Hillary: I'm in
I'm starting to think she doesn't really like Hillary Clinton very much. lol. Seriously though, I don't like Hillary much either but Dowd's obsession with her husband and the Monica Lewinsky scandal is, I think, unfair, limited and yes sexist. I can dislike the woman and still not limit her to a modern day Dido -- a leader unable to harness her womanly passions and emotions and allowing them to dictate her ambitions. Please. Hillary was always a calculating power hungry go-getter, with our without her husband and with or without Monica Lewinsky.
Where Dowd nails it -- finally, a salient point after all these silly articles on Lewinsky and John Edwards' haircut -- is in her analysis of Hillary sneakily playing the gender game from both sides; Hillary really not being much of a feminist or advocate for women's rights AT ALL; and Hillary staking out such a no woman's land political territory that she can literally align with whatever position she wants to secure herself the White House, and then afterwards be unencumbered by political promises.
New York Times
November 4, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Gift of Gall
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
Girlfriend had a rough week.
First Hillary got brushed back by the boys in the debate. Then some women bemoaned Hillaryland’s “Don’t hit me, I’m a girl” strategy.
The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus deplored the “antifeminist subtext” of Hillary’s campaign playing the woman-as-victim card. “Using gender this way,” she said, “is a setback.”
I must rush to a sister’s defense.
Women need to rally to support Hillary and send her money because there are men, men like Tim Russert, who have the temerity to ask her questions during a debate. If there are six male rivals on stage and two male moderators and heaven knows how many men manning lights and boom mikes, the one woman should have the right to have it two ways.
It’s simple math, really, an estrogen equation.
If she wants to run on her record as first lady while keeping the lid on her first lady record, that’s only fair for the fairer sex. And if she wants to have it both ways on illegal immigrants getting driver’s licenses, then she should, especially if those illegal immigrants are men, or if Lou Dobbs is ranting on the issue, because he’s not only a man, he’s a grumpy, cranky, border-crazed man.
She should certainly be allowed to play the gender card two ways, or even triangulate it. As her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, said after the debate, she is “one strong woman,” who has dwarfed male rivals and shown she’s tough enough to deal with terrorism and play on the world stage. But she can break, just like a little girl, when male chauvinists are rude enough to catch her red-handed being slippery and opportunistic.
If the gender game worked when Rick Lazio muscled into her space, why shouldn’t it work when Obama and Edwards muster some mettle? If she could become a senator by playing the victim after Monica, surely she can become president by playing the victim now.
Sometimes when Hillary takes heat, she gets paranoid and controlling. But this time she took the heat by getting into the kitchen. After trying to have it both ways during the debate, she tried to have it both ways after the debate.
In New Hamphire on Friday, she stayed above the fray, saying that her male rivals are not “piling on” because she’s a woman but because she’s “winning.” Meanwhile, she let her aides below the fray stir up fem-outrage by putting a video on the campaign Web site called “The Politics of Pile On,” edited to highlight men ganging up on her to the tune of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro.”
Mark Penn presided over a conference call on Wednesday to rally supporters to the idea of a fem-backlash, during which one devoted Ellen Jamesian suggested that Tim Russert “should be shot.” The woman quickly repented, not the sentiment, but the fact that she shouldn’t have said it on a conference call. (NBC security remained on high alert.)
Nothing should be sacred when it comes to rousing the women’s vote, especially the working-class women Hillary needs to carry her back to the White House. That may be why she recently blew off a Vogue photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz at the last minute, according to Liz Smith: to show solidarity with supporters who can’t afford Vogue frocks.
And remember the time Hillville used a Washington Post story about a sighting of the senator’s cleavage in the Senate to spearhead a fund-raising drive with women? Dollars for décolletage. Genius!
When pundettes tut-tut that playing the victim is not what a feminist should do, they forget that Hillary is not a feminist. If she were merely some clichéd version of a women’s rights advocate, she never could have so effortlessly blown off Marian Wright Edelman and Lani Guinier when Bill first got in, or played the Fury with Bill’s cupcakes during the campaign.
She was always kind enough to let Bill hide behind her skirts when he got in trouble with women. Now she deserves to hide behind her own pantsuits when men cause her trouble.
We underestimate Hillary if we cast her as Eleanor Roosevelt. She’s really Alfonse D’Amato. Not just the Senator Pothole role, but the talent for playing the aggrieved victim.
D’Amato pulled off a dramatic upset in ’92 against Robert Abrams, the New York attorney general, by pouncing when Abrams slipped one night and called D’Amato a “fascist.” Though never a sensitive soul about insulting other ethnic groups, D’Amato quickly cast “fascist” as an insult to Italian-Americans, producing an ad with scenes of Mussolini.
“It was sheer gall,” Anthony Marsh, D’Amato’s media consultant, proudly told The Times’s Alessandra Stanley.
Like Alfonse, Hillary has the gift of gall. She can be righteous while playing brass-knuckle politics. She will cozy up to former enemies she can use, like Matt Drudge and David Brock, and back W.’s bellicosity if it helps banish her old image as antimilitary.
There is nowhere she won’t go, so long as it gets her where she wants to be.
That’s the beauty of Hillary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin
Where Dowd nails it -- finally, a salient point after all these silly articles on Lewinsky and John Edwards' haircut -- is in her analysis of Hillary sneakily playing the gender game from both sides; Hillary really not being much of a feminist or advocate for women's rights AT ALL; and Hillary staking out such a no woman's land political territory that she can literally align with whatever position she wants to secure herself the White House, and then afterwards be unencumbered by political promises.
