HILLARY

I ran across Princess Girly Girl's Hillary Clinton blog on Blog Explosion and wanted to comment, but in a very Kerry-like moment, I ran out of space, so I've posted it here.

If you visit her blog from my blog, please be polite, even if you disagree!

I don't normally respond to blogs I don't agree with because it seems that dissident commenters either flagrantly, or unwillingly, end up in a pissing match. Being two women, I think there's a higher probability that we can have a rational discussion. :) No offense guys, but there's something about that Y chromosome that makes you a little nutty at times. No pun intended.

There are a lot of strong women on both sides of the "Should Hillary have left Bill" question. Neither is right or wrong, in my opinion. Personally, I would have probably left after the first 2, but I don't know what situation they were in with their child. For all BC's familial faults, he clearly loves Chelsea, so I'm going to put that aside for now.

As far as Hillary riding Bill's coattails, I think they each rode the other's "coattails" from time to time. Nearly all professional couples do it, our current president has done a lot of it, and everyone in business does it. If they're successful, they do it well because it really boils down to someone's ability to network.

In addition, everyone that makes it into the White House is dirty in some way. EVERYONE. It takes a lot of money to get to the White House, and there are a lot of compromises you have to make along the way. Equally, it's unfortunate that it's up to the American public to decipher truth from sensationalism, and then the public has to decipher the response. How much is spin, how much is truth, is there truth in the spin but they need to spin the truth so the media will run the story longer?

Not to mention, every politician is just a person. Complicated, tortured and egotistical. If everyone were put under a microscope in the same way, I think most people would run for cover. Politicians make mistakes and they do bad things. You just have to weigh the individual team's pros and cons, and even Nixon, for all his faults, was admirable to an extent (see below).

So what's worse. "No, I did not get a hummer in the Oval Office," or "Hussein is responsible for 9/11 or he has WMDs or it's for Iraqui freedom."

General Clarke stated that on 9/12, he visited the Pentagon and a group of generals told him to come inside their office because they wanted to tell him a joke.

Clarke: We don't have time to be telling jokes.

Generals: You'll want to hear this one because it's a good one.

They go inside an office and close the door.

Generals: If Sadaam Hussein didn't attack us, he's going to wish he had. The word has come down that we're going to get him for it.

Clarke: That's not very funny.

They agreed.