• INEVITABLE HYPOCRISY OF POLITICS

Salvaging as much of her ego as she could this week, Hillary Clinton threw in the towel, almost, and made a speech supporting Barack Obama's candidacy for the Presidency. After long months of blood letting on the campaign trail, the two held a private meeting, intended to foster some ground rules to their supportive relationship. Obama needs Clinton and Clinton needs Obama. She now supports him. Why?

In her resignation/victory speech, Hillary Clinton does not say Obama will be a great President, or Commander in Chief of the armed forces, or lead the country out of the financial mess it’s in, or even that she knows he’ll reconstruct Washington into a diligent overseer of the taxpayer’s interests. She came out in support of the Democratic Party’s new leader. He would likely have done the same thing. Rationalization? All’s fair in politics. It shouldn’t be. If politicians, or most of us for that matter, really meant and believed our own presentations of ourselves, we would more often take a stand. Once Obama crossed the magic threshold for the win, if she really believed the aspersive and admonishing rhetoric with which she littered the campaign trail, Hillary should have thrown in the towel, wished him well, good health, a happy life, thanked her supporters, and gone home.

OK, so that’s a little extreme, but the point is that such action, although it should be the appropriate denouement, would not be personally expedient or financially beneficial for the Clinton family, nor for Hillary personally. So off she goes to help wage battle against McCain, because he’s from a different political party, and McCain can’t help her repay a massive campaign debt quite as well as Obama might. She is doing what everyone would expect of her - get behind her party’s new leader and his bid to win the White House. Funny how what’s expected has also become matter-of-factly anticipated, though under objective light, is hypocritical.

This is not a let’s-all-join-the-battle against an enemy because the country’s wellbeing is endangered, scenario. This is a race for the political power and influence of a particular candidate and that of his financial backers and power brokers. Through the campaign, Clinton was vilified for repackaging herself and returning to the ring to fight another round. Her promises and presentations fell fifty thousand votes short of a win, and now she fights for her own future political power and influence. Securing public office is a game of formulated promises and their effective presentation. Having failed in that effort, her ego now takes the necessary self-preserving action of hypocritically supporting someone she evidently has little respect for. Her career’s health demands it. The rest of us now await new promises.