New York Times
November 4, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Gift of Gall
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
Girlfriend had a rough week.
First Hillary got brushed back by the boys in the debate. Then some women bemoaned Hillaryland’s “Don’t hit me, I’m a girl” strategy.
The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus deplored the “antifeminist subtext” of Hillary’s campaign playing the woman-as-victim card. “Using gender this way,” she said, “is a setback.”
I must rush to a sister’s defense.
Women need to rally to support Hillary and send her money because there are men, men like Tim Russert, who have the temerity to ask her questions during a debate. If there are six male rivals on stage and two male moderators and heaven knows how many men manning lights and boom mikes, the one woman should have the right to have it two ways.
It’s simple math, really, an estrogen equation.
If she wants to run on her record as first lady while keeping the lid on her first lady record, that’s only fair for the fairer sex. And if she wants to have it both ways on illegal immigrants getting driver’s licenses, then she should, especially if those illegal immigrants are men, or if Lou Dobbs is ranting on the issue, because he’s not only a man, he’s a grumpy, cranky, border-crazed man.
She should certainly be allowed to play the gender card two ways, or even triangulate it. As her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, said after the debate, she is “one strong woman,” who has dwarfed male rivals and shown she’s tough enough to deal with terrorism and play on the world stage. But she can break, just like a little girl, when male chauvinists are rude enough to catch her red-handed being slippery and opportunistic.
If the gender game worked when Rick Lazio muscled into her space, why shouldn’t it work when Obama and Edwards muster some mettle? If she could become a senator by playing the victim after Monica, surely she can become president by playing the victim now.
Sometimes when Hillary takes heat, she gets paranoid and controlling. But this time she took the heat by getting into the kitchen. After trying to have it both ways during the debate, she tried to have it both ways after the debate.
In New Hamphire on Friday, she stayed above the fray, saying that her male rivals are not “piling on” because she’s a woman but because she’s “winning.” Meanwhile, she let her aides below the fray stir up fem-outrage by putting a video on the campaign Web site called “The Politics of Pile On,” edited to highlight men ganging up on her to the tune of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro.”
Mark Penn presided over a conference call on Wednesday to rally supporters to the idea of a fem-backlash, during which one devoted Ellen Jamesian suggested that Tim Russert “should be shot.” The woman quickly repented, not the sentiment, but the fact that she shouldn’t have said it on a conference call. (NBC security remained on high alert.)
Nothing should be sacred when it comes to rousing the women’s vote, especially the working-class women Hillary needs to carry her back to the White House. That may be why she recently blew off a Vogue photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz at the last minute, according to Liz Smith: to show solidarity with supporters who can’t afford Vogue frocks.
And remember the time Hillville used a Washington Post story about a sighting of the senator’s cleavage in the Senate to spearhead a fund-raising drive with women? Dollars for décolletage. Genius!
When pundettes tut-tut that playing the victim is not what a feminist should do, they forget that Hillary is not a feminist. If she were merely some clichéd version of a women’s rights advocate, she never could have so effortlessly blown off Marian Wright Edelman and Lani Guinier when Bill first got in, or played the Fury with Bill’s cupcakes during the campaign.
She was always kind enough to let Bill hide behind her skirts when he got in trouble with women. Now she deserves to hide behind her own pantsuits when men cause her trouble.
We underestimate Hillary if we cast her as Eleanor Roosevelt. She’s really Alfonse D’Amato. Not just the Senator Pothole role, but the talent for playing the aggrieved victim.
D’Amato pulled off a dramatic upset in ’92 against Robert Abrams, the New York attorney general, by pouncing when Abrams slipped one night and called D’Amato a “fascist.” Though never a sensitive soul about insulting other ethnic groups, D’Amato quickly cast “fascist” as an insult to Italian-Americans, producing an ad with scenes of Mussolini.
“It was sheer gall,” Anthony Marsh, D’Amato’s media consultant, proudly told The Times’s Alessandra Stanley.
Like Alfonse, Hillary has the gift of gall. She can be righteous while playing brass-knuckle politics. She will cozy up to former enemies she can use, like Matt Drudge and David Brock, and back W.’s bellicosity if it helps banish her old image as antimilitary.
There is nowhere she won’t go, so long as it gets her where she wants to be.
That’s the beauty of Hillary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin
Thank you Damien. That was my point exactly.
Of course OscarGuy, competence is always preferable to gross abuse of power and staggering ineptitude -- and I'm sure Hillary Clinton's Administration would be far more competent than Bush's -- but that doesn't translate to anything more than a relative comparison and an extremely low bar.
Saying Clinton was the best president in two decades is certainly true, but it's asking which toilet full of shit stinks the least. At the end of the day, you're still sniffing a toilet full of shit, you know?
Of course OscarGuy, competence is always preferable to gross abuse of power and staggering ineptitude -- and I'm sure Hillary Clinton's Administration would be far more competent than Bush's -- but that doesn't translate to anything more than a relative comparison and an extremely low bar.
Saying Clinton was the best president in two decades is certainly true, but it's asking which toilet full of shit stinks the least. At the end of the day, you're still sniffing a toilet full of shit, you know?
