Just Who Is Hillary Clinton?

Some commentators have rightly pointed out that the policies of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton should not be conflated and that Hillary should not be praised or blamed for the policies of her president husband predecessor. This valid point, however, raises the issue of just what are the policies of Hillary Clinton. To try to ascertain what Hillary Clinton's policies are I asked several people what Hillary stands for just after the Democrats met for their convention in Philadelphia but none of them could tell me what her policies are or what she stands for. To try to figure out what Hillary stands for and what she might do as president I decided to look at her more recent past.

If past is prologue we should be able to look at what Clinton has done since she was first lady in the Clinton administration in order to get an idea of what she might do if she is elected president of the United States in 2016. When she was first lady Clinton devised and promoted a "pragmatic" health care plan that may have given at least some of the millions of Americans without health care health care. Clinton's health care plan, as most commentators admit, would also have been a boon for big pharmaceutical companies and the big health care corporate industry. Hillary voted for the war in Iraq as senator from New York, a war that led to the devolution of Iraq into tribal and sectarian warfare and which saw al-Qaida and later ISIS fill the political vacuum the war left. Clinton later turned against the war but it must be remembered that while she was secretary of state Hillary strongly supported and apparently urged President Obama to prosecute a bombing campaign against the Qaddafi regime in Libya--Qaddafi was one of those many Hitleresque tyrants the US had selectively turned against--a war that led to the collapse of Libya into tribal and sectarian warfare and which saw the rise of ISIS in Libya. Clinton supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade trade agreement only to, as she did with the war in Iraq, turn against it. Those close to Clinton say that should she be elected president she will support TPP if a few "tweets" are made to this trade policy. While secretary of state Hillary supported the expansion of NATO, an arm of US imperial power, in Europe.

So if past is prologue Clinton is likely to be a pro-corporate and pro-"interventionist" president. If past is prologue Clinton is likely to continue her support for globalisation. If past is prologue Clinton is likely to continue America's imperialist great power aims. The problem with all this, of course, is that pro-corporate politics have led to increasing inequality and the increasing enrichment of the 1%, globalisation has led to the loss of good paying American working class jobs, while the expansion of NATO has led to increasing tensions with Russia, the great power which NATO keeps inching and inching towards. In reality Russia is not a threat to NATO or Europe. Islamic sectarianism is. If past is prologue Clinton is likely to be yet another one of those paternalistic, pro-big business, and interventionist Progressives we have seen since the Progressive Era arose in the early 20th century in the US, Bill Clinton amongst them. If past is prologue Clinton, just like most of her Progressive predecessors of the past, is not likely to do much of real as opposed to symbolic substance for non-Whites. If past is prologue Clinton is likely to fight for the same people and things her Progressive forebears did, namely, corporations and the American military-industrial complex. The more things change...