Hillary’s Thesis
02 March 2007 10:11 am by Taylor Marsh
| PHOTO: Stimmell/Wellesley College Archives Hillary Rodham addressing the 1969 graduating class at Wellesley: \”Fear is always with us but we just don\’t have time for it. Not now.\” |
I\’ve read countless books on Hillary Clinton, including the right-wing screeds that tear her apart. But there is something invigorating about looking at the idealistic college student that didn\’t know where her life would lead, but now finds herself running for president. The first viable female candidate in U.S. history.
“In spite of his being featured in the Sunday New York Times,\”
she wrote of Alinsky, \”and living a comfortable, expenses-paid life,
he considers himself a revolutionary. In a very important way he is. If the
ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution.
Ironically, this is not a disjunctive projection if considered in the tradition
of Western democratic theory. In the first chapter it was pointed out that
Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political
philosophy. As such, he has been feared — just as Eugene Debs or Walt
Whitman or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most
radical of political faiths — democracy.” – Hillary Diane Rodham
This is fascinating to me. From secrets to open air, Senator Clinton\’s 92-page
college thesis about Saul
Alinsky, her mentor, is now being read and dissected to see if it says anything
about her. One reason is that Alinsky\’s two books use the one word Republicans
are dying to hang around Clinton\’s neck: Reveille for Radicals and
Rules for Radicals. Radical? Hillary Clinton? That\’s simply hilarious.
I don\’t know about you, but I\’m a fairly different being than I was in college.
That said, my values have stayed the same. As for my politics, well, I was way
too young to be a Goldwater girl like Hillary, but I was a Reagan Democrat.
As life goes by you change. I haven\’t voted Republican since and likely never
will. If Hillary Clinton is a \”radical,\” well, then the word has lost
its meaning.
The problem is that yesterday\’s college thesis can become today\’s oppo research.
I haven\’t read the paper, because you have to travel to Wellesley to do so,
but I thought the article\’s break out of Saul Alinsky\’s “rules of power
tactics\” was instructive. I think you\’ll recognize the tactics, but they\’re
used far beyond just \”radicals.\”
\”Personalize it\”
Saul Alinsky\’s rules of power tactics, excerpted from his 1971 book \”Rules
for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals\”1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Whenever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man\’s most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into
its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
Talking to one of the original swiftboater ad producers, Chris Lacivita, at
the end of the article, you already can see the nasty general election campaign
coming.
\”Maybe you look at the contrast. What year did Hillary write this paper?
1969.\”And where was John McCain in 1969? A POW in Vietnam.\”
I get it. Hillary was young. McCain was a war hero. So now Hillary is what exactly? As for McCain, sorry, but being 72 at his inauguration makes John an old man.