But that's sizing him up against Reagan and the two Bushes, all hideous. Of course, Clinton was better than them. But he was still a lousy president.OscarGuy wrote:You may not have liked Clinton personally or cared much for most of his positions, but the fact remains that he was the best president in more than two decades.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
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OscarGuy
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You may not have liked Clinton personally or cared much for most of his positions, but the fact remains that he was the best president in more than two decades.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
What on earth are you basing that on? Her horrible positions thus far? Or her husband's equally hideous tenure as President?Greg wrote:I think the best thing about Hillary is her lack of personal convictions. If the polls go the right way, she'd do the right thing as president; and, even that would be a massive improvement.
Frank Rich says it best in his new column.
NY Times
November 4, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Noun + Verb + 9/11 + Iran = Democrats’ Defeat?
By FRANK RICH
WHEN President Bush started making noises about World War III, he only confirmed what has been a Democratic article of faith all year: Between now and Election Day he and Dick Cheney, cheered on by the mob of neocon dead-enders, are going to bomb Iran.
But what happens if President Bush does not bomb Iran? That is good news for the world, but potentially terrible news for the Democrats. If we do go to war in Iran, the election will indeed be a referendum on the results, which the Republican Party will own no matter whom it nominates for president. But if we don’t, the Democratic standard-bearer will have to take a clear stand on the defining issue of the race. As we saw once again at Tuesday night’s debate, the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, does not have one.
The reason so many Democrats believe war with Iran is inevitable, of course, is that the administration is so flagrantly rerunning the sales campaign that gave us Iraq. The same old scare tactic — a Middle East Hitler plotting a nuclear holocaust — has been recycled with a fresh arsenal of hyped, loosey-goosey intelligence and outright falsehoods that are sometimes regurgitated without corroboration by the press.
Mr. Bush has gone so far as to accuse Iran of shipping arms to its Sunni antagonists in the Taliban, a stretch Newsweek finally slapped down last week. Back in the reality-based community, it is Mr. Bush who has most conspicuously enabled the Taliban’s resurgence by dropping the ball as it regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Administration policy also opened the door to Iran’s lethal involvement in Iraq. The Iraqi “unity government” that our troops are dying to prop up has more allies in its Shiite counterpart in Tehran than it does in Washington.
Yet 2002 history may not literally repeat itself. Mr. Cheney doesn’t necessarily rule in the post-Rumsfeld second Bush term. There are saner military minds afoot now: the defense secretary Robert Gates, the Joint Chiefs chairman Mike Mullen, the Central Command chief William Fallon. They know that a clean, surgical military strike at Iran could precipitate even more blowback than our “cakewalk” in Iraq. The Economist tallied up the risks of a potential Shock and Awe II this summer: “Iran could fire hundreds of missiles at Israel, attack American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, organize terrorist attacks in the West or choke off tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s oil windpipe.”
Then there’s the really bad news. Much as Iraq distracted America from the war against Al Qaeda, so a strike on Iran could ignite Pakistan, Al Qaeda’s thriving base and the actual central front of the war on terror. As Joe Biden said Tuesday night, if we attack Iran to stop it from obtaining a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium, we risk facilitating the fall of the teetering Musharraf government and the unleashing of Pakistan’s already good-to-go nuclear arsenal on Israel and India.
A full-scale regional war, chaos in the oil market, an overstretched American military pushed past the brink — all to take down a little thug like Ahmadinejad (who isn’t even Iran’s primary leader) and a state, however truculent, whose defense budget is less than 1 percent of America’s? Call me a Pollyanna, but I don’t think even the Bush administration can be this crazy.
Yet there is nonetheless a method to all the mad threats of war coming out of the White House. While the saber- rattling is reckless as foreign policy, it’s a proven winner as election-year Republican campaign strategy. The real point may be less to intimidate Iranians than to frighten Americans. Fear, the only remaining card this administration still knows how to play, may once more give a seemingly spent G.O.P. a crack at the White House in 2008.
Whatever happens in or to Iran, the American public will be carpet-bombed by apocalyptic propaganda for the 12 months to come. Mr. Bush has nothing to lose by once again using the specter of war to pillory the Democrats as soft on national security. The question for the Democrats is whether they’ll walk once more into this trap.
You’d think the same tired tactics wouldn’t work again after Iraq, a debacle now soundly rejected by a lopsided majority of voters. But even a lame-duck president can effectively wield the power of the bully pulpit. From Mr. Bush’s surge speech in January to Gen. David Petraeus’s Congressional testimony in September, the pivot toward Iran has been relentless.
Reinforcements are arriving daily. Dan Senor, the former flack for L. Paul Bremer in Baghdad, fronted a recent Fox News special, “Iran: The Ticking Bomb,” a perfect accompaniment to the Rudy Giuliani campaign that is ubiquitous on that Murdoch channel. The former Bush flack Ari Fleischer is a founder of Freedom’s Watch, a neocon fat-cat fund that has been spending $15 million for ads supporting the surge and is poised to up the ante for Iran war fever.
There are signs that the steady invocation of new mushroom clouds is already having an impact as it did in 2002 and 2003. A Zogby poll last month found that a majority of Americans (52 percent) now supports a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
In 2002 Senators Clinton, Biden, John Kerry, John Edwards and Chris Dodd all looked over their shoulders at such polls. They and the party’s Congressional leaders, Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt, voted for the Iraq war resolution out of the cynical calculation that it would inoculate them against charges of wussiness. Sure, they had their caveats at the time. They talked about wanting “to give diplomacy the best possible opportunity” (as Mr. Gephardt put it then). In her Oct. 10, 2002, speech of support for the Iraq resolution on the Senate floor, Mrs. Clinton hedged by saying, “A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war.”
