Category: The Clintons

My opponent gives speeches.

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date February 19, 2008
1 Comment on My opponent gives speeches.

I love the fact that Ms. Clinton is going around giving speeches, saying:

My opponent gives speeches. I offer solutions

To complete her thought fragment: “I offer solutions in speeches.” Such an incredibly empty point from my perspective. But obviously polling has shown that deriding”speeches” works – even if you do it in a speech.

I first noticed this on Ms. Clinton’s first appearance on Meet the Press after Iowa in which she, for the first time I noticed, repeated variations of the line, “My opponent is running based on a speech he made five years ago…” And, thanks no doubt to Mark Penn, she’s still going at it.

Election 2008 Obama The Clintons

80 NYC Election Districts

The New York Times reports on some anomalies in the results reported out of New York City this past February 5th:

Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.

That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district…

“First it was reported at 141 to 0, now it’s 261 to 136 in an Assembly district that went 12,000 to 8,000 for Barack,” Mr. Davis said on Friday.

Election 2008 Foreign Policy Politics The Clintons

A Sure Losing Strategy

Glenn Greenwald always seems to be at his best when attacking liberals and Democrats. I don’t mean that as a slight. He points out obvious truths and fundamental flaws. So he did yesterday, describing Terry McAuliffe, a top Clinton aide, discussing Senator John McCain and “toughness” on MSNBC thus:

If the Democrats want a blueprint for a sure losing strategy, they need look no further than McAuliffe’s answer…McAuliffe never once dared to criticize McCain on national security – not one word of criticism. Instead, he ignored the issue, immediately switched the topic to the economy, accepted the premise that McCain was “tough” and formidable on foreign policy, and then argued that Hillary was just as “tough” and would not, therefore, be vulnerable to attack. In other words: Hillary and McCain are the same on national security – equally “tough” – therefore that can be ignored and the focus should be on domestic issues.

That is the same failed strategy that Democrats have been pursuing with complete futility for the last eight years.

Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

The Reactive Executive

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date February 10, 2008

Philip Roth, the prominent novelist summed up one of the main arguments against the importance of Ms. Clinton’s nuanced plans and in favor of Mr. Obama’s style of letting voters understand how he thinks:

They’ll respond to particular situations as they arise.

Mr. Roth dismisses the talk as “pure semantics”, and favors Mr. Obama because he wants a black president. But his summary of what each candidate will do in office is essentially correct. We cannot know what any candidate will do – even if a candidate puts forth a 12-point plan outlining exactly what they want – because in the end, Presidents are mainly driven by “particular situations as they arise.”

History demonstrates this clearly.

Election 2008 Foreign Policy Obama Politics The Clintons

The next time…

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date February 1, 2008

Kevin Drum lays out the argument Obama should make against Hillary:

The last time a U.S. president faced an unexpected crisis, he panicked and pushed us into a disastrous and unneeded war. Senator Clinton went along with him. We can’t afford for that to happen again. The next time terrorism tests a president, we need someone in the White House who won’t panic, someone who has the confidence and judgment to keep from being pushed into bluster and bombs as their first option…

Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

The process of change and changing the process

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date January 30, 2008
3 Comments on The process of change and changing the process

This is a response to the thoughtful and reflective comments written by the Floria on my posts about Hillary Clinton here and here.

I will try to respond in general to her criticisms and to specific allegations she makes. This is written as a specific response to Floria’s comments:

I…do not blame Hillary for pointing out that Obama has been inconsistent with his past positions. Edwards goes on to say that this is not a time to be discussing those things, but with Obama’s perfectly PC nature and almost messiah-like campaign, we are obliged to hearing the both sides, beyond the glittering facade he and the media portray of himself.

First, I don’t agree with your characterization of what Hillary was doing. She was not pointing out that Obama was inconsistent – she was telling a lie, or at best, distorting the truth, in order to attack one of his strengths: the fact that he has been remarkably consistent. On health care, Obama has said he would be in favor of a single-payer health care system if he was designing it from scratch, but that he realizes that this isn’t feasible at the current time, and so he proposed a system which Hillary largely copied when she put out her plan. ((I do not mean to suggest she directly copied from Obama – more that their plans are both based on the policy work of the same groups of Democrats.)) On the Patriot Act, although Obama said he would oppose it’s reauthorization, he supported the compromise that introduced some measures of accountability into the bill. I do not believe Senator Obama ever campaigned on a promise to block the Patriot Act – rather he voiced concerns over the bill; he still had concerns when he signed it, but he believed the compromise was an improvement, and so begrudgingly, supported it.

Hillary was distorting Senator Obama’s statements and record to suggest that he had been inconsistent – because she knows that his consistency is part of his appeal, and one that stands in stark contrast to her entire persona.

