The Public Relations Factor

I realize that I've been a bit lazy about updating this - in truth, it's difficult for me to start a new habit without a babysitter for a while. I have been reading Hillary Clinton's "Living History" and am planning on reading a book written by a Vanity Fair reporter, Gail Sheedy, called "Hillary's Choice." Once I'm done with those, I'll most likely move on to Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope."

As I focus my attention on Hillary, I find myself defending her at all the negative comments. It's amazing what kind of jokes/stares people will give you when they see you holding her book. Is she really so awful that carrying her writing is the equivalent of holding the Devils Bible or Mein Kampf? The more I think about it, the more it seems that people's sever dislike of Hillary is nothing more than a bandwagon campaign. People can't seem to come up with any better reasoning in hating her than "she's cold and calculating," "she started her run for the White House in 1992," "she doesn't inspire any likability," "look at her marriage," etc.

To address these, what objections, if any, are these?

People see her politics as being well planned out, opportunistic, calculated, etc. They find her to be overreaching I suppose. What is it about this that's wrong? Should she be doing everything at the last minute, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, kind of operation? I guess that's what America wants - no planning. Don't we call this the Bush Administration? Planning out your political ambitions and placing yourself in the right positions to achieve them is plain good politics, and everyday life in business and careers. If you want a promotion, do just just write one good report out of nowhere? Hell no, you make friends with the right people, tout your good performance evaluations, etc. The difference here is, a politician is answering to their constituents. I see nothing wrong with Hillary planning things out before she goes after them. We should desire that highly in an American President, as we're talking about the Chief Executor of the United States of America. We should desperately cling to someone that can say "hey, lets make a plan before we start throwing money around!"

Hillary Clinton to many is unlikable. I think a lot of people see her as one of those ball-buster kind of gals that seem to be a little too masculine. Think about the times Hillary grew up in - it wasn't exactly winning the women's vote, but it was definitely a struggle for her to get into the Yale School of Law (she was one of twenty or thirty women in a class of two to three hundred). Being a woman 40 to 30 years ago is nothing I would wish for; she probably had to develop some strong arm behaviors to get where she was, and that's alright.

I think this is one arena where Bill is somewhat of a liability. When you put her next to her husband, how in the world could anyone but a professional actor look good? Bill is one of the best communicative presidents of the era of radio and television broadcast. Once these technologies came around, the office of President added a likability factor that hadn't been a big player before. People like John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill took this and ran with it. Does that really make them any more qualified? I think the likability factor has taken away from the office. I would rather a strong, intelligent leader, than a likable one.

Bill cheated on Hillary, at least once, but I would guess that it's happened a few times. Hillary stuck with him. For one, why is this even any of America's business? If your spouse broke the ranks of fidelity, would you really want the media involved in all of it? The marriage of the Clintons is up to their family and their family alone. This came up recently with John Edwards campaign when it was announce that his wife had bone cancer. Even Sean Hannity proclaimed that he wished only the best for the both of them, and that this is a matter for only their family - it had nothing to do with America.

I find it ironic that most of the people attacking Hillary for this reason are Republicans who are very quick to raise their banner of Christianity. For the past several years, I've been horrified at the things people will carry out in the name of Christ. I was raised as a Christian, and I feel this gives me some qualifications to comment on it. Marriage is a gigantic part of their doctrine, and it seems that it's become less and less important to keep it (well, unless you're talking about two men or two women getting married, then it moves from a temporary burden to something sacred). I think that Hillary's choice to stick with her husband is respectable, and if she has forgiven him, then I find it the Christian thing to do. Foremost, however, it's none of our business.

Since I started the rant a little, I'll go into it for a minute because it suits me to do so. Gay marriage is a topic used to distract people. The American trend on gay marriage is somewhat unique given the way our society is built up. European nations tend to set the social policies, and we tend to follow them a few years later, after seeing that they didn't bring about the apocalypse, their country isn't in ruin, etc. Largely, even their conservative nations have enacted gay marriage of some sort. Yes, this has changed things for them somewhat. Is is bad or good? Who knows? It's not something you can really measure that I can figure. So far, society looks good though.

Massachusetts has gay marriage. Equal, equitable rights for heterosexual and homosexual couples alike. Has a great sinkhole to hell opened up and swallowed it? No. Has everything collapsed? No. In fact, it's hardly newsworthy, and this is because the news would never function by running a headline that says "Business as usual!" Never happened, never will. Several other states are getting into it, but by and large, it's being outlawed by the states in constitutional amendments. This isn't good. For the most part, legislation is all about copying someone else's work. Rather than drafting your own, you find something similar and replace the variables. Most of the state constitutional amendments are drawn off one that is severely discriminatory, and will not allow for civil unions. Proponents of the amendment claim that it's not true, they just don't want gays to be able to use the term "marriage." That's a lie - it makes it illegal for civil unions, in fact anything that gives the equal or similar position to marriage.

A few years ago, the state I live in passed such an amendment. It was basically passed the day it went into the hopper, but I fought it all the same. The state Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff, came out in opposition to it, saying that it was unconstitutional, and that it would be struck down someday in court. I agreed with all of his reasoning. Though my knowledge of legal reasoning is small, I still find them to be in violation of a clause and amendment of the US constitution, namely the Full Faith and Credit Clause, and the Due Process, or equal protection under the law, of the 14th amendment.

For those of you who are against it, and think that you've stopped it, you're hilariously wrong. Marriage, as far as the law goes, is a special kind of contract that enables hundreds to thousands of rights and privileges given only in this union. Most of them are just things that happen automatically at marriage - the truth is, they can be enacted through a series of complicated but legal documents. Stopping gay marriage doesn't stop gay people. I find it funny when I find someone who thinks that the "trend will die down" once the gays can't marry. Uhhhh -we've always been here buddy, we just hold hands in public now.

Frighteningly enough, a solution I've heard belongs to none other than Bill O'Reiley of Fox News. He stated that he would rather have no marriage altogether, but rather civil unions for any two adults, be it gay or straight. I believe that he sees marriage as a religious term, not a term of the state. I agree with this (although it would be a hard time coming, as people voting on this would thing that if it passed their marriages would dissolve). Also, and somewhat backtracking, allowing gay marriage in no way forces religions to marry gay individuals. That's plain basic civics, the state can in no way dictate the policies of a church. Come on people.