What's Wrong with Hillary?

Even a Bernie Sanders supporter can be right some of the time. Today Camille Paglia, a staunch supporter of the Vermont socialist, takes out after Hillary Clinton. In so doing she exposes the weakness of the Clinton candidacy.

If the Republicans did not seem to be hell bent on nominating their weakest candidate, the election would have been a walk. As things look now, it’s probably going to be a blowout, and not for the good guys.

Alas, here is Paglia on Hillary:

Hillary’s breathtaking lack of concrete achievements or even minimal initiatives over her long public career doesn’t faze her admirers a whit. They have a religious conviction of her essential goodness and blame her blank track record on diabolical sexist obstructionists. When at last week’s debate Hillary crassly blamed President Obama for the disastrous Libyan incursion that she had pushed him into, her acolytes hardly noticed. They don’t give a damn about international affairs—all that matters is transgender bathrooms and instant access to abortion.

Since the Hillary candidacy, and not just the Hillary candidacy reflects what Paglia calls the dysfunction of our dramatic institutions, she is right to identify an atavistic longing, either for monarchy or pagan idolatry. In all fairness the Hillary candidacy is not the only one that fits the description.

In her words:

I’m starting to wonder, given the increasing dysfunction of our democratic institutions, if the Hillary cult isn’t perhaps registering an atavistic longing for monarchy. Or perhaps it’s just a neo-pagan reversion to idolatry, as can be felt in the Little Italy street festival scene of The Godfather, Part II, where devout pedestrians pin money to the statue of San Rocco as it is carried by in procession. There was a strange analogy to that last week, when Sanders supporters satirically showered Hillary’s motorcade with dollar bills as she arrived at George Clooney’s luxe fund-raiser in Los Angeles.

Finally, because no one else seems to be interested in it, Paglia raises the issue of Hillary’s persistent cough:

And what about that persistent cough? “Allergy season,” the hacking Hillary claimed on a New York radio show this week. (“You all right? Any mouth to mouth CPR?” joked a host.) I’m just a Ph.D., not an M.D., but I’ll put my Miss Marple hat on here. Am I the only one who noticed Hillary’s high-wrap collar, pallid, puffy face, and bulging eyes during her choleric New Hampshire primary concession speech in February? (Another unusually high collar followed the next morning.)

My tentative theory is that Hillary may have sporadic flare-ups of goiter, worsened under stress. Coughing is a symptom. High collars mask a swollen throat. In serious cases, an operation may be necessary. Is this chronic thyroid condition disqualifying in a presidential candidate? Certainly not in my view, but I don’t like being lied to—by candidates, campaign staffs, or their media sycophants.

Of course, a persistent cough can mean anything. But it is very rarely a sign of good health. Surely, Paglia is correct. The American people do have a right to know what’s wrong with Hillary.