Second: turbo-charged phrases like “Obama’s perfectly PC nature and almost messiah-like campaign” and “the glittering facade he and the media portray of himself” are difficult to respond to specifically because they reflect feelings rather than substance – this is not to denigrate them, but to place them in a context; I’m certainly guilty of expressing my feelings on political subjects as well. I’ll try to in the last few paragraphs, but let me say that I agree that it is important to hear both sides – but that each of us must be ready to acknowledge that one side might just be entirely, or mainly, wrong.

I think it takes an even bigger and more compassionate person to be able to dedicate yourself to helping others simply out of feeling of responsibility and empathy. Hillary dedicated her life to helping children and the less fortunate, but she didn’t need a touching story about rising out of poverty or whatnot, to drive her to do so or to attract more attention to it.

I agree that it takes a very compassionate person to dedicate themselves to helping others out of a feeling of responsibility and empathy. (Although I do not see how explaining what lead one to become compassionate, to understand particular problems, undermines it.)

But I don’t see how this applies to Hillary Clinton. Yes, she was on the board of the Children’s Defense Fund and the Arkansas Children’s Hospital (but she was also on the board of Wal-Mart and The Country’s Best Yogurt Company). In her professional career, she did focus on helping children after the health care debacle forced her to take a more traditional role in her husband’s administration – but it wasn’t what she set out to do. And what First Lady hasn’t devoted significant amounts of time to helping children?

I’m not sure what in her record indicates that Hillary has “dedicated her life” to helping children or the less fortunate – other than the fact that she is a liberal, and that liberal policies tend to favor both groups. I am not saying Obama has selflessly dedicated himself to doing good in the world – but from his career, and his speeches, and his memoirs, I am left with the sense that the primary impetus behind his political career is the desire to create a movement to renew American democracy – whether as a community organizer, constitutional law professor, state legislator, senator, or presidential candidate – this has been his message.

Senator Clinton’s record indicates something different – as a presidential candidate, she has seen fit to use voter suppression tactics and other methods and messages that will hurt the Democratic party’s chances in November; in 1995, after the Republicans took back the Congress, she advised her husband to bring in the sleazy Dick Morris who advised the Clintons to co-opt the Republican agenda in order to maintain their own power, and Hillary supported this decision; in 2002, Hillary Clinton decided to vote to authorize military force against Iraq, and though her motives are impossible to determine, political calculation certainly played a role. Throughout her career, Hillary Clinton has been willing to embrace tactics and policies that hurt the poor and the middle class and Americans in general if she thought it would further her career.

Clinton doesn’t have the cleanest campaign strategy – I can see that. But I am cynical and I don’t appreciate Obama’s strategy that is seemingly taking advantage of the young, liberal, less-informed, idealistic voters by alluding to “changing the status quo”, “not giving in to special interests”, and getting out of Iraq with little to no flexibility in timeline and approach.

I think I responded to the point about Clinton’s campaign strategy above to some degree. To reply to your point about Iraq: Senator Obama has repeatedly said that we must be “as careful getting out as we were careless getting in”. Senator Clinton actually made headlines this January by taking a more aggressive stand on getting troops out of Iraq by suggesting she will begin withdrawing troops within 60 days of her taking office. ((Her actual quote actually gives her more room to hedge though.)) In fact, Obama and Clinton have virtually the same positions on withdrawing from Iraq – including virtually the same language, as you can see if you compare Barack Obama’s position on “Bringing the Troops Home” and Hillary Clinton’s position. To say that Obama plans on “getting out of Iraq with little to no flexibility in timeline and approach” is to demonstrate an ignorance of the actual positions each candidate has taken on the issue.

Finally, I think it is exceedingly cynical to suggest that Obama is trying to take advantage of “younger, less informed, idealistic voters”. Do you think Ted Kennedy has been hoodwinked by Obama as well? John Kerry? Janet Napolitiano? Tim Kaine?

I think I described the issue you are sensing in this post on “The Paradox of Barack Obama”. To take that post a bit further: the heart of Obama’s campaign is not his policy positions. Edwards, Clinton, and Obama all have similar policy positions, and though the minor differences reveal a great deal about how each candidate is positioning him or herself, and a little about each candidate’s approach to governance, the real contrast is in temperament and in the potential.

Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have are both policy-oriented. Each of them has particular goals they want to achieve as president, and they discuss how they will try to achieve this goals mainly to prove their seriousness. Barack Obama, on the other hand, sees the particular policy goals as secondary.

