Health Concerns

B1428-LH156

Health Concerns

That old, tricky devil, Karl Rove, is VERY concerned about the health of Hillary Clinton. He worries for the fate of our benighted republic. He worries about the fate of the American people who might be led by an enfeebled executive who cannot respond to the pressures and dangers of the world in which we live, and he worries A LOT about another Republican “fire and fall back” failed run to capture the White House in 2016. He was quoted as saying that Clinton had suffered some serious brain damage, but he walked that back under some unusual press pressure to say she had suffered a serious brain injury. Of course, by any measurement of sanity, a person must have brain damage to want to be President of these United States; what with wannabe terrorist groups as thick as Hillary’s post-concussion glasses, Thailand under military rule, Syria ready for civil war, Iraq nowhere near stability—just to name a few items on a President’s “to do” list, as well the possibility of a congress held, or held hostage by, the opposition party.

But I think Karl is saying Clinton is just not up to the task. Commentators are trying to be fair by saying, “Well, of course the health of a putative President is of concern. Of course age is, too.” Carl mentioned how old Hillary would be by 2016, just in passing. He didn’t mention her height, hip size, and weight, but give him time. This is sly, since he gains cover by having the mainstream media pounce on all this, but the timing is unusual. There is still a long way to go before Hillary even ADMITS she wants to sit behind that big desk on Pennsylvania Ave., and a longer way still until the primaries and even longer until the Main Event in 2016. So if tainting the lady in voters’ minds is on Karl’s agenda, it seems a little early—we all know that the American voter has the attention span of a cocker spaniel, but this may be the new strategy: the death by a thousand cuts.

We already have Benghazi to look forward to—an endless succession of congressional “hearings” and innuendo contests (which, karaoke-like, are a bit off tune, but a hell of a lot of fun for the drunken dingers). We’ll have Monica Lewinsky and Bill and fellatio in the taxpayers’ house in that same room Hillary wants to sit in, and we’ll have Whitewater, and maybe Troopergate, from Bill’s old days as Playah-in-Chief when he was doing Arkansas. Maybe the fabulous GOP Brain Trust (Mitt trusted them and we all know how THAT turned out) has decided that all those arrows won’t be enough to mortally wound the Warrior Queen, so they are putting extra arrows in the quiver, hoping one will resonate with voters and twang its way to her elective death.

It’ll be a case of Clinton money and contacts and power and connections versus—what? Rand Paul? Marco Rubio?—an invitation to voters to indulge their hatreds and fears, to vent their frustrations at the struggling economy and the dizzying pace of social change. It will be Establishment politics, Democratic style, versus a distinctly libertarian bent (the liberal version of a Tea Party). So far this primary season, the voters have bagged the Tea party in favor of more “establishment” GOP candidates, even though those very candidates have changed the definition of “establishment” by pushing the whole party to the right. So maybe they worry and maybe they get desperate and maybe they say and do things which will be picked up by the media and blown out of proportion (is there is any sense of proportion left in American politics?), and Hillary will get to choose her own White House china and linens by default.

There have been health issues concerning our Presidents going back a while, including FDR’s polio, Eisenhower’s heart problems, JFK’s Addison’s Disease, Nixon’s phlebitis, and Carter’s lusting in his heart (which many suffer from and cannot—in our time and culture—really be called a “disease.”) The problem with tricky folk is that they can’t go straight. They weasel and swerve and sling surreptitious mud and never stop. They don’t know how to be straight, wouldn’t know facts if they fell in bathtub-sized chunks from the sky onto their heads, and taint every process they awkwardly, sly, cunningly try to manipulate. It’s not that Clinton doesn’t have some questions to answer, but I cynically believe that straight answers—especially on health issues—in an election year are about as rare as NFL championships are for the Cleveland Browns.

During Clinton’s hearings in congress on Benghazi, I repeatedly told the legislators what to ask her, what I wanted Clinton to answer for, but I guess they couldn’t hear me through the TV screen. And if the GOP wins the senate, she must have a clot in her brain somewhere if she thinks she will be able to do anything she wants to do during her tenure. It shouldn’t be an issue as to whether or not she is healthy, but that the republic she will be the executive of will be. So far, that’s an open question.

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