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December 1, 2007

Just Like Real Leadership: The Clinton 'Hostage Crisis'

Clarice Feldman
My late mother-in-law used to say of anything that tasted good to her," It's just like from the can." It made us all laugh, but she was seriously unable to distinguish between good food and pap.

Frankly, that's what I think of the efforts by AP, Larry Sabato and others to suggest that Hillary's role in Friday's hostage crisis reveals she is a leader. It debases real leadership with the ersatz, highly salted and laced-with-preservatives stuff.

Hillary did what anyone would do -- and what the enforcement authorities doubtless demanded -- stay away and let the professionals handle it.  Which they did -- quite professionally it seems, as no one was hurt and all the hostages were released.

AP, however, treated this as if it were the equivalent of Giuliani‘s role on 9/11:

When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis.

The image, broadcast just as the network news began, conveyed the message a thousand town hall meetings and campaign commercials strive for - namely, that the Democratic presidential contender can face disorder in a most orderly manner.

[snip]

"It affected me not only because they were my staff members and volunteers, but as a mother, it was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time."[/quote]
AP is not alone in puffing up her performance. The normally sane Larry Sabato, was equally batty:  Politico continues inflating this like from- the- can soup into farmhouse Tuscan ribollito with Sabato's assistance:
The scene was one of a woman in charge.

"It looked and sounded presidential," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. "This was an instance of the White House experience of this campaign. They knew how to handle this."

That the crisis was outside Clinton's control gave it a rare quality in this era of hyper-controlled politicking, Sabato added.

"What's most important about it is that it's not contrived," he said. "It's a real event and that distinguishes it from 99 percent of what happens in the campaign season."
Like me, Ann Althouse isn't buying the puffery:
Did she do anything? Other than canceling her appearances - which she had to do to show decent sensitivity - she made a lot of ineffectual phone calls. For 5 hours, we're told, she "continued to call up and down the law enforcement food chain, from local to county to state to federal officials." She says, "I knew I was bugging a lot of these people."

Afterwards, she used the occasion to make a show of her emotions (or did you think she was cold and mechanical). [snip]
Is that what you want in a President? Someone who feels extra confusion because she's a mother? 

But I don't believe that for one minute. I think that was just what was considered a good script. I don't happen to think it is a good script, because I don't want a President to roil into a mommyesque ball of emotion when a few people are in danger.
But it's not just the leadership meme that Hillary will be using this incident to exploit. There's the ever-looming effort of hers to destroy our excellent health care system and bring it to the level of Britain's horrific NHS that she will doubtless put this crisis in service to.

The latest report is that the hostage taker, Mr. Leeland Eisenberg, spoke to CNN (great choice if you want to reach Hillary!) to complain that he could not afford the mental health care he needed.

Eisenberg had a hostage call CNN three times and spoke to network staffers during the standoff, CNN reported after the ordeal was over and all the hostages were safe. Eisenberg said he wanted help getting psychiatric care, but had been turned away because he didn't have the money.

"I need to speak to Hillary Clinton," CNN quoted him as saying. "Something's got to change. Ordinary people need help" with their insurance.
He'd been scheduled that afternoon to make an appearance in a domestic violence  hearing and I suppose this notion of making himself the center of the drama was a more appealing choice to him than punishment for  banal, anti-social behavior alone.

In any event the claim that he could not get mental health care because he lacked adequate resources seems unlikely. A quick Google shows all these community resources for those who need mental health treatment:  

All around the story tastes "just like from the can."

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