He believes that the problems America is facing today are the result of deep-seated problems in the processes of government, in the processes of innovation, in our politics;
He believes in making the government more accountable to the people (with ethics reform, with databases of federal funding, and by opening up as much of every government agency’s deliberations as possible to the public);
He believes that a large part of the reason that so many Americans are apathetic about politics is because they do not feel engaged with power and they are tired of the mudslinging (which is why he has refrained from egregious smears, despite great provocation);
He believes that partisanship is the cause of political gridlock – and that more partisanship will not solve the major problems we face (and if you think that sounds like common sense read Paul Krugman or look at some of Hillary Clinton’s aides);

The core Obama belief – the one which sells me on his potential – is that he believes that the integrity of the process matters as much as the end result of the process. You can see this principle in every position he takes, in his entire public career, and in his campaign. Hillary Clinton believes that the ends justify the means – or else she could not reconcile many of the actions she has taken publicly with her professed beliefs.

A president who believes that the ends justify the means – the thought frightens me. After George W. Bush has enlarged the powers of the presidency beyond recognition, it frightens me even more. Having Democrats defend the precedents Bush has established because a President Hillary believes she needs to take advantage of them in order to pass some bill frightens me. ((And there would be a kind of poetic harmony to this – as Hillary’s actions in the first Clinton administration were used by Cheney and Bush to expand executive power further.))

I believe we need a president who will focus on fixing the processes that keep our society, our environment, and our polity healthy. The problems we face as a nation will not be fixed with the marginal improvements that would be the goals of a Hillary Clinton presidency, as helpful as those improvements might be. They might not be fixed even with greater transparency, consensus, and innovation. But at least with that approach, we might have a chance. Global climate change; terrorism; the turmoil of globalization; immigration; failing educational and health care systems. A polarized polity will not be able to begin to fix these problems; as a nation today, we are incapable of fixing these problems because the processes of our government and our politics are broken.

Barack Obama is not a messiah. But he sees the problem; and unlike Clinton, he sees the beginning of a solution. Clinton is campaigning on the promise of competent management; ((Which is quite debatable when you look at her record; the two biggest initiatives she has run so far have been mismanaged – health care reform in the 1990s and her campaign today.)) she is campaigning on her goals and policies; she is campaigning on the idea that she will be able to get change done. But look at Obama. He is running on the theory that he can spark a movement; and that the people, being moved, will change; and that if many, many people are motivated and empowered, real change – and real improvement – will be inevitable. As Grace Lee Boggs said, Obama will only become a great president if we become a great people. While Clinton sees change as top-down, imposed by Washington; Obama sees change coming from the bottom-up, from a motivated citizenry.

It might sound like bullshit. But it’s something real.

In essence, Obama is betting his candidacy on the ideals that America was founded upon, on the possibility of a democracy and a republic that works, on an informed and active citizenry, on hope in a better tomorrow. It might be a sucker’s bet. But something are worth losing over.

Election 2008 Politics The Clintons

Dawn in South Carolina

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date January 29, 2008

From Bob Moser of The Nation magazine:

[T]he Clintons have come to embody, for many middle Americans, the moral and intellectual emptiness they seen in liberalism–feel-good, stand-for-nothing, make-no-difference power players cloaking their lust for control in “feel-your-pain” platitudes.

Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons The War on Terrorism

Slowly standing up

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date January 29, 2008

From the Hill this morning reporting, on Bush’s State of the Union Address, comes this telling anecdote:

In one instance Clinton appeared to gauge Obama’s response before showing her own.

When Bush warned the Iranian government that “America will confront those who threaten our troops, we will stand by our allies, and we will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf” Obama jumped up to applaud. Clinton leaned across Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), seated to her left, to look in Obama’s direction before slowly standing.

Election 2008 Politics The Clintons

My Hillary Story

[digg-reddit-me]I never met Senator Clinton. And I never had much opinion of her one way or another throughout the 1990s. She had receded from the spotlight by the time I started paying attention to politics around 1994 or so. But I do have one particular memory from high school – when she was running for the Senate in my home state, New York. An acquaintance of mine was very political, and his father was tied in with the local Democratic party.

As we were driving, we were talking about the Senate race – of First Lady Clinton against our hometown congressman, Rick Lazio. I didn’t much like Lazio; and I didn’t much like Clinton. Being straightforward, I admitted as much.

It was right then that I first heard the “inevitable” argument regarding Hillary Clinton. “You might as well get on board, because she’s going to win, and you’ll gain nothing by opposing her,” I was told. The pressure was on – and for maybe five minutes, this high school acquaintance tried to convince me – not of Hillary’s inner goodness, or her policy savvy, or her experience, or any positive quality. Rather, he tried to convince me that nothing good could come from standing in her way.

I hadn’t really remembered this conversation much in the years ahead – but as I began to hear again and again about how Hillary was “inevitable” and how nothing good would come from standing in her way, the memory resurfaced. Hillary obviously can’t be held responsible for the tactics her supporters use at such a remove from herself; but I see today the same dynamic – in Nevada, in South Carolina, in Paul Krugman, in her most ardent supporters. And it forces me to wonder if this bullying is not some essential part of what makes Hillary Clinton the public figure she is today.