We know how smart this strategic positioning turned out to be. Weeks later the Democrats lost the Senate.
This time around, with the exception of Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic candidates seem to be saying what they really believe rather than trying to play both sides against the middle. Only Mrs. Clinton voted for this fall’s nonbinding Kyl-Lieberman Senate resolution, designed by its hawk authors to validate Mr. Bush’s Iran policy. The House isn’t even going to bring up this malevolent bill because, as Nancy Pelosi has said, there has “never been a declaration by a Congress before in our history” that “declared a piece of a country’s army to be a terrorist organization.”
In 2002, the Iraq war resolution passed by 77 to 23. In 2007, Kyl-Lieberman passed by 76 to 22. No sooner did Mrs. Clinton cast her vote than she started taking heat in Iowa. Her response was to blur her stand. She abruptly signed on as the sole co- sponsor of a six-month-old (and languishing) bill introduced by the Virginia Democrat Jim Webb forbidding money for military operations in Iran without Congressional approval.
In Tuesday’s debate Mrs. Clinton tried to play down her vote for Kyl-Lieberman again by incessantly repeating her belief in “vigorous diplomacy” as well as the same sound bite she used after her Iraq vote five years ago. “I am not in favor of this rush for war,” she said, “but I’m also not in favor of doing nothing.”
Much like her now notorious effort to fudge her stand on Eliot Spitzer’s driver’s license program for illegal immigrants, this is a profile in vacillation. And this time Mrs. Clinton’s straddling stood out as it didn’t in 2002. That’s not because she was the only woman on stage but because she is the only Democratic candidate who has not said a firm no to Bush policy.
That leaves her in a no man’s — or woman’s — land. If Mr. Bush actually does make a strike against Iran, Mrs. Clinton will be the only leading Democrat to have played a cameo role in enabling it. If he doesn’t, she can no longer be arguing in the campaign crunch of fall 2008 that she is against rushing to war, because it would no longer be a rush. Her hand would be forced.
Mr. Biden got a well-deserved laugh Tuesday night when he said there are only three things in a Giuliani sentence: “a noun and a verb and 9/11.” But a year from now, after the public has been worn down by so many months more of effective White House propaganda, “America’s mayor” (or any of his similarly bellicose Republican rivals) will be offering voters the clearest possible choice, however perilous, about America’s future in the world.
Potentially facing that Republican may be a Democrat who is not in favor of rushing to war in Iran but, now as in 2002, may well be in favor of walking to war. In any event, she will not have been a leader in making the strenuous case for an alternative policy that defuses rather than escalates tensions with Tehran.
Noun + verb + 9/11 — also Mr. Bush’s strategy in 2004, lest we forget — would once again square off against a Democratic opponent who was for a pre-emptive war before being against it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin
New York Times
November 1, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Everybody vs. Hillary
By GAIL COLLINS
Hillary Clinton stood on a stage for two hours Tuesday night, being yelled at by six men. Now this is what they mean by pressure. The most important job in the world is at stake and every single one of the other candidates walked into the presidential debate gunning for her. They began piling on from the first question. She took it all and came out the other end in one piece. She’s one tough woman. Kudos.
Her fighting spirit was all the more impressive because so many of the positions she was defending were virtually indefensible. It’s not easy to try to make a matter of principle out of a refusal to say anything specific about Social Security. And you really need a spine of steel to stand up on national television and explain why it was a good idea to vote for a bellicose Senate resolution on Iran that has given George W. Bush a chance to start making ominous remarks about weapons of mass destruction again.
“Well, first of all, I am against a rush to war,” she said. That would have been disturbing even if she had not attacked the idea of “rushing to war” twice more in the next 60 seconds. Being against a rush to another war in the Middle East seems to be setting the bar a tad low. How does she feel about a measured march to war? A leisurely stroll?
And how could she have voted for an Iran resolution that was sponsored by Joseph Lieberman, who was basically drummed out of his party in Connecticut because of his hyperhawk stance on Iraq? Lieberman, who was once a somewhat boring but apparently good-hearted centrist, has turned into a disaster area for Democrats, a one-man quagmire.
If it hadn’t been for his unhelpful performance in Florida after the 2000 election, perhaps Al Gore would be president now and there would be peace and global cooling throughout the planet. Honestly, there’s a book in this somewhere: Joe Lieberman Ruined Everything.
We digress.
Hillary Clinton is relying on her Democratic audience to understand that all her peculiar positions and triple-waffles have to do with a fear of being demagogued by the Republicans in the general election. But you would have to be a very, very committed Hillaryite to be comfortable listening to two solid hours of dodging and weaving on everything from her vote on the Iran resolution to her husband’s attempt to keep records of their White House communications secret until after 2012. (“{hellip} Certainly we’ll move as quickly as our circumstances and the processes of the National Archives permits.”)
On Social Security, the underlying message seems to be that Clinton will not support any effort to keep the program solvent by eliminating the cap on Social Security taxes until she gets elected president and sets up a bipartisan commission to provide political cover. The problem with that, as Barack Obama pointed out, is that you don’t arrive in the White House with a mandate for anything more daring than appointing a bunch of people to do a study. And when you’re talking about taxing income above $97,500 the same way we do income of, say, $30,000, it’s not really helpful to describe it as “a trillion-dollar tax increase on middle-class families.”
