Judd Gregg: Clinton’s substance-free campaign

Hillary Clinton’s announcement for the presidency and follow-on tour was unique.

First, she is the first front-runner and presumptive nominee of a national party who is a woman. Second, she says that the reason she should be elected is that she is a woman.

She is not running on her record as secretary of State. Her time in that role was startlingly devoid of success, unless you count miles traveled as an achievement. In fact, a fairly strong case can be made that her tenure contributed to the disastrous rise of ISIS, and to the collapse of Iraq.   

{mosads}She is not running on her record as a senator. While it is true that she was well thought-of while a member of the upper chamber, again there is little in the way of real results to which one can point.

She is certainly not running on a record of ethical leadership. Her activities at the State Department set a new low for obfuscation, as she hid her emails in a manner that clearly violated federal policy. It seems clear that her approach was aimed at side-stepping the law and thwarting the public’s right to know.

She does claim to be running to defend Middle America from the avarice of Wall Street. It is interesting that the amount she, her husband and her daughter collected and to some extent used to support themselves through their foundation, their speeches and their books during the last few years probably exceeds the combined income of the CEOs of the five largest Wall Street banks by millions of dollars.  

Avarice is of course in the eye of the beholder. But her charges ring a bit hollow in the face of the way the Clinton Foundation has been funded and used.

She is not running because she is comfortable with scrutiny from the media on her past activities or her future plans. 

Reporters who follow her on the trail find access to her — and even her willingness to answer basic questions — tightly circumscribed. In fact, a reporter who was suppose to be part of the group following her in the press pool recently was told he could not participate. His newspaper — the Daily Mail — has been critical of Clinton in the past. 

She is not running because she wants to take courageous stances on the issues of the day. After weeks of avoiding the trade debate that is currently roiling Congress, she now has taken a position on both sides of the issue.   

“‘I am against it but also for it,” seems to be her approach on both fast-track trade authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).  

Even though her former boss President Obama is in a serious and important struggle to pass legislation he genuinely believes will raise America’s economic wellbeing, she evades and fudges.

This behavior must be especially galling to the president, since Clinton aggressively supported TPP during her time as secretary of State. Her help now could swing the votes Obama needs.

She is not running on the issue of foreign policy.  

She has not told us what she wants to do in Iraq or how she would deal with ISIS and the fundamentalist terrorist threat. It’s unknown whether she even supports the president’s recent decision to move more training troops into Iraq.  

Foreign policy and national security issues requiring substantive positions have disappeared from her lexicon.  

Some of the most exceptional leaders in the post-World War Two period have been women. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who basically changed the western world’s approach to market economies and buttressed President Reagan’s willingness to confront the Soviet Union, was one of the most extraordinary leaders of her time.  

Current German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the lynchpin of strong policy and sanity in a chaotic Europe today.  

In both cases, however, their leadership was not just a matter of them being women. Merkel is a fearless leader, as Thatcher was, who takes on tough issues, setting the course for her nation and defining its place in the world.  

It would be difficult to image Thatcher or Merkel kicking off a campaign for leadership of their respective countries with a platform devoid of ideas and built on the basic theme of “vote for me because I am a woman.”  It would not meet their leadership test.

Maybe as the campaign goes on, Clinton will move on to substance. Maybe she will define her goals and explain her past in a manner that will give us a sense that she should be the standard-bearer of one of America’s great parties.

Let’s hope so. The country needs a sense that the nominees of both parties will be substantive leaders who can, if required, navigate America through this difficult and dangerous world.

Judd Gregg (R) is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee.