Hillary and the Last Gasp of the Me Generation

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway

Don't block up the hall

For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled

There's a battle outside and it's ragin'

It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

For the times they are a changin'

—Bob Dylan, 1963

Odds are, Hillary Rodham sang these words as a teenager, perhaps as an idealistic Wellesley undergraduate who was seeking, as she put it in that institution's 1969 commencement address, "a more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living." 

They are the words that helped drive a generation of young Americans who saw much to change in the world and decided to take action. Much of this generation's work and service to its country, and indeed the world, has been admirable. Yet it also has been characterized by a showy, often counterproductive, preoccupation with itself. The 60s counterculture mantra "don't trust anyone over 30" was essentially another way of saying "we are the only ones who get it — the only ones who matter." 

As the wide-eyed 60s gave way to the disappointing, hedonistic 70s and the greedy 80s, the Baby Boomers became the Me Generation. And since the early 90s they have controlled the reins of power in the United States — the White House, Congress, governors mansions and state legislatures, big corporations, the media, the non-profit sector, you name it. And the same pattern held sway, good intentions (and often good deeds) mixed with equal portions of juvenile entitlement, vindictiveness and egomania. 

The Clinton and Bush White Houses exemplified this approach, and the American electorate soundly repudiated it on Nov. 4.

Today, in the aftermath of that vote, Bob Dylan's words invoke a different message to the Me generation: Get over yourselves. 

And that brings me back to Hillary. 

Hillary. A first-name-only icon like Ike, Evita, Cher, Pele, Madonna, Oprah and Ichiro. 

Like so many other Boomers she has done a lot of good for the world. But ultimately, it's all about her. Her campaign addresses were filled with "I" and "me." Obama preferred to invoke "you," "we" and "us." Even after she had been mathematically eliminated from capturing the Democratic nomination for president, she refused to yield the stage to Obama, delivering a speech in New York that all but denied the plain reality of her defeat. Instead, she offered up a paean to herself. Here are some excerpts to refresh your memory:

You know, I understand that a lot of people are asking, 'What does Hillary want? What does she want?'

Now, the question is: Where do we go from here? And given how far we've come and where we need to go as a party, it's a question I don't take lightly. This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight.

And in the coming days, I'll be consulting with supporters and party leaders to determine how to move forward with the best interests of our party and our country guiding my way.

Flabbergasting. The vainglorious egomaniac simply couldn't entertain the possibility that she lost, and that she did not have the right to get what she wanted. 

Now, the business of America is once more on hold while Hillary figures out what she wants. 

President-elect Obama is forced to delay making critical decisions about the rest of his national security team, and is distracted from the far more important task of appointing a Treasury secretary, amid the drama of whether Hillary will be appointed Secretary of State. Meanwhile, leaks are flying, stories are constantly changing and the focus of the nation is on Hillary rather than on solving our formidable problems, which are getting worse by the minute. 

How on Earth did this happen during the no-drama Obama transition?

My first thought when I heard the news of Senator Clinton's potential appointment was that the Billary crew leaked this to the press to back Obama into a corner. She's very junior in the Senate, an institution where seniority means everything, so the best of several lousy options for her immediate future would be to angle for a major cabinet post. I did not, however, think Obama would entertain this notion for a moment. Just as she'd angled for the VP job and been rebuked, so, too, would she fail in this quest. Obama represents putting the Me generation in the rearview mirror. It's what he believes in. It's what he campaigned on. It's how so many of us hoped he would govern. Isn't it? And if he wasn't bullied into choosing her as VP, he probably wouldn't be pressured into appointing her to his cabinet. 

But once it became clear that this was not just trumped up by the Clinton alternative-reality machine, another thought kicked in. Obama, as his victory two weeks ago demonstrated, is a far better politician than he's been given credit for. Bringing Hillary into the cabinet may be a coldly calculated move to marginalize her politically, straight out of Sun Tzu's playbook: keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Given her track record, Obama would be stupid to not expect her to challenge him in 2012. For Hillary, staying in the Senate would mean two years of impotent drudgery at the feet of Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy, but, more importantly, it would provide the same platform for a presidential run that it did this time around. Being a critical part of the Obama administration, on the other hand, would effectively prevent her from running to succeed him. 

Others have suggested that the two candidates struck a deal that promised her a cabinet position in return for her aggressive post-primary campaign support. 

I don't know how it happened, but I do know this: I don't like it, and it's a bad idea. 

If Obama in fact appoints her to marginalize her politically, I will have lost a bit of respect for him. Secretary of State is a vitally important job in any administration. With two wars going on and our reputation abroad in need of massive repair, it's even more critical than usual. Hiring Hillary just to keep her from running against him in four years would be exactly the kind of cynical, permanent-campaign governing that Americans want Obama to end. So I hope I'm wrong about that motive. 

Some have suggested that picking Hillary for the State post is the ultimate repudiation of the politics of the Clinton-Bush years, precisely because Hillary has been so mortal an enemy of Obama's in the past. "Appointing a Clinton to the cabinet," wrote the Times' Maureen Dowd on Saturday, "would be so un-Clintonian." 

I don't buy that. The bigger issue, as Dowd's colleague Thomas Friedman astutely pointed out in his Times column earlier this week, is that the Secretary of State and the president must present an unquestionably united front to the rest of the world. They need to have each other's back, so to speak, or foreign leaders — particularly our enemies, with whom Obama has rightly vowed to resume normal diplomatic relations — will pounce. And that stems from liking and trusting one another — from having similar world views, styles and personalities. I very well could be wrong about this, but everything I've seen and heard about these two people tells me that they could not have such a working relationship. And that would be very bad for the country. 

Finally, and not to be underestimated, there's the baggage factor. Do we really want four (or eight) more years of Billary on the national stage — and worse, using the power of the State Department to carry out their infantile grudges and paranoid insecurities? 

The world is already infatuated with Obama and eager to deal with him instead of with Bush. What he needs as Secretary of State is someone who has proven herself as an effective diplomat, and someone who can faithfully execute his foreign policy for a new era. He doesn't need someone who embodies the divisive, me-first mindset of the generation that is finally beginning to take its last breaths in power. 

Please, Mr. Obama, do the right thing. 

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now will later be fast

As the present now will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin'

And the first one now will later be last

For the times they are a changin'