Hillary Clinton

As I was watching the coverage of Hillary Clinton’s three-percentage-point victory over Barack Obama in today’s New Hampshire primary, I have to admit that I was not terribly impressed by the media’s insistence upon this being such a huge victory. In fact, some anchors, pundits and other politicos were ready to declare this one of the biggest upsets in history.

Although polling seemed to indicate that Obama would win by a rather notable margin, Hillary took a three-point victory over the Illinois senator as around 50% of the precincts had reported. Why I keep repeating this three-percentage-point difference should be rather clear; however, television media were incredibly excited to overlook this point and declare Hillary’s win as if it were some kind of slaughter. This was by far no huge victory for the admirable yet over-politicized, mechanized New York senator.

I’ve got to run a little disclaimer before I continue: it’s not that I hate Hillary. I was on the Hillary boat between the time she began indicating her candidacy for the Oval Office and more than weeks after Obama declared his candidacy. I believed that Obama’s limited experience in politics was a huge disadvantage and that Hillary was primed and ready for the presidency. I no longer view the experience issue in this manner, and I now truly believe that Obama’s fresh face is rather preferable compared to Hillary’s over-saturation in politics. As a fellow blogger pointed out to me through Twitter: shouldn’t we be concerned that two families will have run this country for the entire lifetime of a young generation?

And it’s not to say that I don’t miss Bill Clinton. Heck, any of those Democratic contenders are light years better than our current president, not to mention that I would support any of the Democratic contenders over any of the Republican candidates. And it’s not so much partisanship that drives me to this opinion; as my father said, “The Democrats’ problem is that all of the candidates are just so good. The Republicans’ problem is that all of the candidates are just so bad!” Even John McCain has lost a great deal of my admiration after asserting that bombing Iran has some degree of hilarity to it.

I’ll give the television journalists one thing: change is indeed the voters’ message this time around, and change is what the candidates are going to need to promote to carry a convincing campaign. But Hillary does not represent change; if anything, she represents the underlying fear of standing apart from the majority. Hillary has catered to the popular conveyed opinion; that is, she has made her political choices based on the media’s projections of what the American people want. In other words, she is complicit. In harsher words, she panders. It depends on your prerogative.

On a more basic and obvious level, in the line of what her critics have been saying, Hillary is too mechanized. She is steeped in institutionalized politics, something that is a far cry from the kind of change we need to revive the integrity once viewed as a quality essential to being the American president.

What I ultimately don’t believe is that Hillary is the answer to uniting our country. I don’t believe that her message carries the kind of optimism for our country embodied by Barack Obama. Nor do I believe that any of the Republican candidates even come close to inspiring hope for this country. And where Obama shows true promise for me is in that he has the potential to win this election while still being more viable than the other Democratic candidates who share his vision. As far as I’m concerned, Hillary is closer to being a Republican candidate in the spectrum of the entire field of contender because she lacks the appeal of being able to bring this extremely divided country any closer together. Her message is about promoting herself, as are the messages of virtually every single other viable, big-name candidate aside from Obama and Edwards. The change we need will begin with electing a president who draws voters by giving us a vision, not through “I-told-you-so” or “look-at-me” politics.

I do not want a candidate whose message is essentially self-promotion, nor does the vast majority of my generation. After seven years of severe incompetency, this is not about a single candidate’s whims and desires. This is not about the candidate who wants their name in the books.