Last year, Hillary Clinton published a book about leadership. It was called Hard Choices. This is one of the reviews:

“To its credit, Clinton’s memoir is serious, sober and substantive…. No fair-minded reader could finish this book and doubt Clinton’s essential command of the issues, whatever one might think of her solutions for them. She roams widely and delves into war and peace, terrorism and Russia, economic development and women’s rights. She knows the players and the history.” (Peter Baker, New York Times Book Review)

Of course, every candidate for president wants to talk about hard choices. This is specially true of Mrs Clinton who owns with President Obama one heck of a mess of a foreign policy.   

Yesterday, Mrs Clinton reminded us that she is not really about hard choices after all. She is now opposed to the TPP trade deal, or the same one that she called the gold standard:

Mrs. Clinton was asked on PBS’s NewsHour whether the trade deal is “something you could support?”   

Her reply: “What I know about it, as of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it. And there is one other element I want to make, because I think it’s important. Trade agreements don’t happen in a vacuum, and in order for us to have a competitive economy in the global marketplace, there are things we need to do here at home that help raise wages. And the Republicans have blocked everything President Obama tried to do on that front. So for the larger issues, and then what I know, and again, I don’t have the text, we don’t yet have all the details, I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set.”  

So she hasn’t seen the agreement’s text, and can’t speak to the details, but she’s against the deal because Republicans who haven’t held the White House in seven years haven’t raised wages.

No profile in courage.   

What if Mrs Clinton had said something like this: "I was part of the team that negotiated the deal. I would call on President Obama to release the text so that voters can see that we did a good job for workers and employers."

Or something like this: "Sorry, Senator Sanders but you are just pandering for votes with your attacks on the deal."

Instead, she took the easy way out and threw the TPP under the bus. 

She is the same "Pander Hillary" who danced around Iraq and NAFTA in 2008. Sadly, millions will vote for her because she is a woman. I guess that identity politics trumps honesty these days with the Democrat faithful.

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