When A Crocodile Really Cries

A lot of conservatives such as Mike Gallagher think that Hillary Clinton's tears were fake. Neal Boortz writes,

Throughout the entire Clinton presidency Hillary's husband waved a succession of his girlfriends in front of her face. Did she ever cry in public? Not that I can remember. But let someone ask her how a campaign is affecting her and here come the tears. Don't you ladies realize how phony she is?

I think the tears were real and unplanned. As an actor, I know that tears do not always come when you want them onstage. I don't think Clinton is that good an actor.

Hillary Clinton was expressing self-pity because she might lose an election. Why is it hard to believe she would shed a tear over that? Power is a high value to her, if not the highest. If she doesn't win the presidency, she'll cry a river. You bet she will.

Boortz is completely wrong, unless by "phony" he means the Clinton marriage. Hillary Clinton would not cry over Bill's philandering. Obviously, they have made some arrangement in their marriage that allows Bill to screw around. At most she would get pissed off because his idiotic recklessness threatens the couple's pursuit of power.

I know it's hard to believe anything happens by coincidence to a Clinton. Hillary has been caught planting questions in this campaign. And then there was that moment on the beach at Normandy during the Clinton Presidency when Bill was walking along and happened to see a pile of stones that he rearranged into a cross (gag me). Of course, it turned out that the stones had been preset on the beach by aides; the whole thing was staged.

Furthermore, Hillary's tears apparently turned the New Hampshire election for her. Some Democrat women that would have voted for Obama came back to Hillary after she cried. The tears were precisely what Clinton needed to gain some sympathy. They worked. How then, could they not have been purposeful?

As with all conspiracy theories, people attribute too much intelligence to the players involved. Democrats do this when they credit every coincidence that helps Bush to Karl Rove's brilliant foresight. If some genius in Hillary's campaign had said to her, "You need to shed a few tears," some other genius would have argued, "Are you nuts? Do you remember Muskie in New Hampshire?" After all the arguments and phone calls with consultants the last thing Hillary Clinton would have been able to do is cry spontaneously at the right moment as she did.

Sometimes people just get lucky.

She cried because she might have been thwarted in her fight for power and that made some women vote for her. It's a lesson Hillary won't forget: the path to power is to show you really care about getting it.