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THE NEW YORKER ENDORSES HILLARY CLINTON The election of Hillary Clinton is an event that we would welcome for its historical importance, and greet with indescribable relief. By The Editors Excerpt
Hillary Clinton is neither saint nor prophet; she is a pragmatist of deep experience and purpose. But her toughness, her guile, and her experience—qualities that helped her patiently decimate Trump in their three debates—will be assets in future political battles. In “Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic,” Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that there was no reason “to believe that Abraham Lincoln, the statesman and opportunist, was morally inferior to William Lloyd Garrison, the prophet. The moral achievement of statesmen must be judged in terms which take account of the limitations of human society which the statesman must, and the prophet need not, consider.” In this populist moment, the attractions of continuity hold little romance. And yet Clinton not only promises to be a vastly better President than her opponent; she has every chance of building on the successes and insights of a predecessor who will leave office with a remarkable record of progressive change and, in an often ugly time, as an exemplar of Presidential temper and dignity.
Quote:Last month, in a broadcast to union representatives, Clinton remarked, “Why aren’t I fifty points ahead, you might ask.” Throughout the campaign, commentators have had much to say about her “negatives,” her “baggage.” Her greatest political problem—the reason that she is not even farther ahead in the polls—is that so many voters distrust her. She and her husband are not unique among politicians in enriching themselves on the speaking circuit and in the business world—everyone from Al Gore to Rudolph Giuliani has done so—but it is understandable that, when those fees amount to tens of millions of dollars over the years, and when Clinton speaks in such familiar tones to audiences of investment bankers, her opponents assume the worst. The Clintons are right to assert that their foundation is infinitely more worthy than Trump’s, but it is also more than fair to wish that the Clintons, knowing full well that they were not done with public life, had taken far greater care to avoid potential conflicts of interest, or even the appearance of them. There is another reason to wish for reëvaluation: Clinton’s mistrust of the media can make her guarded, stubbornly opaque—a reflex that was evident from her initial failure to come forward with her Whitewater documents, in the nineteen-nineties, to her failure a few weeks ago to disclose her pneumonia. For the most part, however, Clinton is distrusted in ways that have little to do with her own choices, beyond the choice to be part of public life. She has been the target of twenty-five years of hatred, misogyny, and conspiracy-mongering, endlessly metamorphosing from one confected “scandal” to another—Filegate, Benghazi, the State Department e-mails. As each one has proved to be more smoke than fire, the fury has found another target. Now attention has moved to the WikiLeaks dump of her staff’s e-mail. Thanks to the tradecraft of what appears to be Putin’s hackers and his fond desire to unnerve the American political class, we now know that Clinton’s aides exchange fevered political calculations; that they say in private what they might not on television; that they make the occasional thoughtless or arrogant remark. Not since the release of the Nixon White House tapes has any political figure had private communications subjected to this degree of public scrutiny. Yet no dark alter ego has emerged. Whatever Americans think about Hillary Clinton, we cannot say that we don’t know her. We do know her. And there is a great deal to admire.
