We challenge readers to recall anything that might be described as a significant achievement on the part of Hillary Clinton during her years as first lady, U.S. senator, and secretary of state.
Yet in its endorsement of her last week, The New York Times proclaimed that “Democratic primary voters…have the chance to nominate one of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history.”
The Times did not present any helpful examples but it did say of the experience she would bring to the presidential table:
Hillary Clinton would be the first woman nominated by a major party. She served as a senator from a major state (New York) and as secretary of state – not to mention her experience on the national stage as first lady with her brilliant and flawed husband, Bill Clinton….
As for how she stacks up against Bernie Sanders:
…Mr. Sanders does not have the breadth of experience or policy ideas that Mrs. Clinton offers. His boldest proposals – to break up the banks and start all over on health care reform with a Medicare-for-all system – have earned him support among alienated middle-class voters and young people. But his plans for achieving them aren’t realistic, while Mrs. Clinton has very good, and achievable, proposals in both areas.
Nothing of substance there.
Mrs. Clinton is said to have worked for the rights of women but we are not told how. We are told that “[a]s secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton worked tirelessly, and with important successes, for the nation’s benefit” – but again, we are left in the dark as to what those successes were. The Times claims “Mrs. Clinton helped make it possible to impose tougher sanctions on Iran,” with no further explanation.
We are told of the many speeches she’s made on a number of issues, but not how they impacted on events.
The Times acknowledges that “Certainly, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis deepened during her tenure” – and then hastens to add “but she did not cause that.”
And the endorsement makes quick dispatch of the issue that has been front-page news for more than a year: “Some [issues], like those about Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server, are legitimate and deserve forthright answers.”
All this reminds us of the Times’s extraordinary editorial endorsement of Hillary Clinton in her first Senate run, in 2000.
The Times raised some of the issues that were dogging her campaign, particularly that she was a “carpetbagger,” having not lived in New York prior to her Senate run. The editorial also touched on such thing as the various Clinton scandals, her being “clearly less than truthful in her comments to investigators,” “her fondness for stonewalling in response to legitimate questions about financial or legislative matters,” and “her [supportive] comments on Palestinian statehood and the awkwardness of her encounter with Suha Arafat.”
Nevertheless, the Times concluded, “We believe Mrs. Clinton is capable of growing beyond the ethical legacies of her Arkansas and White House years.” On campaign finance reform, the Times said that despite her record, “we believe she would work tirelessly toward the long-term goal of full public financing of elections.” On the Middle East, “Mrs. Clinton has, in fact, acquired a useful education in international affairs through her travels and activities as first lady.”
Summing up, the Times actually said of Mrs. Clinton, “We are placing our bet on her to rise above the mistakes and difficulties of her first eight years in Washington….”
So much for the reliability of New York Times endorsements.