Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination

It’s fitting for a political blogger, I suppose, that this 1000th post on the site is one detailing why I plan to vote for Hillary Clinton in Georgia’s primary next year.

As some of you regular readers will know, I became a Democrat in May of this year, following the GOP’s shooting itself in the foot with their attempt at “Comprehensive Immigration Reform”. I caught a little bit of flak for that (far less than I expected, really), but I’m still happy with the decision. I’ve certainly not shifted left in my views (which, where domestic policy is concerned, were never of the social con variety in any case), and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of refraining from netroots-type attacks on my former party.

The other thing that really hasn’t changed is my personal theory on how I decide to vote for a presidential candidate. That’s probably a subject for a separate post, but the nuts and bolts of it are that the letter appended after the candidate’s name matters much less than the authenticity a candidate displays while defending policies or positions with which I agree — Or proposing new policies that I may or may not agree with, but feel would serve the country well. I think there’s a lot of utility in working to have a political party control one or both houses of Congress, so that checks and balances can remain in place, or particularly bad administrations can be hogtied somewhat. There’s far less utility in determining who one will vote for for the office of President based on their party affiliation.

The President has to make decisions that affect the entire country, and everyone in it. He or she must ultimately drive the national conversation, even if it’s only in attempts to convince us that this or that bill, or policy will serve all of our ends. That’s a difficult enough job in peacetime, but like many other Americans, I believe we are still very much at war with people who want very badly to kill us, or at the very least frighten us so badly that we favor their own advantages over ours. The most important front in that war, at this moment in time, is Iraq.

The Democratic party of today has a very large problem with voters like myself, in that we don’t entirely trust them to aggressively prosecute that war, or to maintain an emphasis on protecting the United States during these dangerous times. That’s entirely the party’s fault, given that they’ve spent virtually all of their time since voting (most of them, anyway) to approve the AUMF trying to convince people that despite that vote, the war was (and is) a bad idea. A lot of that is politics as usual, but given the Vietnam-shaded prism that I view these things through, it seems to me that the Democratic leadership is interested primarily in two things: Embarrassing George W. Bush and the Republican party, and re-living their perceived glory days of the 1960’s and 70’s. They have believed that the only way to do that is to force a withdrawal from Iraq, and they’ve damned the consequences of such a move.

All three of the frontrunners for the Democratic nomination have served in the United States Senate, and to a degree, all of them have been complicit in efforts by the liberal Democratic leadership to undermine both the president and the war effort. In some cases, those efforts were probably driven by political necessity, in others, by personal conviction. Unfortunately, political necessity, on the Democratic side of the aisle, is tied very closely with the interests of the liberals in leadership and their desire to foist a “progressive” agenda on the country…a country I still don’t believe is as liberal as the Democratic leadership would like it to be.

What is it, then, that separates Clinton from Edwards and Obama? It certainly isn’t any sterling record in the Senate, and it definitely isn’t her husband’s record as president. It’s not that I see her as any less dissembling than Edwards or Obama, or any less nakedly ambitious. No, the deciding factor for me (having already decided against any of the Republican candidates) is that Hillary Clinton hasn’t taken up liberal positions she doesn’t support during this primary process in order to cater to the grassroots or “netroots” of her party, and that she has defended her disagreements with those groups in no uncertain terms. That tells me this much: She’s not going to cave to pressure by those groups should she win the presidency either.

I’ve been of the opinion for quite some time now that the only way to move forward on Iraq in the current national mood is to put Democrats in charge of it. Even given the slim majority enjoyed by the Democrats in the current congress, their efforts in regard to Iraq have been ludicrously partisan, slanted severely towards their base, which wants nothing less than a complete capitulation in the war, and immediate and total withdrawal. The Democrats in Congress, along with their cheerleaders in the “netroots” don’t honestly believe that immediate withdrawal is the best policy…what they believe is that anything that would damage the Republican party would be good for the country.

Having watched this campaign as it has unfolded, I think an acceptable Plan “B” is to put a Democrat in the White House who not only has voted in a manner consistent with a national security outlook I agree with, but who I think has the courage and determination necessary to stick to her guns on that outlook without caving in to the liberals in her party whose only concerns are partisanship and a fierce dislike of the current president. A Democrat who was, however peripherally, part of an administration that understood the ramifications of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq cooperating with Terrorists (yes, yes — perhaps not Al-Qaeda, but explain Salman Pak?), and who has concentrated her criticism of the war on its execution, rather than its legitimacy.

Do I have concerns about Hillary Clinton? You bet I do. No one would be hard pressed to find instances in the past where I’ve stated I would never vote for her, based on what I think is her disdain for professional military officers and some of her more liberal inclinations. Hell, for that matter, I actually don’t like the Senator from New York, to the extent that at times, I come close to understanding how the Kossacks feel about George W. Bush. I’m more concerned, however, with two things: I believe she’d do a good job of governing from somewhere near the center on domestic policy (especially if Congress remains as closely split as it is today), and I believe she’s closer to where I am on national security policy than any of the other Democratic candidates for president.

Update: Welcome, Instapundit readers, and Happy New Year to you all!