I know it’s a long established tradition in American politics, but it seems to have played a larger role this year than most, particularly with the attacks on Obama for a rather tenuous connection to former 1960’s radical Weatherman member William Ayers, and the less tenuous, but equally as asinine connection to his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright (which seemed to be the only story the media focused upon this campaign season for many weeks after a few out of context statements from a sermon were broadcast incessantly on You Tube, and all the cable nets). It’s stupid because you can almost always find these types of innocent connections between politicians and various controversial figures or organizations (at least controversial to some people in some places at some times).
The latest to come to light is Hillary Clinton’s former internship at a so-called “left wing” law firm in Oakland California back in the day:
When Hillary Rodham Clinton questioned rival Barack Obama’s ties to 1960s radicals, her comments baffled two retired Bay Area lawyers who knew Clinton in the summer of 1971 when she worked as an intern at a left-wing law firm in Oakland, Calif., that defended communists and Black Panthers.
“She’s a hypocrite,” Doris B. Walker, 89, who was a member of the American Communist Party, said in an interview last week. “She had to know who we were and what kinds of cases we were handling. We had a very left-wing reputation, including civil rights, constitutional law, racist problems.”
Malcolm Burnstein, 74, a partner at the firm who worked closely with Clinton during her internship, said he was traveling in Pennsylvania in April when Clinton attacked Obama for his past interactions with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, members of Students for a Democratic Society who went on to found the bomb-making Weather Underground.
“Given her background, it was quite hypocritical,” Burnstein said. “I almost called the Philadelphia Inquirer. I saw what she and her campaign were saying about Ayers and I thought, ‘Well, if you’re going to talk about that totally bit of irrelevant nonsense, I’ll talk about your career with us.’ “[…]
“The very things she’s accusing Barack of could be said of her with much greater evidence,” said Tom Hayden, a leading anti-Vietnam War activist, author and self-described friend of the Clintons.
Robert Reich, who went to Yale Law School with Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton and later served in the Clinton administration, called Hillary Clinton’s attack on Obama “absurd,” adding: “That carries guilt by association to a new level of absurdity. Where does guilt by association stop? I mean, she was a partner of Jim McDougal in the 1980s, for crying out loud.” Reich is now an Obama supporter.
First of all, I’d like to commend Senator Clinton (or her youthful self) for taking this internship in the first place. As a Yale law student, I’m sure she could have found a less controversial and better paying internship elsewhere. In our system of justice where the rule of law prevails (or is supposed to prevail) over the rule of our elected officials in Government, everyone is entitled to a defense for alleged crimes. That goes for KKK members as well as Black panthers, for Neo-Nazi groups as well as members of the Communist Party, for police officers accused of shooting unarmed African Americans as well as for black men accused of killing cops. It’s the foundation of one of our country’s highest ideals, that we are all equal in the eyes of the law.
What she did back then was admirable in my view. She worked at a law firm dedicated to defending people who were highly unpopular in their heyday, and remain lightening rods for hatred among many even today. That is service in the finest traditions of America’s lawyers, because it serves to provide even the most despised people their day in Court, with a chance to contest the charges brought against them by the Government. Otherwise, we would still be living in the age of Frontier justice and vigilante lynchings where innocent people were judged and condemned to death merely based on wild accusations and their racial or political identity by lawless mobs. What she did took courage at a time when this nation was more polarized along political and racial lines than we are today, and when assassination and violence were tactics practiced by partisans on both the right and the left sides of our political spectrum.
As for the charges of hypocrisy leveled against her by her former colleagues, I must sadly agree with them. It is ridiculous to tar Barack Obama with these so-called “radical associations” promoted by many Hillary supporting blogs on less than even flimsy evidence, while ignoring her own past history of a far greater involvement with such figures. It’s stupid politics, as well.
Hillary as a young law student acted in the best interest of our country when she worked to defend people whose political views were and often still are outside the mainstream of prevailing public opinion. She was standing up for our Constitution and the Rule of Law embodied within it, just as the ACLU did when it defended the Nazis who were denied their right to march through Skokie Illinois, or the lawyers who defended radical right wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh. To turn around now, when it is convenient for her politically, and attack Obama for his far more nebulous ties to Ayers in the 1990’s, a man whose affiliation with the far left radical, and terrorist, group, the Weathermen occurred when Obama was a young adolescent back in the mid-seventies, is the height of political opportunism and blatant McCarthyist style smear and fear tactics.
I commend Hillary Clinton, the young law student who stood up for America’s principle of justice for all, as embodied in our laws, and particularly in the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution. However, I condemn Senator Hillary Clinton and her campaign for employing the same exact “guilt by association” political tactics that she so roundly decried when she and her husband were the target of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy by conservative and Republican attack hacks in Congress and the media.
You can’t have it both ways Senator Clinton. You are running for the highest political office in our nation. The oath the president must take upon inauguration take would require you to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.” You can start by observing the spirit of that oath by and calling off your negative spin doctors and by publicly apologizing for, and loudly denouncing, the excesses of your campaign staffers and supporters who have inserted such venomous and dangerously divisive topics into this year’s Democratic Presidential Nomination race.
I think very highly of the young Hillary Clinton based on her past work on behalf of the weak and defenseless people of our country. I’d like to think some of that young woman’s idealistic nature still makes up a large part of Senator Hillary Clinton’s character, even though evidence of any such deeply held ideals and principles hasn’t been on display much during this election year. Senator Clinton, you can go a long way to restoring your tattered reputation among many in your party by returning to those bedrock principles and leading your supporters away from the unmitigated hatred and bile we have seen directed toward Senator Obama for no other reason than that he stood in your way to a second Clinton Presidency. It would be the politically expedient thing for you to do, but, more importantly, it would be the right thing for you to do.
I hope you can still find that young woman’s courage and conviction in your older self and take the necessary steps needed to heal the divide within your own party. Now, more than ever, we need a return to governance by both big D and little d democrats. We cannot afford another 4 years of the failed policies of right wing Republicans with their politics of personal destruction, their racist and bigoted appeals to voters, their trampling of our civil liberties and rights, and their failed foreign and domestic policies which have harmed so many for the benefit of so few. If you love your country like you say you do, look past your ambition and remember the better part of your nature. Become the leader we need, and unite your supporters with Senator Obama’s to accomplish the only thing that really matters this year: saving our nation from the damage done to it by the incompetence, corruption and despotism of the last eight years of Republican rule.