Hillary and the X-Files constituency
If there is a single question the average American would ask if elected to the White House, it arguably is: OK, so what’s really the deal at Area 51?
In this respect, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton may speak for us all in her recently noted suggestion – a lighter campaign moment, to be sure, but still, hey, the truth is out there – that the next president should “open the files” on the Nevada Air Force base where classified intel on extraterrestrials is supposedly in storage.
In March, she told Jimmy Kimmel that she would be open to re-examining the subject of unidentified flying objects. Or, as she noted, with her usual command of policy, “Unexplained Aerial Phenomenon.”
In the past few weeks, she has merrily doubled down, noting in a radio interview that “there’s enough stories out there that I don’t think everybody is just sitting in their kitchen making them up.”
Actually, maybe they are. But like so many life forms in this vast cosmos, she is not alone – at least not in wanting to “get to the bottom” of the whole UFO, or UAP, thing.
Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, asked for a review of the Roswell, N.M., crash of an alien spacecraft, rumored since the Truman administration. President Jimmy Carter went so far as to assert that he saw a UFO in Georgia outside a Lions Club meeting in the late 1960s.
Even President Barack Obama, who has been accused of being an actual alien from Not Hawaii, has noted that many Americans ask him about Area 51.
In 1968, the U.S. Air Force released the Condon Report, a kind of Warren Commission investigation into the UFOs. It found no evidence of anything we should be concerned about other than “swamp gas.”
As with the Warren Commission, many disputed the findings. And now that Secretary Clinton has reopened the conversation, it could be argued that more swamp gas is now arising from this tabloid staple.
But given the scary alien behavior coming from other presidential campaigns, we welcome the diversion. Those who enjoy UFO mythology are legion, and the tabloid-y assertion by putative GOP nominee Donald Trump that Ted Cruz’s father hung around with Lee Harvey Oswald suggests a key voting bloc.
We didn’t expect Hillary Clinton, of all candidates, to inject this subject into the 2016 campaign, but we are glad she did, and not just because the Kepler spacecraft last week found 1,284 new planets, some Earthlike.
We suspect a President Clinton would be hawkish with alien life, but also terribly inclusive. A President Bernie Sanders would ask about the visiting civilization’s wealth and influence, and whether they would treat Earth with economic fairness.
A President Donald Trump would be tough – very, very tough. He’d try to get a very, very good deal of some sort and exact major concessions. And, failing that, there is little doubt that President Trump could just build a very, very bigly wall to surround Earth. Yuge, even.
Naturally, the aliens would pay for it.
This story was originally published May 13, 2016 at 3:00 PM with the headline "Hillary and the X-Files constituency."