Clinton needs to ration her obfuscations. Otherwise, she risks looking as silly as she did at the end of the debate, when she gave a perfectly rational explanation of why she once said that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to allow illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses “makes a lot of sense,” then raised her hand a minute later to add that the fact that she understood why Governor Spitzer was trying to do it did not mean that she thought it should actually be done.
The good news for her side was that nobody else seems really poised to take her place in the front of the field. Barack Obama continues to be a calm, measured, let’s-all-work-together presence, occasionally reminiscent of — Oh, Lord! — Joe Lieberman before the fall. Obama’s vision of a presidential leadership that rises above the squabbles and partisanship that stalk the Clintons is extremely appealing. However, it’s tough to play the wise elder statesman when you’re just three years out of the Illinois State Senate.
What the debate did demonstrate was that the others deserve more time to make their case. Hillary might have looked immovable on that stage, but she sure didn’t look inevitable.
There are still two months before the first primaries, contests that as we all know only involve a tiny, tiny number of very, very special voters. (On behalf of the rest of the country, let me suggest that presidential candidates refrain from ending their rallies by saying: “We need your support! If you know anyone in Iowa or New Hampshire {hellip}”) Most of the nation has at least until next February to think about this, and Hillary really hasn’t sealed the deal.
But you do have to give her a few points for not letting the guys push her around.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin
November 1, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Everybody vs. Hillary
By GAIL COLLINS
Hillary Clinton stood on a stage for two hours Tuesday night, being yelled at by six men. Now this is what they mean by pressure. The most important job in the world is at stake and every single one of the other candidates walked into the presidential debate gunning for her. They began piling on from the first question. She took it all and came out the other end in one piece. She’s one tough woman. Kudos.
Her fighting spirit was all the more impressive because so many of the positions she was defending were virtually indefensible. It’s not easy to try to make a matter of principle out of a refusal to say anything specific about Social Security. And you really need a spine of steel to stand up on national television and explain why it was a good idea to vote for a bellicose Senate resolution on Iran that has given George W. Bush a chance to start making ominous remarks about weapons of mass destruction again.
“Well, first of all, I am against a rush to war,” she said. That would have been disturbing even if she had not attacked the idea of “rushing to war” twice more in the next 60 seconds. Being against a rush to another war in the Middle East seems to be setting the bar a tad low. How does she feel about a measured march to war? A leisurely stroll?
And how could she have voted for an Iran resolution that was sponsored by Joseph Lieberman, who was basically drummed out of his party in Connecticut because of his hyperhawk stance on Iraq? Lieberman, who was once a somewhat boring but apparently good-hearted centrist, has turned into a disaster area for Democrats, a one-man quagmire.
If it hadn’t been for his unhelpful performance in Florida after the 2000 election, perhaps Al Gore would be president now and there would be peace and global cooling throughout the planet. Honestly, there’s a book in this somewhere: Joe Lieberman Ruined Everything.
We digress.
Hillary Clinton is relying on her Democratic audience to understand that all her peculiar positions and triple-waffles have to do with a fear of being demagogued by the Republicans in the general election. But you would have to be a very, very committed Hillaryite to be comfortable listening to two solid hours of dodging and weaving on everything from her vote on the Iran resolution to her husband’s attempt to keep records of their White House communications secret until after 2012. (“{hellip} Certainly we’ll move as quickly as our circumstances and the processes of the National Archives permits.”)
On Social Security, the underlying message seems to be that Clinton will not support any effort to keep the program solvent by eliminating the cap on Social Security taxes until she gets elected president and sets up a bipartisan commission to provide political cover. The problem with that, as Barack Obama pointed out, is that you don’t arrive in the White House with a mandate for anything more daring than appointing a bunch of people to do a study. And when you’re talking about taxing income above $97,500 the same way we do income of, say, $30,000, it’s not really helpful to describe it as “a trillion-dollar tax increase on middle-class families.”
Clinton needs to ration her obfuscations. Otherwise, she risks looking as silly as she did at the end of the debate, when she gave a perfectly rational explanation of why she once said that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to allow illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses “makes a lot of sense,” then raised her hand a minute later to add that the fact that she understood why Governor Spitzer was trying to do it did not mean that she thought it should actually be done.
The good news for her side was that nobody else seems really poised to take her place in the front of the field. Barack Obama continues to be a calm, measured, let’s-all-work-together presence, occasionally reminiscent of — Oh, Lord! — Joe Lieberman before the fall. Obama’s vision of a presidential leadership that rises above the squabbles and partisanship that stalk the Clintons is extremely appealing. However, it’s tough to play the wise elder statesman when you’re just three years out of the Illinois State Senate.
What the debate did demonstrate was that the others deserve more time to make their case. Hillary might have looked immovable on that stage, but she sure didn’t look inevitable.
There are still two months before the first primaries, contests that as we all know only involve a tiny, tiny number of very, very special voters. (On behalf of the rest of the country, let me suggest that presidential candidates refrain from ending their rallies by saying: “We need your support! If you know anyone in Iowa or New Hampshire {hellip}”) Most of the nation has at least until next February to think about this, and Hillary really hasn’t sealed the deal.
But you do have to give her a few points for not letting the guys push her around.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin
As I said below, I agree. He's even worse.Sonic Youth wrote:She's not ideal, but I'll take her over Robot Obama.
Counterpunch.org
June 23 / 24, 2007
More Muscular Interventionism
The Foreign Policy of Barack Obama
By JEFF TAYLOR
Barack Obama provides no alternative to Hillary Clinton, in terms of imperial-minded foreign policy. This is doubly regrettable since Clinton herself provides no substantive alternative to the neoconservative philosophy of the Bush administration.
