Michelle Goldberg discovers Hillary Clinton isn't so bad

One year ago today, Hillary Clinton ended her presidential campaign, much to the relief of millions of ardent Barack Obama supporters like me. Throughout the primaries, I had been irritated and then outraged by those who argued feminism obliged women to back her. The possibility that our first female president would be a former first lady promising to continue her husband’s legacy struck me as profoundly dispiriting. During the campaign, her hardball tactics horrified me. So when she made her rousing and gracious speech in the National Building Museum, conceding defeat but celebrating "18 million cracks" in "that highest, hardest glass ceiling," I was too furious to really hear her.

So begins Michelle Goldberg's latest article for the Daily Beast.  She goes on to sing Hillary's praises for putting the interests of women and girls at the forefront of our nation's foreign policy agenda.

I'm still trying to digest that first paragraph, however.  In the first place, it is not at all clear to me that the raison d'etre for Hillary's candidacy was to "continue her husband's legacy."  Even if that were the case, however, what would be wrong with modelling an administration after the most successful one since FDR?

Second, what "hardball tactics"?  We heard this constantly from the lower-level minions of the Obama campaign, and from some higher-level minions too, along with their Amen Corner in the blogosphere--"The Clintons will do anything to win," they said.  If that were really the case, why didn't she win?

It would be interesting to roll the clock back a year, and have Ms. Goldberg on the inside of the Clinton campaign.  She would find that the race looked totally different from that perspective as opposed to the one that was spun out in the media. 

In fact, it is a tribute to the political skill of the Obama campaign that their preferred "media narrative" is that one that the media did, in fact, adopt, particularly in the early months of the campaign. 

Comments

[lillianjane]

I agree, John. Goldberg is so steeped in the narrative that she still qualifies her praise, lest some blogger accuse her of heresy, even now that Clinton has the imprimatur of Obama.

[John Petty]

I can understand the phenomenon. It's called believing your own propaganda.