Hillary (like Bush?) is a fighter, not a quitter…

Last January, after the first votes were cast for nominees in this year’s presidential election, I noted how amazed, if not flabbergasted, I was at the level of interest people all over the world were expressing in this American spectacle.

In fact, try as I did to get friends and business associates in Europe, Africa and Asia to talk about the political situation on their respective continents, all they wanted to talk about was U.S. politics.

Therefore, I was not at all surprised when Hillary vs. Obama dominated conversation amongst international lawyers at a luncheon in Washington yesterday. What did surprise me, however, was the near-universal admiration people expressed for Hillary’s “stay-the-course” campaign strategy – no matter the cost in terms of her personal finances (she has already “donated” $12 million to fuel her terminally stalled presidential ambition) and Democratic Party unity).

But I found their admiration for her in this respect a little peculiar, perhaps even hypocritical. After all, they were all acutely aware that Hillary doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the nomination. (And I explained why in Euclidean detail; alas, to no avail.)

Accordingly, I felt obliged to inquire why they so admired this stubbornness in Hillary, which compels her to continue fighting. This, after eliciting their near-universal condemnation of President Bush for his stubbornness, which has compelled him to pursue a my-way-or-the-highway strategy in dealing with everything from climate change to the war in Iraq.

As you can imagine, my inquiry transformed me from a gracious into a contumacious host in an instant….

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