Hillary Clinton for President
On the other hand, Hillary Clinton is one of the most qualified candidates for the presidency in modern times, as was Al Gore. We cannot forget what happened when Gore lost and George W. Bush was elected and became arguably one of the worst presidents in American history. The votes cast for the fantasy of Ralph Nader were enough to cost Gore the presidency. Imagine what a similar calculation would do to this country if a “protest vote” were to put the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court all in the hands of the extreme right wing that now controls the Republican Party.
Clinton not only has the experience and achievements as first lady, senator and secretary of state, but a commitment to social justice and human rights that began for her as a young woman. She was one of those college students in the Sixties who threw herself into the passionate causes of those times, and she continues to do so today.
The debates between Clinton and Sanders have been inspirational; to see such intelligence, dignity and substance is a tribute to both of them. The contrast to the banality and stupidity of the GOP candidates has been stunning. It’s as if there are two separate universes, one where the Earth is flat and one where it is round; one where we are a country that is weak, flailing and failing; the other, an America that is still a land of hopes and dreams.
I keep hearing questions surface about her honesty and trustworthiness, but where is the basis in reality or in facts? This is the lingering haze of coordinated GOP smear campaigns against the Clintons — and President Obama — all of which have come up empty, including the Benghazi/e-mail whirlwind, which after seven GOP-led congressional investigations has turned up zilch.
Battlefield experience is hard-won, and with it comes mistakes but also wisdom. Clinton’s vote authorizing Bush to invade Iraq 14 years ago was a huge error, one that many made, but not one that constitutes a disqualification on some ideological purity test.
Rolling Stone has championed the “youth vote” since 1972, when 18-year-olds were first given the right to vote. The Vietnam War was a fact of daily life then, and Sen. George McGovern, the liberal anti-war activist from South Dakota, became the first vessel of young Americans, and Hunter S. Thompson wrote our first presidential-campaign coverage. We worked furiously for McGovern. We failed; Nixon was re-elected in a landslide. But those of us there learned a very clear lesson: America chooses its presidents from the middle, not from the ideological wings. We are faced with that decision again.
In 2016, what does the “youth vote” want? As always, I think it has to do with idealism, integrity and authenticity, a candidate who will tell it like it is. It is intoxicating to be a part of great hopes and dreams — in 2016 it’s called “feeling the Bern.”
You get a sense of “authenticity” when you hear Sanders talking truth to power, but there is another kind of authenticity, which may not feel as good but is vitally important, when Clinton speaks honestly about what change really requires, about incremental progress, about building on what Obama has achieved in the arenas of health care, clean energy, the economy, the expansion of civil rights. There is an inauthenticity in appeals to anger rather than to reason, for simplified solutions rather than ones that stand a chance of working. This is true about Donald Trump, and lamentably also true about Sanders.