John Nichols: Hillary Clinton's other campaign: against Scottish independence
Edinburgh, Scotland Among the most high-profile opponents of Scottish independence are a number of non-Scots. British Prime Minister David Cameron has toured Scotland this week, urging a "no" vote on Thursday's referendum on whether to separate from the United Kingdom. That's to be expected. What was less expected was the intervention of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumed front-runner in the 2016 race for the presidency of the United States.
When Clinton traveled to Scotland earlier this year to accept an honorary degree from the University of St. Andrews, she was explicit in her opposition to the proposal.
"I would hope it doesn't happen," she declared.
"I would think it would be a loss for both sides," added Clinton, who told BBC interviewer Jeremy Paxman that "I would hate to have you lose Scotland."
That brought a reminder from Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond that "Scotland is not a property to be lost but a nation about to take a precious and consensual and democratic decision."
Clinton is not the only American who has weighed in on the Scottish vote. President Obama said in June, "There is a referendum process in place and it is up to the people of Scotland." That was a reasonably balanced statement. But then he added what sounded to many like a slightly subtler appeal for a "no" vote, suggesting that "we obviously have a deep interest in making sure that one of the closest allies we will ever have remains a strong, robust, united and effective partner."
On Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest reiterated the president's earlier remarks, while acknowledging in response to a question about how the United States would respond to a "yes" vote by saying, "I suspect that there's somebody at the administration who's been thinking about that at some level."
The notion of a "special relationship" between the United States and the United Kingdom is not new. And Obama and his aides have every right to mention it, just as Clinton has every right to urge Scots to vote "no" on Sept. 18.
But the notion that voting "yes" would represent "a loss for both sides," as Clinton suggests, is every bit as debatable as the notion that the separation in 1776 of the United States from the Great Britain represented "a loss for both sides." Britain obviously did not approve, as the long war that followed the American Declaration of Independence confirmed. But the idea that prominent Americans would go around discouraging others from declaring independence especially via an orderly and nonviolent electoral process does seem rather, well, hypocritical.
"It was very interesting hearing Obama in his own equivocal way telling the Scots don't do it,' and Hillary Clinton in a much more vicious argument Scotland shouldn't do it,' et cetera, et cetera," observed the author and activist Tariq Ali, who noted that the United States supported the breakup of the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia.
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John Nichols: Hillary Clinton's other campaign: against Scottish independence