most pressing needs of the nation, and of the great majority of its people. They would express delight with a candidate that knows how government works, and has the proven ability to negotiate across party lines. How pleased they would be with a candidate who understands global issues, and is known and respected by world leaders. Here, they would say, is a person who can bridge the gap between vision and pragmatic possibility.
If Hillary was a man, Trump would be clearly revealed as the dangerous charlatan that he is. His hollow swagger, his incompetency as a business person, his life of gargantuan exaggeration and lies beyond number, his bigotry, his history of fraud and abuse, his record of contempt that, if ever prosecuted, would be criminal. It would blossom like a field of poison ivy.
But Hillary is not a man. She is a woman, and not only a woman, but a woman following a black man. For some that is beyond unacceptable, it is unthinkable. Never in American political history has a person’s life been parsed and investigated with the voracious hunger of a ravenous wolf pack as has her life. And where has it led? Nowhere! But even nowhere can be made into somewhere. Every error of judgment and misstep of behavior common to us all has been contorted into felonious proportions. Every record of a diligent work ethic applied to many accomplishments of merit has been ignored or trivialized. Never has so much been made of so little in an effort to demean a person for no good reason other than that she is a woman, and not just a woman, but a woman following a black man.
I am not surprised by the Hannitys and Limbaughs of the airways, nor of the Breitbarts and Drudges of the internet. They earn their living by appealing to the worst in human nature. It’s an old vocation, a form of intellectual prostitution, but it can provide a handsome income. I am disappointed by editorial coverage in papers such as the WSJ that is as dreadfully ill informed as its reporting is well informed. What really distresses me are the rank and file journalists who have murdered journalistic integrity in their attempts at fairness by equilibrating one person’s venial errors with the other’s mortal sins.
This is not an election in which we must choose between the lesser of two evils. This is an election in which we must choose between selfish malfeasance personified, and an experienced person whose fundamental, if humanly flawed, integrity is as solid or better than yours or mine, and is dedicated to the best interests of the nation.
Is there a yes, but? Of course there is, in fact there are several. For perfection in persons one needs to look elsewhere, the mirror not included.