Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), wife of Bill, former First Lady of Arkansas and the United States, was interviewed on Larry King Live, on Nov. 17, 2004, in connection with the opening of the WJC Presidential Library overlooking the Arkansas River in Little Rock, AR.
Asked about whether she would participate in a filibuster against Pres. GWB nominees to the federal judiciary, she said she already had, but had voted in favor of over 200 and voted against no more than ten. Filibusters are important, she said, because they were one of the few tools available to protest the appointment of people to life-time judiciary positions who were not "within the mainstream" of American political thought, attitude or sympathy.
I was struck by the idea of being within the mainstream.
This mainstream is interesting.
You can't see it, but you know it's there.
Have you ever swum in a flowing river?
I swam in the Delaware as a boy. One time, a vacation trip with family.
You cannot swim upstream. The current carries you downstream. Swimming upstream against the flow exhausts you in no time flat.
You must go with the flow. You have no choice. The river flows in one direction only, while you swim, float would be a more apt term, in it.
Can a river reverse course? Only in the event of a cataclysm, such as an earthquatke, a shifting of the tectonic plates.
I don't think we've seen that in this country since the Civil War.
Elections are incremental changes, not cataclysmic.
Wise words, O'Neil.
Posted by: rs | November 28, 2004 at 10:30 PM
While the new appointees may be forced to go with the flow, we all know that they can put up barriers to slow-up the flow or even forge new channels of deviation.
Take nothing for granted. Senator Clinton is an intelligent lady who may, sooner than later, be our President.
Posted by: O'Neil | November 28, 2004 at 10:06 PM