As with Clinton and the other "respectable" contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Obama has consistently voted to fund the war and has opposed an immediate withdrawal of American troops. While state legislator Obama opposed an immediate war with Iraq in 2002-03, he did not do so on anti-imperial or noninterventionist grounds. He opposed the war at a time when the idea was relatively unpopular, especially among his Chicago constituents. He later backpedaled somewhat from his public opposition.
Referring to the U.S. Senate authorization vote of 2002 and senators having access to intelligence reports, in July 2004, he told the New York Times, "What would I have done? I don't know." Asked about the pro-war votes of Kerry and Edwards, Obama told NPR, "I don't consider that to have been an easy decision, and certainly, I wasn't in the position to actually cast a vote on it. I think that there is room for disagreement in that initial decision." Not exactly a stunning statement of the peace position! In July 2003, Obama argued that a unilateral approach to Iraq was not the best one, that a multilateral coalition against Saddam Hussein would have been better so that "if we ultimately had to overthrow him, we would have built an international coalition that could have moved forward."
An adept politician, Obama began emphasizing his "anti-war" stance as the war became increasingly unpopular among Democrats across the country and he began gearing up for the 2008 presidential campaign. Gone was the 2004 equivocating. He had found an issue with which to distinguish himself from Clinton, Edwards, and Biden. Campaigning among grassroots Democrats, Obama sounds like Cindy Sheehan, but his real, far more nuanced views have been laid out for members of the elite Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
In November 2006, he telegraphed his "safe" imperial mindset to the powers that be when he said, "There is one other place where our mistakes in Iraq have cost us dearly--and that is the loss of our government's credibility with the American people. According to a Pew survey, 42% of Americans now agree with the statement that the U.S. should 'mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.' We cannot afford to be a country of isolationists right now. 9/11 showed us that try as we might to ignore the rest of the world, our enemies will no longer ignore us. And so we need to maintain a strong foreign policy, relentless in pursuing our enemies and hopeful in promoting our values around the world."
Of course, Obama is being dishonest when he pretends that the U.S. government was trying to "ignore the rest of the world" prior to 9/11. Isolationism did not provoke the terrorists. On the contrary, the terrorist attack was partly a result of decades of U.S. intervention overseas--precisely the kind of meddling that Obama euphemistically calls "maintaining a strong foreign policy, pursuing our enemies, and promoting our values around the world." This is the point made by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), a principled and consistent Iraq War opponent, and it is understood by millions of populist Democrats as well. When you stick your hand in a hornet's nest, you may get stung. Perhaps the action is worth the possible consequence, but don't pretend that the sticking of the hand into the nest had nothing to do with the stinging! The hornets didn't choose to sting someone minding his own business simply because they "hate freedom."
In a second speech, in April 2007, Obama told the CCGA, " I reject the notion that the American moment has passed. I dismiss the cynics who say that this new century cannot be another when, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, we lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good. I still believe that America is the last, best hope of Earth. We just have to show the world why this is so. This President may occupy the White House, but for the last six years the position of leader of the free world has remained open. And it's time to fill that role once more." Yes, the dream of Pax America must continue, only under better management--management that is more savvy in handling international public opinion.
With a straight face, Obama declared, "In today's globalized world, the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people." He continued, "World opinion has turned against us. And after all the lives lost and the billions of dollars spent, many Americans may find it tempting to turn inward, and cede our claim of leadership in world affairs. I insist, however, that such an abandonment of our leadership is a mistake we must not make....We must lead the world, by deed and example."
In his speech to the internationalists, Obama endorsed the Persian Gulf War of 1991, a bloodletting that had nothing to do with U.S. national security and was opposed by populists as diverse as Jerry Brown, Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and Chuck Grassley: "No President should ever hesitate to use force--unilaterally if necessary--to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened. But when we use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others--the kind of burden-sharing and support President George H.W. Bush mustered before he launched Operation Desert Storm."
Notice that Obama has quietly slipped in an endorsement of preemptive war with his wording "imminently threatened." And notice also the use of the Power Elite's favorite foreign policy weasel words: "our vital interests." This is a catch-all phrase that really means the economic and imperial interests of the Fortune 500 and their political deputies. Not shying away from military imagery, Obama said, "In order to advance our national security and our common security, we must call on the full arsenal of American power and ingenuity. To constrain rogue nations, we must use effective diplomacy and muscular alliances." He evoked the names of beloved figures of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment: Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Richard Lugar, George Marshall, and Harry Truman.
Senator Obama ended his speech with stirring words worthy of a neoconservative: "The American moment has not passed. The American moment is here. And like generations before us, we will seize that moment, and begin the world anew." Revolutionary fervor a la Robespierre and Trotsky has not completely left the Democratic Party in favor of greener Republican pastures!
Not surprisingly, neocon guru Robert Kagan gloated over this speech in a Washington Post column ("Obama the Interventionist," April 29, 2007). Kagan is the man who coauthored the 1996 Foreign Affairs article "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy" with William Kristol in which he told us that the "appropriate goal" of U.S. foreign policy is the preservation of "American hegemony" so we can continue to fulfill our "responsibility to lead the world." Kagan's résumé could be considered quintessential for a servant of the Power Elite. All of the usual suspects are found: Yale, Harvard, Public Interest, Washington Post, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, U.S. Information Agency, State Department, George Pratt Shultz, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Council on Foreign Relations, Henry Jackson Society, Project for the New American Century, New World Order, and--appropriately enough--an Alexander Hamilton fellowship at American University. It is no coincidence that Kagan sounds so much like Obama and vice-versa. They share an elite mindset.
