Forty-five years ago Hillary Rodham made a fateful decision. It has defined her life.
Understanding that moment of decision is essential to understanding Hillary Clintons life the successes and the failures and perhaps the future. It would explain the subtly discordant persona that causes the media even many elite Hillary sympathizers to present her as some kind of fabulous monster. And it may reveal something of the soul within.
Hillary Rodham chose the path of central power" rather than the path of personal dignity." There is some evidence she is not fully at peace with that decision. Much depends for her her party and America on what she does next.
A media Hurricane Hillary begins to blow. Its a Cat 5. The New York Times recently reports that the (by far) largest Democratic SuperPAC which in 2008 had opposed Hillary Clinton now actively is supporting her presumptive candidacy. Yet the elite media attention has an odd aspect.
Time Magazines January 27th cover story Can Anyone Stop Hillary? is illustrated by a tiny man dangling from the bottom of a raised stiletto heel. It is an odd slightly monstrous image. The New York Times Magazine on January 26th presents a Hillary Clinton cover generating enormous unanticipated buzz. Entitled Planet Hillary it presents her with a distinctly alien mien. Again a faintly monstrous depiction… in a sympathetic venue. Typical media cheek? Or something more?
Hillary Clinton is without question formidable. She is smart skilled experienced in seeking and wielding power. Formidable however is freighted praise. It conveys admiration but not likability. Frankensteins monster was formidable.
Hillary Clinton is more than just formidable. Despite (indeed because of) having spent all of her adult life in the public eye she also is guarded. She presents as enigmatically somewhat tormented. There is an unguarded keyhole to help us read the inner Hillary Rodham Clinton. It offers a possible clue to this strange phenomenon. Planet Hillary concludes theres still something at the center of Hillary Clinton thats aching for the rest to be peeled away."
Could the key reside here: Hillary Rodhams 1969 Wellesley Bachelors honors thesis THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT…" An Analysis of the Alinsky Model? There we encounter the voice of a precocious erudite and witty prodigy. The thesiss epigram is from T.S. Eliots East Coker rather poignantly explicating the title chosen: There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again." There is even then a sense of brave futility.
Her honors thesis strongly suggests that just before stepping onto the public stage Miss Rodham reached a fork in her lifes road. She received and declined a job offer from the premier anti-establishment populist of our epoch Saul Alinsky. She chose instead to take the road more traveled and go to the liberal-establishment Yale Law School. This choice turned out for her to be defining. It also is telling. Perhaps fateful.
Alinsky as Hillary Rodham understood was a passionate populist. Populism as defined by public intellectual Jeffrey Bell (with whom this columnist has a professional association) is optimism about peoples ability to manage their own affairs relative to the ability of an elite to do so for them. Alinsky had this optimism in abundance. It was his defining characteristic. What Alinsky stood for far more than his famous thirteen tactical rules was the principle of human dignity: the capability of and existential need for people to participate in forging their own destiny.
Hillary Rodham consciously turned away from the participation by rank-and-file citizens from solving their own problems by finding and exercising their own power. She diffidently turned instead both explicitly and by deed toward central planning. That choice brought her power wealth glory and celebrity.
Yet there is good evidence that she chose this course not primarily for careerist reasons. She chose it as the better path to improve the human condition. Hillary Clinton by credible reports is a natural caregiver. Yet after 45 years in public life including positions of great prestige and power First Lady of Arkansas and of the United States United States Senator Secretary of State there is little evidence that she materially has advanced her existential objective social transformation.
Few true populists either of the left (such as Alinsky) or of the right believe that central planning can much improve the human condition. And it undermines personal dignity. Forty-five years of participation in the futility of central planning (however authentic was and possibly is her belief in its efficacy) would bring inner conflict to one whose central motivation is devotion to the betterment of society.
Hillary Rodhams purpose of social improvement consistently has been thwarted. Not by a vast right wing conspiracy. Thwarted by an internal contradiction. Central planning does not work.
