Blood Feud

I’ve always found American politics very interesting, probably because of how polarizing they are. I find it hard to fathom that Americans are okay with a political system that makes them choose between two extremes. With a population of 300+ million people there are bound to be some people who fall in the middle? What if you wanted more relaxed gun laws and better health care? Same sex marriages and a bigger military? But that’s a topic for another day. The book I’m going to talk about, Blood Feud, was particularly interesting to me because it talks about a divide within a party. Both groups are within the same party but on opposite ends of the spectrum, which makes me think, why not start another party? Instead, their answer appears to try and destroy/undermine the other group. And so, Blood Feud focuses on two families: The Clintons and the Obamas.

When Obama was getting ready to run for re-election, his team realized that he had low ratings and couldn’t do it alone. So they told him to make a deal with Bill Clinton. Bill, who still has high approval ratings and a significant amount of power, would help Obama get re-elected if Obama would back Hillary’s run for presidency in 2016. Bill is set on Hillary becoming president, and the Clintons being back in the White House. So he helped Obama campaign and gave a great rallying speech for him at the Democratic convention. But since then Obama has reneged on the deal, which has caused a lot of animosity between the families. Apparently, the idea of turning back on the deal came from Obama’s #1 advisor, Valerie Jarrett. She is best friends with Michelle Obama, she lives in the residence and Obama passes everything by her. She has more power than any presidential aid in a long time and was a key part of getting Obama elected.

According to many sources, Obama was unprepared and too inexperienced to be president. He is a great campaigner but poor at governing. His 2^nd term plan was to be a bully, be rude, and demand things from congress but that didn’t work. The Republicans turned down one thing after another. Plan B was to go on a charm offensive and engage with Republicans, but they are very cynical because he didn’t do this in the first 4 years. The Republicans aren’t the only ones who Obama ignored in the first four years. He did the same to Oprah, ignoring her after all the work she did for him in his first presidential campaign (supposedly getting him around 1 million votes), and now it looks like she may support Hillary in a presidential election.

Bill hasn’t taken well to Obama ignoring their deal, and started to steal away some of Obama’s staff to work on Hillary’s campaign. Obama called Hillary and asked her to reign Bill in – she said she can’t and she won’t. Throughout his post presidential years, Bill has worked hard to reinvent himself, focusing on charity, politics and education. Hillary has high approval ratings, even after she was blamed for the incident in Benghazi (where the CIA was supposed to defend the embassy), and made to lie by the President. It’s also likely that they will have the backing of Caroline Kennedy. However both Hillary and Bill have anger issues and health issues. There are questions about Hillary’s age, health and her over familiarity.

There are also worries that Bill’s heart will give out on him. What would Hillary do without him? Would she retire from politics? Apparently Bill has planned out how his death would help Hillary, saying “It should be worth a couple million votes.” I think this is quite funny, and shows just how much politics is embedded in who they are. There is also their daughter Chelsea to consider. She has started to run the Clinton foundation and will most likely run the day to day details of Hillary’s campaign. She may also run for office someday, considering Hillary has appointed her as her heir apparent.

This book offered a very insightful look into two very political families who are fighting for control of the Democratic Party, and perhaps for control of America. It’s strange to think that in a democracy we would have dynasties or legacies such as the Bush’s and the Clinton’s. Perhaps time to consider that we are being ruled by an elite? Lots of food for thought in this one!