David Brooks, another influential neocon writer, has been very warm toward Obama's candidacy. Obama has told Brooks that Reinhold Niebuhr is one of his favorite philosophers. This was also true for Senator Hubert Humphrey (DFL-MN), a father of neoconservatism. In the early 1940s, Niebuhr resigned from the Socialist Party, denounced Norman Thomas as a "utopian" for maintaining pacifist, anti-imperial views, and became an admirer of FDR. Niebuhr and Humphrey were both founders of Americans for Democratic Action, a pro-capitalism, pro-Cold War group, and both supported Truman for president rather than Norman Thomas or Henry Wallace in the fall of 1948.
Niebuhr used theological arguments to defend the economic and political status quo, specifically monopoly capitalism seasoned with welfare programs at home and martial imperialism leaved with humanitarian rhetoric abroad. Unlike William Jennings Bryan--a Democratic opponent of militarism and imperialism earlier in the century--Niebuhr rejected orthodox Christianity as grounded in a literal reading of the New Testament.
Like Hillary Clinton, Obama is clearly in the Hubert Humphrey-Harry Truman-Henry Jackson tradition of "muscular internationalism," with its attendant gunboat diplomacy and faux global humanitarianism. Obama also identifies with the Kennedy fraternity of the Democratic Party...not only stylistically with his movie star glamour but also with his "pay any price, bear any burden" view of the whole world as our responsibility and fiefdom. Those who want peace on Earth and who favor a humble American republic rather than an overbearing American empire must look elsewhere for an alternative to HRC, GWB, and the foreign policy status quo.
Returning to the supposed glory days of a bipartisan foreign policy is not the answer. That would only mean a return to White House/Wall Street management of the world through the fig-leaf instrumentality of the U.N. Security Council. Exchanging the Bush-Kristol-Kagan neoconservative approach of unilateral imperialism for the Clinton-Schlesinger-Brzezinski approach of multilateral imperialism yields nothing positive. In fact, the more subtle imperial approach favored by Democratic leaders may be more dangerous, as Gabriel Kolko pointed out in 2004 here and here.
What is the answer? It ain't Obama. Better to vote for Senator Mike Gravel or Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich is good but he has a Humphrey-like sentimentality that can lead to mushy-headed thinking and political compromise. Gravel is more of a no-nonsense guy with deep populist instincts unclouded by New Age touchy-feeliness. That's one reason I prefer him over Kucinich. But either of these lesser-known Democratic candidates are far better than the more-famous options of Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Richardson, Biden, Dodd, or Gore. All of these individuals supported the Clinton administration's foreign policy of missiles and money in the 1990s, and all of them supported military action against Iraq during the past twenty years.
Another option for those of us who like popular sovereignty, justice, and nonviolence is Ron Paul. He is the only GOP presidential contender who opposes the Iraq War, the U.N. Security Council, and the Patriot Act. It's true that some liberal Democrats cannot swallow his opposition to abortion--which comes from a consistent life ethic that also includes opposition to war and capital punishment--and some New Deal nostalgiasts object to his libertarian belief in small, constitutional government, but Ron Paul is far more Jeffersonian in the best sense of the word than is Obama or Clinton.
Unfortunately, Gravel, Kucinich, and Paul have no chance of being nominated for president by their respective parties. The best we can hope for is the injection of some real issues and good ideas into the primary-season presidential "debates" and perhaps a worthy third party ticket next year (Paul-Gravel?). In the meantime, Americans who are dissatisfied with needless wars and arrogant meddling could more profitably spend their time reading someone like Andrew Bacevich than gazing at the tinseled hoopla surrounding candidates like Barack Obama.
http://www.counterpunch.org/taylor06232007.html
I actually don't even think it's much of a leap forward in the U.S. either, but y'all know where I stand on this already.
The Nation
Editor's Cut
Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Cristina and Hillary
UPDATED--Her husband is a former governor and president who presided over an economic boom. She is a popular center-left senator--a tough, disciplined and savvy politician who has led voters to think that they will be getting two leaders for the price of one. No, not Hillary Clinton. She is Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina.
Kirchner cruised to victory Sunday, becoming the Western Hemisphere's second female president voted into office in the last two years, following Michelle Bachelet of Chile.
To critics who say Kirchner is simply riding the coattails of her husband, "she likes to point out that she has been a senator since 1995 and so was a national political figure when her husband was a mere provincial governor.
Senator Clinton ☼, of course, is also confronted with the same charge -- one that unfairly makes short shrift of her own achievements and talent. But while her campaign is focused on her being "the most experienced and qualified" candidate for the job, while also providing the opportunity to "make history" with her election, it might be more accurate to say that -- in the context of world history -- Hillary's more of a transitional figure than a groundbreaking one. As historian Linda Colley recently wrote in the London Review of Books , "… If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes president of the United States in 2008, this will – in terms of women's place in American politics – be a significant political milestone. In global terms, and in historical terms, however, her elevation would be less innovatory. Of the women who have been elected heads of state since the Second World War, a substantial proportion have been closely related to men who have themselves previously held high political office…. Looked at in this comparative context, a Hillary Clinton presidency would be an expression of old-style dynastic politics, and its persistence in the US, not simply a victory for postwar female liberation. If Hillary wins in 2008, and is granted a second term, people whose surname is Bush or Clinton will have presided over the Oval Office for 28 consecutive years."
