On Monday, there was a fascinating piece in Tiger Beat On The Potomac in which some unnamed people in the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton whispered to a reporter that the campaign was sending out feelers to what the story laughingly referred to as the foreign-policy "elders" of the Republican Party. The list of foreign policy "elders," according to TBOTP's sources, included the following examples of the Republican Undead:

Henry Kissinger: war criminal and abettor of abattoirs around the world.

James Baker: political survivor, mastermind of the Great Florida Ratfck of 2000, Bush family retainer.

George Schultz: potential Iran-Contra stool pigeon.

Condoleezza Rice: National Security Advisor during Worst National Security Disaster in U.S. History.

Also:

Stephen Hadley, a national security adviser to then-President George W. Bush who also is considered an elder, dodged when asked to answer "yes or no" on Thursday whether Trump has the temperament to be president. Hadley's response, however, offered a glimpse into the dilemma facing Republicans wondering whether to back Trump: By casting him off, do you undermine your chance to shape the party's future? "It's a very difficult position that a lot of Republicans are in and it sounds easy so a number of my Republican friends have said, 'He does not have the temperament, and therefore, I endorse Hillary Clinton.' And that is a legitimate approach," he said during a POLITICO Playbook Breakfast. "The problem with that approach is that Republicans will then say, 'Well, you know, you really weren't a Republican anyway' and shelve them. And you then deal yourself out of the debate within the Republican Party about what does the Republican Party stand for."

Hadley also once said this:

What the president has said is that we do not torture. And he said that while we need to be aggressive in the war against terror, we also have to do it in a way that complies with U.S. law, with U.S. treaty obligations and with the Constitution.

This, as we have come to learn, is a fairly demonstrable non-fact.

Now, the story is intriguing if looked at in a certain way. Reading the tea leaves laid out by anonymous bureaucrats to reporters is always cut-rate Kremlinology, but let's do it anyway. I can't imagine at this point that there aren't a number of somebodies within the HRC campaign already planning what to do once the election is over and HRC wins. (That seems fairly prudent to me.) What if there is some internal tug-of-war breaking out between the people who want President HRC to govern from "the middle," which I consider a fairly mythical place at the moment, and some of the people who want her to genuinely be an agent of change on every front? (Let's guess that the latter group is made up of younger people.) Certainly, that's a fascinating political story on which to keep a weather eye for the rest of the campaign, and it can't be easy for the candidate herself to navigate its course, either.

However…

I live in the bluest damn state there is east of Hawaii. My senators are Senator Professor Warren and Edward Markey. Less than a third of my fellow citizens are Republicans. (Granted, one of them is the governor, but let's move on.) HRC could not lose the Commonwealth (God save it!) even if she drank a polyjuice potion and campaigned here transformed into Alex Rodriguez. So I can say this full in the knowledge that what I say will not have the slightest effect on the outcome of the presidential election. But it is not negotiable.

If Hillary Clinton actively seeks, or publicly accepts, the endorsement of Henry Kissinger, I will vote for Gary Johnson and Bill Weld on November 8. (Jill Stein, you might've been a contender, but going off to Red Square to talk about Vladimir Putin and human rights? Being an honored guest of a Russian propaganda channel? I don't think so.) Kissinger is a bridge too far. He is responsible for more unnecessary deaths than any official of a putative Western democracy since the days when Lord John Russell was starving the Irish, if not the days when President Andy Jackson was inaugurating the genocide of the Cherokee. He should be coughing his life away as an inmate at The Hague, not whispering in the ears of a putatively progressive Democratic presidential candidate. I can tolerate (somewhat) the notion of her reaching out to the rest of the wax museum there, but Kissinger is a monster too far. He is my line in the sand. I can choose who I endorse to lead my country, a blessing that Henry Kissinger worked his whole career to deny to too many people.

Plus, I really do want Bill Weld to be vice-president.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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