Hillary Clinton’s Hissy Fit

August 11, 2009 / 10:37 am • By Dr. Melissa Clouthier

I got this from RightWingSparkle and it had me laughing. Some might not think this whole episode is very becoming…or funny. John at Powerline rightly notes that Hillary is “still angry after all these years”:

The Clintons’ “two for the price of one” shtick was always pretty weird. Hillary Clinton’s one great career move was marrying Bill, a political genius. But she often seemed to be burning with rage because her own equal, if not superior, merit was going unrecognized. That’s never really changed, even though Hillary has gone on to enjoy her own career in recent years.

Jules Crittenden says, “She’s BAAAAAAACK”:

It’s the Hill we all know and love from the campaign. Upstaged by Bill, with Obama and Biden out there on the road, doing her job, the last straw was in Kinshasha today when some hapless Congolese university student asked her, “What does Mr. Clinton think, through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton …” CBS has the vid. She looks around, a little stunned, then commences operations on Joe College, with big scary eyes. Money quote follows:

“Wait, you want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not secretary of state, I am.”

AP has the story, how she’s been out of circulation, plus the history of this “complicated couple.” OK, rest of the quote:

“If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband.”

Isn’t Ms. Clinton so very diplomatic and dignified? Restart button, indeed.

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  • http://bitsblog.florack.us DavidL

    I don’t buy the But for Bill arguement. Maybe Mrs. Clinton could succeeded on her own. We don’t know, because she never tried. Having dance all career with Bill, she stuck with him.

    It may have been a Deal with the Devil, but it was Mrs. Clinton’s choice to make the deal. So just have a beer and act like a diplomat.

  • http://jasperjava.blogspot.com jasperjava

    Melissa, what does your husband think about this? His opinion is, of course, more valid than yours.

    I don’t blame Hillary for getting angry. If that question was really phrased that way, it was demeaning, sexist, and insulting.

    But I read somewhere that the translator got it wrong: the questioner actually asked about Mr. Obama’s point of view – a totally legitimate question. Mr. Obama is President, not Mr. Clinton.

    I would like to see the video with the original French.

  • OBloodyhell

    I can see Hillary’s pique, here, but part of it also is the typical failure of an ardent feminist to properly deal with something she should, as SoS, very inherently grasp and have a feel for the proper way to deal with (hint: “pique”, while human and understandable, ain’t it).

    That thing is the fact that she’s dealing, almost certainly, with a male-dominated culture which does not fully respect her as a woman.

    That is wrong, at the least from our point of view (I qualify it solely because I don’t want to be considered ethnocentric — I think it is uniformly a wrong idea at its heart that women are inferior on the whole, as many non-Euro cultures still do) — but being pissed off at some boorish swine who doesn’t agree with that isn’t going to make them less boorish about it.

    Such foolish ideas are not well founded but they generally are well-defended. They may be pure lard inside, but they’ve got 24 inches of armor plate in front. A direct frontal assault, as by “pique”, no matter how justified, isn’t going to change things.

    As a general person I can see how she might react exactly this way against such thrown in her face.

    As an SoS, she is going to face it for her entire career, and more should she (shudder) actually win the PotUS job (ghad, if there is anyone able to screw things up more as a successor to Obama than her I don’t know who it would be)… If she deals with any Islamic religious leader, you can guarantee that will be an undercurrent. If she deals with most Chinese leaders, that will be an undercurrent.

    It’s not even like she said the wrong thing. She just allowed her anger to be easily visible on the matter. That puts the opponent on the defensive, activating that armor plate to move into position, which is going to weaken the results of her response, not improve upon them.

    “Sir, what you have said ignores my professional stature, insults my ability to do my job, and requests that I do something which I have no business doing, which is attempting to tell someone what my husband thinks on something in a professional capacity. I will happily give you MY valuable opinion. I cannot do the same for my husband. Shall I do the former?”

    Nail the guy on his sexism, make it clear and up front, but do it coldly and dispassionately.

    And it is Hillary’s blatant inability to do that which makes her a lousy politician.

  • Carolynp

    I’m bothered with all the folks who keep saying they understand her behavior. I sure don’t. Yes, of course it angers you when you are asked to speak for your husband. So what? Welcome to diplomacy you ignorant shrew. Diplomacy is when you’re asked to smile at people you’d like to kick. If she’s too self-centered and childish to do that, I understand there are a few people who are job hunting right now and she can be easily replaced.

  • http://www.johansens.us Jay

    If someone asked me, “What does your wife think about …”, I can’t imagine that that would make me angry. Even if I had expertise or a strong opinion on the subject myself, so what? The fact that someone asks what she thinks about it doesn’t necessarily mean that they think my opinion is irrelevant, just that, at the moment, for whatever reason, they are curious about her opinion.

    As someone else noted, for a diplomat Mrs Clinton’s reaction is even a bigger goof than it would be for the rest of us. Diplomats are supposed to be diplomatic. That’s why we call them “diplomats” and not “professional rude people”.

    And a diplomat isn’t supposed to be representing herself anyway. She’s supposed to be representing the official position of the government of the United States. I’m sure there have been many, many times in history when a secretary of state or ambassador had to work to advance a position that she did not agree with, and had to do it with a smile on her face and in her sincerest tone of voice. That’s part of the job.