In fact, Colley points out that from a global perspective, the state of affairs for women in politics in the United States is in some ways lagging. Only 16 percent of our members of Congress are women, compared to 45 percent in Sweden and 49 percent in Rwanda. 58 women have served as an elected prime minister or president, with only one coming from the Northern Hemisphere (Kim Campbell, prime minister of Canada for less than six months.)
So a win for Hillary in the US – like a win for Cristina in machismo Argentina – would represent a leap forward for women in both countries. But for the world as a whole it is a more measured achievement – no matter what Hillary's campaign would have you believe.
Edited By Akash on 1193696311
The Nation
Editor's Cut
Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Cristina and Hillary
UPDATED--Her husband is a former governor and president who presided over an economic boom. She is a popular center-left senator--a tough, disciplined and savvy politician who has led voters to think that they will be getting two leaders for the price of one. No, not Hillary Clinton. She is Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina.
Kirchner cruised to victory Sunday, becoming the Western Hemisphere's second female president voted into office in the last two years, following Michelle Bachelet of Chile.
To critics who say Kirchner is simply riding the coattails of her husband, "she likes to point out that she has been a senator since 1995 and so was a national political figure when her husband was a mere provincial governor.
Senator Clinton ☼, of course, is also confronted with the same charge -- one that unfairly makes short shrift of her own achievements and talent. But while her campaign is focused on her being "the most experienced and qualified" candidate for the job, while also providing the opportunity to "make history" with her election, it might be more accurate to say that -- in the context of world history -- Hillary's more of a transitional figure than a groundbreaking one. As historian Linda Colley recently wrote in the London Review of Books , "… If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes president of the United States in 2008, this will – in terms of women's place in American politics – be a significant political milestone. In global terms, and in historical terms, however, her elevation would be less innovatory. Of the women who have been elected heads of state since the Second World War, a substantial proportion have been closely related to men who have themselves previously held high political office…. Looked at in this comparative context, a Hillary Clinton presidency would be an expression of old-style dynastic politics, and its persistence in the US, not simply a victory for postwar female liberation. If Hillary wins in 2008, and is granted a second term, people whose surname is Bush or Clinton will have presided over the Oval Office for 28 consecutive years."
In fact, Colley points out that from a global perspective, the state of affairs for women in politics in the United States is in some ways lagging. Only 16 percent of our members of Congress are women, compared to 45 percent in Sweden and 49 percent in Rwanda. 58 women have served as an elected prime minister or president, with only one coming from the Northern Hemisphere (Kim Campbell, prime minister of Canada for less than six months.)
So a win for Hillary in the US – like a win for Cristina in machismo Argentina – would represent a leap forward for women in both countries. But for the world as a whole it is a more measured achievement – no matter what Hillary's campaign would have you believe.
Edited By Akash on 1193696311
Well, gee, she actually pleasantly surprised me.
Clinton says she'd give up some powers
NEW YORK - If elected president in 2008, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton would consider giving up some of the executive powers President Bush and Vice President Cheney have assumed since taking office.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071023/ap_po/clinton_executive_power
Clinton says she'd give up some powers
NEW YORK - If elected president in 2008, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton would consider giving up some of the executive powers President Bush and Vice President Cheney have assumed since taking office.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071023/ap_po/clinton_executive_power
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OscarGuy
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I have listened to Edwards live and he's phenomenal. I think his politics are right where they need to be plus he's moderately attractive, which is something the white house hasn't really had since Kennedy.
But I think he's the best course for our country.
And if Iraq isn't a problem in 2 years, it will be because we pulled out. Violence is still a problem, peace cannot be reached and the countless people are abandoning the capital even to find refuge elsewhere because it's not safe there. If Bush can't do more in the three years he's had so far (we're in no better a position than we were when we invaded), he's not going to fix it in the next two.
Edited By OscarGuy on 1169845047
But I think he's the best course for our country.
And if Iraq isn't a problem in 2 years, it will be because we pulled out. Violence is still a problem, peace cannot be reached and the countless people are abandoning the capital even to find refuge elsewhere because it's not safe there. If Bush can't do more in the three years he's had so far (we're in no better a position than we were when we invaded), he's not going to fix it in the next two.
Edited By OscarGuy on 1169845047
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
The best thing about both Clinton and Obama is that they understand that at this moment in time a complete withdrawal would be utter disaster for us. As the President said, no matter how Congress feels about having gone to Iraq, they didn't vote for failure when they gave the authority and funding. We have to be in it to win. They are being smart.
Edwards is just playing politics with this. By 2008 Iraq won't be the same issue it is now and the War on Terror overall will be the bigger issue again.
Edwards is just playing politics with this. By 2008 Iraq won't be the same issue it is now and the War on Terror overall will be the bigger issue again.
"Because here’s the thing about life: There’s no accounting for what fate will deal you. Some days when you need a hand. There are other days when we’re called to lend a hand." -- President Joe Biden, 01/20/2021
Exactly Damien. I'm not saying national security and international relations shouldn't be a huge priority, but Edwards is refreshing in that he doesn't think starting sh*t in other countries or trying to find an "easy" way to leave Iraq is necessarily more important than improving the lives of our citizens and addressing very grave and very bleak environmental issues (which is the ONE THING liberals and conservatives should be able to agree on. None of our pro/con arguments on any subject are going to matter if we don't have a viable planet to live on).