To understand the significance of Miss Rodhams thesis and what it says about her first though it is necessary get clear on Alinsky. Alinskys name tends to be an incendiary conversation stopper. Alinsky was a proxy target for Barack Obama (who never met him). If Clinton runs for president Alinsky is destined to become a proxy target for her and an epithet.
To continue to misunderstand Alinsky is a terrible waste of an opportunity to understand the political transformation on the cusp of which America hovers. It may even be fair to say that a correct understanding of Alinsky may be essential to a full understanding of contemporary politics and of the upcoming 2016 election. A proper understanding of Alinsky also appears key to understanding Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hillary Rodham declined his job offer. This matters.
Most conservatives relentless vilify Alinsky as a communist. This is wrong.
Alinsky in his writings and deeds was an explicit anti-communist. Alinsky Rules p. 10:
We have permitted a suicidal situation to unfold wherein revolution and communism have become one. These pages are committed to splitting this political atom separating this exclusive identification of communism with revolution. If it were possible for the Have-Nots of the world to recognize and accept the idea that revolution did not inevitably mean hate and war cold or hot from the United States that alone would be a great revolution in world politics and the future of man.Anti-communism was not a popular position for a man of the left to take in his era. Moreover Alinsky personally advised Cardinal Montini who would go on to become Pope Paul VI on how to counter the Italian Communist Party. Alinsky also was an intimate of the great Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain who praised in a letter to Alinsky Rules for Radicals. (For the record let us note Alinsky of course also abjured Joe McCarthys demagoguery masquerading as anti-communism.) Neither was Alinsky a conventional Big Government liberal. He loudly called LBJs War on Poverty political pornography." When Sargent Shriver crowed that LBJ had helped more Negros in 25 months than Alinsky had helped in 25 years" Alinsky shot back that Shriver has a zoo-keeper mentality desiring not to help Negroes in ghettos but to keep them quiet." Alinsky observed: We (the Industrial Areas Foundation) spend $100000 a year and Shriver compares us with the U.S. Government. Shriver says hes done more for the Negro than we have. Hes telling the truth. Weve never done anything for the Negroes; weve worked with them." This was not lost on Hillary Rodham. She quoted it in her thesis. The right conflates Alinskys provocations with elements of the New Left to which Alinsky did not belong. These are the same elements of the left condemned in her thesis by Hillary Rodham as showing elitist arrogance and repressive intolerance." The right also wrongly vilifies Alinsky because Alinsky engineered his own notoriety. Today my notoriety and the hysterical instant reaction of the establishment not only validate my credentials of competency but also ensure automatic popular invitation." Alinsky did not as is often claimed dedicate Rules for Radicals to Lucifer. He offered a provocative epigram one of three no more sinister than Churchills trope that If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." (Rules was dedicated to Alinskys wife Irene. Not Lucifer.) Alinsky was neither saint nor devil. He exemplified Rabbi Hillels dictum one dear to his heart: Where there are no men be thou a man. His nature best can be appreciated by reading in full Rules for Radicals and by reading Sanford Horwitts definitive biography Let Them Call Me Rebel. The real importance of Alinsky to American politics and for understanding Hillary Rodham Clinton lies not in his rules but in his credo. Alinsky:
We learn when we respect the dignity of the people that they cannot be denied the elementary right to participate fully in the solutions to their own problems. Self-respect arises only out of people who play an active role in solving their own crises and who are not helpless passive puppet-like recipients of private or public services. To give people help while denying them a significant part in the action contributes nothing to the development of the individual. In the deepest sense it is not giving but taking taking their dignity. Denial of the opportunity to participate is the denial of human dignity and democracy. It will not work. (Rules for Radicals pp. 122-3)Hillary Rodham explicitly acknowledged Alinskys argument. Yet she chose the path of establishment liberal the path of central planning instead. Why? And what might that say about her? Click here to read Part II