There are few American politicians for which I have the kind of respect I have for George McGovern.
He is a brave, thoughtful, and thoroughly decent man - completely unlike so many hacks typically sent to Washington.
But I think he is wrong here.
The problem with Hillary isn't just her being a woman, although I don't doubt it is for America's large apron-and-cookie-baking set.
Mrs. Clinton is an unpleasant personality, full stop. Her intelligence and energy simply do not compensate for that fact.
Now, despite all the talk people do about issues, it truly is, I believe, the qualities of personality and character revealed that influence the votes of most or many.
And this is not a shallow consideration. People want to be comfortable with the personality characteristics of the leader making decisions for them.
In the end, issues often reduce to little or nothing. Just look at Bill Clinton's eight years in the White House. You might well think a moderate Republican had held the office, judged by actual achievements.
He (and she) utterly failed on solving America's healthcare problems, despite raising great hopes. They took pride in ending conventional welfare. He sent missiles flying to kill innocent people and launched a small war in Serbia. He appointed some nasty pieces of work to offices.
America is fundamentally a very conservative country, one largely comfortable with militarism and huge, anti-democratic empire. It has always had a tendency towards a degree of fascism despite the high-sounding words of the Bill of Rights, words ignored or abused for the greatest part of the country’s history.
The countless abuses of its growth from thirteen colonies to a sea-to-sea colossus only differ in ethical qualities from those of Germany trying to secure the chief place in Europe because the people America overran – Spanish, Mexicans, various native tribes previously guaranteed their places on the plains, Hawaiians, and others - were smaller in numbers and less well organized. It was only briefly liberal-minded during the period of the Great Depression into the Cold War.
That liberalism was purchased at the cost of the Democratic party tolerating institutional racism in the South. Mrs. Roosevelt pleaded with her husband in private to do something about the lynchings and abuse in the South, but he explained that his coalition depended on the support of Southern Democrats.
When a Democrat finally did do something, the party lost its Southern following. And there things remain today.
No person elected will be able to create any dramatic change in the tenor of the nation, and that includes the remarkable Obama. He will put a friendlier, more cooperative face forward to a world horrified by Bush’s brutality, and perhaps succeed at this or that little change, but that’s as much as we can hope for.
Hillary’s metallic personality does not offer even this promise.
The overwhelming sense of her bind ambition – understood by many witnessing years of her ghastly marriage, her ethics about being truthful and consistent, her embarrassing compromises in rising to the Senate, and now her mud-slinging campaign – leave many, on the left as well as the right, with little confidence in her. This is of course a fault of many national politicians, but people like at least the illusion that it is otherwise.
