What Has Hillary Accomplished?

Ann Althouse recently asked the question, “Has Hillary Clinton ever registered an actual accomplishment?” Good question, since her major accomplishment as the Secretary of State is to leave the Middle East imploding as she walks away on her farewell tour. If you want to know the result of her policy, just look at Egypt. Morsi, the new Egyptian Pharaoh and leader of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, just recently shredded what was left of the Arab Spring as he simply became a dictator. Before that, he most likely encouraged Hamas to rise up and start a rocket campaign, leading to Israel's reaction. While Israel downgraded some of Hamas' capability, the reality is that Hamas managed to become a negotiating partner for Palestinian people on the West Bank, showing that terror does work.

Hillary Clinton will run in a totally different atmosphere in 2016 and memory of what she failed to do as Secretary of State will be forgotten; and the fact that she was a Secretary of State will be there to provide gravities. What has Clinton accomplished in her career? In Bill Clinton’s first term, she pushed her husband to the left only to see the American people slap her husband down in the 1994 election. When Bill Clinton rejected her view and moved to the center, he saw success in his administration. Her career as Senator was hardly marked by brilliance even though she was given marks for her workmanlike habits. On the big issues during the Bush years, she supported the Iraqi war before turning against it when it became politically expedient.

Would a Clinton Administration have been any different from Obama's Administration? We don’t know, and some would argue that she would have moved to the center in the first two years, possibly learning from her mistake in the 1993-94 years. We do know that she ran to the left of Obama often in the primary, as if that was possible, and she will most likely inherit a declining nation economically due to policy that she espoused as a Presidential candidate in 2008.

Hillary Clinton is running on her husband's reputation, but Hillary is no Bill Clinton and one would be hard pressed to find any real accomplishments. But then, we elected Obama with even less accomplishments as a candidate and re-elected him despite his failure of his first administration. So maybe Clinton is right for this era, where mediocrity is rewarded and excellence disdained.