Having listened to Hillary Clinton say that she really resents that President Bush won't finish the war in Iraq in time to leave his successor a clean slate, John Podhoretz ponders the possibility that presidents could start telling us about all they resent being handed to them by their predecessors.
Imagine, for example, that President Bush had given a speech a few days after 9/11 declaring he really resented the fact that Bill Clinton didn't kill Osama bin Laden before Bush became president.
Or that President Bill Clinton, in the wake of the slaughter of 18 American servicemen in Somalia in 1993, informed Americans about his real resentment of George Bush the Elder, who sent those servicemen into Somalia at the tail end of his administration.
Or all the Cold War presidents who must have resented that their predecessors hadn't wrapped that baby up. What a silly formulation for Hillary to express her criticism. If she is so resentful, the solution is easy. Don't run for president.
And if the war is so easy to end by just pulling our troops out, Clinton can do that if she is the next president. But Podhoretz is exactly right about what Clinton truly resents.
There's a lot of talk on the Left these days about how inauthentic Hillary is as a candidate. But there's nothing inauthentic about her expression of resentment against Bush. After all, if he hadn't asked her and other senators to vote for a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, she wouldn't have had to make a choice that she now regrets.
That original choice was almost certainly inauthentic: Hillary became a hawk, in all likelihood, because she wanted (as her husband once said during another war) "to maintain my political viability."
You want the real Hillary? The real Hillary is the Really Resenting one. Enjoy.
Having listened to Hillary Clinton say that she really resents that President Bush won't finish the war in Iraq in time to leave his successor a clean slate, John Podhoretz ponders the possibility that presidents could start telling us about all they resent being handed to them by their predecessors.
Imagine, for example, that President Bush had given a speech a few days after 9/11 declaring he really resented the fact that Bill Clinton didn't kill Osama bin Laden before Bush became president.
Or that President Bill Clinton, in the wake of the slaughter of 18 American servicemen in Somalia in 1993, informed Americans about his real resentment of George Bush the Elder, who sent those servicemen into Somalia at the tail end of his administration.
Or all the Cold War presidents who must have resented that their predecessors hadn't wrapped that baby up. What a silly formulation for Hillary to express her criticism. If she is so resentful, the solution is easy. Don't run for president.
And if the war is so easy to end by just pulling our troops out, Clinton can do that if she is the next president. But Podhoretz is exactly right about what Clinton truly resents.
There's a lot of talk on the Left these days about how inauthentic Hillary is as a candidate. But there's nothing inauthentic about her expression of resentment against Bush. After all, if he hadn't asked her and other senators to vote for a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, she wouldn't have had to make a choice that she now regrets.
That original choice was almost certainly inauthentic: Hillary became a hawk, in all likelihood, because she wanted (as her husband once said during another war) "to maintain my political viability."
You want the real Hillary? The real Hillary is the Really Resenting one. Enjoy.
