Yeah, I\u2019m late to chime in on Hillary\u2019s appearance at the\u00a0American Camp Association of New York and New Jersey\u2019s Tri-State CAMP Conference, as reported on by Bloomberg <\/a>(and multiple other outlets), and as linked to by Ann Althouse<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe really need camps for adults,\u201d the former secretary of state told [the audience]. \u201cNone of the serious stuff \u2026 I think we have a fun deficit in America.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes, this is goofy. \u00a0To be sure, this was off-the-cuff, a question-and-answer session rather than a prepared speech, but what dos this say about her mindset? \u00a0Is she so isolated, after so many years as governor\u2019s wife, then president\u2019s wife, Washington insider, and rocketing from the upper middle class of her lawyerly days to clearly quite wealthy, that she doesn\u2019t understand the rest of America?<\/p>\n News flash: \u00a0\u201ccamps for adults\u201d exist. \u00a0There are \u201cfamily camps,\u201d extensions of summer camps for children, in which a portion of the grounds, or a week or two of the summer, is set aside for families, who live in cabins, eat at the dining hall or on their own, enjoy the facilities of the campgrounds, sail, swim, perhaps even horseback-ride, and, depending on the structure, have the ability to drop of the kids for supervised activities while the parents have some alone-time. \u00a0And there are dude ranches and other sorts of all-inclusive outdoor-recreation vacations, and there are certainly plenty of all-inclusive resorts. \u00a0If we\u2019re talking about simply opportunities for adults to be outdoors, is she unaware of the concept called camping<\/em>, in which one takes a tent, a cooler of food, and, let\u2019s face it,a \u00a0minivan full of gear, and heads out to a place called a campground<\/em>, and, well, camps? \u00a0Gosh, you don\u2019t even have to have a family to camp \u2014 though, admittedly, this type of camping is a lot more work than having your meals provided for you.<\/p>\n Or does she mean by \u201cneed\u201d that Americans should be provided with \u201ccamps for adults\u201d to remedy the \u201cfun deficit\u201d? \u00a0Something like Kraft durch Freude<\/a>, perhaps, except that, since it would be sincere, good-hearted people heading up these government programs, it wouldn\u2019t be as appalling as the Nazi version?<\/p>\n OK, yes, maybe she just felt the need to say something witty and clever, and it shows her lack of ability to think on her feet, as well as a basic instinct towards a desire to, as a government official, think she should try to fix everything and anything, without regard for the proper role of government.<\/p>\n But that sort of misses the point: \u00a0what was the \u00a0American Camp Association of New York and New Jersey doing shelling out the big bucks to have her as a headline speaker? \u00a0\u2014 and the article clearly specifies that she was a paid speaker, and we know what her going rate is. \u00a0According to the article, her \u201chost\u201d was \u201cJay Jacobs, a camp director and chairman of the Nassau County, Long Island, Democratic Party\u201d \u2014 which sounds pretty fishy; was he abusing his position in organizing this conference to funnel money to Hillary? \u00a0Or are camps in New York and New Jersey a far cry from the Scout camps and Christian camps I know, but just another type of business which chooses to have a big-money speaker come to its convention?<\/p>\n And what else did she say? \u00a0She claims that Chelsea when to a German-language immersion camp in Michigan \u2014 wrong; the only such foreign language camp is in Minnesota<\/a>.<\/p>\n She claimed that she planned to \u201cfocus on finding consensus across party lines.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t build relationships with people and all you do is show up to argue or show up to point fingers, you can\u2019t get anything done,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n After citing the importance of personal relationships during the Clinton and Bush administrations, she said,<\/p>\n In the years since, some of that comity has faded as members of Congress face \u201cinsatiable pressure\u201d to raise \u201ccrazy\u201d amounts of money, Clinton said. \u201cAnd the Supreme Court made it worse,\u201d she added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But I don\u2019t see how she can link pressure to raise money to the failure to build personal relationships.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think anyone really has a handle on what\u2019s happened in Washington. \u00a0Yes, the personal relationships are gone \u2014 was that simply a matter of one man, President Obama, refusing to build those relationships? \u00a0Will we go back to the status quo ante<\/em>, once he\u2019s out of office?<\/p>\n Was the naked partisanship of passing the stimulus bill and Obamacare without any Republican support, because of the temporary complete control of Congress and the presidency, simply too poisonous?<\/p>\n Is the declining trust, and the increasing openness and acceptance of dishonesty, itself poisonous for a healthy bipartisan politics? \u00a0I had speculated before that, while everyone distrusted politicians, the willingness to lie, and the acceptance of your guy\u2019s lies if they further your cause, is simply far more open now. \u00a0Witness Obama\u2019s supposed opposition to gay marriage, which everyone pretty much accepted as a convenient fiction; no one believes that he truly changed his mind in later announcing his support for it. \u00a0What\u2019s the significance of this? \u00a0Long-term, you\u2019re much less likely to support a moderate who assures you he\u2019ll listen to your concerns, and you\u2019re\u00a0more likely to support someone whose ideology is not in doubt.<\/p>\n