Beating the Clintons in their own Game.

Hillary Clinton likes bragging that her life experience for the past 35 years has been on the cutting edge of social change in American politics. But what she fails mention is that most of those years she spent defending the status quo in Washington D.C., as well as big business and corporations for nearly 20 years as a partner with the Rose Law firm in Arkansas. Furthermore, she has gone on to make sweeping claims about what  clearly are her pseudo-credentials on national security, foreign policy as well as international crisis management which her opponent have’nt really made serious inroads toward debunking and exposing her for the phoney character happens to be.

It is safe to say, however, that the nearest thing to a crisis perhaps she may ever have had to handle was having to navigate delicately through a constitutional crisis sparked by her husband’s sexual predatory impulses that led to his impeachment. Hence the Clintons have yet to be called on this, if only because they seem so self-righteous as to deem themselves entitled to political power in America to the exclusion of everyone else. Their false sense of entitlement has more often than not driven them into desperation to seize whatever they want to believe is theirs. To achieve their political ends, and, uninhibited by the constraints of decency, there is no moral limit to what they can do. Their failure to put out of action Barack Obama by Super Tuesday 1 had all but convinced them of the imperative of the utility of underhanded means. The ruthless below-the-belt attacks against Obama, the leaking of falsehoods as well as their internet circulation of dirt on him are only the latest last ditch and desperate means they have waged with impunity. They have gotten as much mileage as they could  get out of a situation in which their opponent has often chosen to stay above the political fray rather than stoop to the gutters with them. Yet clearly these attacks are working, as they seem to have slowed Obama’s momentun to a large extent as evidenced by the tactical impasse reflected in the proportionality of  individual shares in poll numbers of both candidates in both Ohio and Texas.

With the foregoing in mind, then, it is important to ask: what will it take for the Obama campaign to understand that the American people are more gullible to negative ads than they profess to eskew. But to ask this question is not to suggest they should castigate themselves to the low the Clinton campaign has relegated itself to.  All there is to it is for them to not just tepidly deny what they view as falsehoods tagged on them by the other side, they should be well equipped with  research on Hillary sufficient to provide effective utility for an uncompromising counter-attack.  Hence the centrality of the Obama campaign war strategies should unequivocally be the prioritization of their initiatives within the context of maximazing their impact through advertising and rapid dissemination of information as a counter-measure to debunk misinformation as well as to initiate a resolute undertaking to define his opponent before she has the chance to define herself.  And, toward this end, they should ”leave no stone unturned”.

In the immediate wake of 9-11, the Bush administration chanelled its efforts—justifiably so—into dismantling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in pursuit of al-Qaeda. Since then, having abandoned  further action against this terror organisation inside Afghanistan itself, as well as in the Afghan- Pakistani- tribal areas, and diverted its attention to the invasion of Iraq, this administration has all but devoted itself to the pursuit of a policy that elevates the primacy of military force and its exclusive utility to the detriment of the prospects of reconciliation and security political and diplomatic efforts might otherwise have conferred on Iraq. Hence with its overwhelming and unmatched destructive power at its disposal, and in a protracted state siege it is generally perceived to have wrought on some segments of the Iragi populace this administration

The Perils of Hillary’s Candidacy.

With each passing day it is increasingly clear that if she won the primaries Hillary Clinton would not be able to stand up against Repuplican attacks. She would simply buckle under pressure if they did’nt accord her  special treatment as a woman, which  raises the question of her endurance  if she won the presidency: would she withstand the pressure of this male-dominated office? The answer to this perhaps is no,  except if  her male counterparts cut her some slack as a woman.  Which amounts to a simple reality of her operating on the basis of lowered expectations if her wishes of being treated as a woman were to be granted.  Which takes us to the general election which is bound to go down in history as one of one bitterest, the nastiest, and the most negative we have  seen in a long time, make no mistake about it. 

The Republicans who are already showing signs of nervousness about the likelihood of Hillary beating them hands-down,  devoid of popularly acceptable ideas ,  and in desperation, are certain to resort to dirty tricks as they customarily always do to ensure whatever it takes that Hillary never wins.  Moreover, other than her high negatives as compounded by her polarizing personality she is going to be unfairly held to account for her husband’s indiscretions while he was in office. They will be recycled  by these “masters of negativism” and dished out to the public, with the hope that they can endure the voters’ skeptism.  Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades thus remain Hillary’s achilles’ heels potentially more devastating than most would acknowledge.

Republicans are going to engage in this “mother of all negativisms” because they have nothing better to offer to the American people. Their ideas are in shambles and increasingly obsolete, and their party in disaray. They will pursue this risky strategy because they view it as the easiest way through which they can avert a nightmare most Republicans are resigned to accept as more likely than ever: the Hillary presidency.

In view of the foregoing, then, it is important to ask: is that kind of negative campaining going to work for Repulicans? It is hard to tell. But there can be no doubt that the voters—while claiming otherwise—are more apt to be more gullible to issues of salacious nature than to ones of esoteric dimension.  And,  as much as public backlash against Republicans remains a likely operative dynamic  accruing from their negative campaigning , it would be foolhardy for the Hillary campaign not to initiate a swift response caliberated to neutralize the attacks.  So that how they deal with these attacks will determine the course of the campaign as well as the eventuality of its strategic endurance.