View original postShe served less than two terms as a Senator, and four years as Secretary of State. That's hardly an impressive resume, even leaving aside the question of what exactly she accomplished in either office.
By recent standards, it's as impressive a resume or more than most other candidates running for either the Democratic or Republican nominations. And yes, having been First Lady for eight years does count for something, even if it's hard to judge exactly how to compare it with other positions.
View original post At what? Little to nothing is general knowledge about her law career, aside from the scandals at the Rose Law Firm, where she ran micro-scale version of the shenanigans that would make the housing market collapse a generation later. The checks people made out for the predatory loans in the Whitewater scam were sent to her law firm, with "attn. Hillary Clinton on them." In the Clinton White House, she was neck deep in a lot of the scandals, starting with Travelgate, and all the way to their looting White House property on the way out the door, as even Democrats would admit before it became clear that she was the last line of defense against a candidate they deplore as irrationally as they accuse people of feeling towards her (ignoring the point that she's been operating in Washington in the national public eye for 24 years now, with plenty of substantive policies & actions by which to assess her, as opposed to finding the candidate's involvement with a reality show or casino tacky). She was handed the job of rolling out Obamacare mk 1 under her husband's administration, and did such a bang-up job that it rolled the policy back 15 years and is credited with inspiring the Republican takeover of Congress that same year. When she decided she wanted a Senate seat as a stepping stone to her own political career, she carpetbagged one of the safest Democratic seats in the country, running effectively unopposed, from the White House with all the power and resources of an incumbent president. And in spite of that, she won the exact same state by a much smaller margin than Al Gore, on the same ballot, getting 55% of the vote to Gore's 60%. That means 5% of the people voters chose to vote of Gore and NOT for Clinton. They liked her husband's stiff, robotic vice-president better than his wife! her service in the Senate was unremarkable, as everyone knew she was simply marking time until it was appropriate to run for President, and she was given Secretary of State as a consolation prize. I defy you to tell me with a straight face that the foreign policy of the US from 2009-2013 was anything to enhance a resume. And that's not even accounting for the blatant cronyism, mishandling of classified material and abuse of the office for fundraising which have come to light in the last few years.
I won't comment on her career as a lawyer since I know nothing about it either. That she wasn't very well-liked at the time of her first Senate election, and hasn't really been since, has very little to do with her competence - in fact, seems to have quite a bit to do with her insistence on playing a politically more active role than First Ladies before her generally did. Certainly those attempts weren't a big success - I've rarely seen her be very inspiring or good at persuading the public. Qualities which you could argue a president should have, yes. For sure there would be many people better suited to the presidency - but to the extent that any such people ran, the Republican primary electorate decided to give them the boot.
As for that Secretary of State position, I think you'll find that if you dare to venture outside the Republican echo chambers, and especially if you look to the foreign nations with whom it was her job to deal, they'll for the most part tell you that she did a fine job - harmoniously working with the White House from the start despite the rivalry with Obama, projecting toughness where necessary but making friends where possible. So yes, I would certainly use the word 'competent'. I'm hardly going to give her rave reviews - but once again, those would only be necessary if she was running against people with stronger resumes or qualities. Which didn't happen in the primaries (I would agree that it would've been better to have stronger opposing candidates, rather than one elderly socialist who seemed to gain a lot of support just by default), and most certainly hasn't happened in the general.