This isn’t a policy tract; and this isn’t psychoanalysis; it’s just a feeling. But I’m under the impression that it’s one shared by many, especially those in power with something to lose. But what happens when you challenge a bully publicly and survive? The bully loses his or her power – because intimidation is based on a fear of retribution.

As my acquaintance kept pushing me harder and harder to support Hillary, I refused to budge. I get like that when I’m pressured. Come election night, many months later – as I filled out my absentee ballot at college – I voted a straight Democratic ticket. Except for the Senate. I voted for Rick Lazio. I didn’t like Lazio all that much; but I didn’t like being bullied.

Election 2008 Politics The Clintons

Shades of Grey

[digg-reddit-me]I got into a discussion in the comments to the Why Hillary Clinton Should Bow Out Today piece with a “Cori” about the moral compromises that inevitably come from being involved in politics.

Cori brought up some minor transgressions that the Obama campaign had committed – for example, citing the Washington Post in an ad saying his health care plan would save $2,500 for every family, when the Post quotation was citing the Obama campaign. She was using this and her other examples – which are in the comments linked to above – to say that Obama was “just another politician.” She continued:

He’s not the end all be all that all the pro-Obama fanatics are making him out to be. To be quite honest I see absolutely no difference between him and Clinton, or any other politician for that matter.

She then went on to explain that because she sees politics as existing in shades of grey she was leaning towards supporting Hillary Clinton.

I’ve seen this type of thinking in other places as well – and it bothers me because of the logical fallacy at its heart. Politics inevitably involves compromise – as taking any action does. But that does not make all compromises equal.

There is a world of difference between citing a source inaccurately to support something you believe and deliberately distorting an opponents words in order to deceive people about what he or she believes. Does the Obama campaign really believe that his health care plan will save $2,500 for every family? Probably so. ((Even more, the mistake doesn’t seem to be part of a broad strategy to deceive, but rather a mistake or laziness on the part of whoever was putting together the ads.)) Does Hillary Clinton really believe that Barack Obama supports the Republican positions of the past few decades? No, she doesn’t. ((And the decision to attack Obama based on falsehoods had to have been approved by Hillary – as it was the theme of the messages, rather than a citation used in one.))

The fallacy is this: one compromise is morally equal to any other; every shade of moral grey is equal. When I say that politics is about compromise, I am not implying that all politicians are equal. When I say shades of grey, my focus is on the shades rather than the grey.

Those who see no difference between Obama and Clinton are just as guilty of moral idiocy as those that proclaim “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” You don’t get full credit for doing away with two opposing moral poles and replacing them with a single category in between which allows for no differences.

At the heart of Bill Clinton’s 1992 strategy was this compromise: fight dirty; fight hard; promise whatever you need to get into the White House; say whatever you need to win; and then, the real leadership starts. This is memorably captured by the scene at the end of the barely fictional film about the 1992 election, Primary Colors based on Joe Klein’s novel of the same name, in which Governor Stanton tries to convince his aide, Henry Burton, to stay on with his campaign: ((I’m sure the video of the scene is online somewhere – so send it in if anyone can find it.))

You don’t think Abraham Lincoln was a whore before he was a President? He had to tell his little stories and smile his shit-eating back-country grin. He did it all just so he’d get the opportunity to stand in front of the nation and appeal to the better angels of our nature.

But Clinton proved to be no Lincoln. His politics in office was the same as his politics in his campaign.

The differences between the two men are instructional: both men compromised, but each did so very differently. Lincoln believed slavery was a moral evil and that it should be eradicated; but he also acknowledged that the political environment of 1860 was not ready for this radical change. And so, on the great moral issue of his day, he compromised and campaigned on stopping the spread of slavery with the understanding that this would lead to eventual and gradual emancipation. He governed on the same principle, until the changing facts on the ground led him to the Emancipation Proclamation, which still only offered limited emancipation. In Lincoln, we can clearly see a moral man struggling with a difficult issue.

Clinton in 1992 campaigned on a Third Way of politics – splitting the difference between the harsher features of the Reagan-Bush legacy and the liberal ideas of the Democratic party. The problem with this approach is that it was dishonest – and Clinton spoke out of both sides of his mouth. When Clinton spoke to the Democratic base, he explained that he really believed what they did, and that if elected, he would be an unabashed liberal. To the electorate at large, Clinton tried to show that he had digested the lessons on the Reagan Revolution. He governed ineffectively as a liberal until the 1994 Contract With America made him realize that he might lose his power, and, at the behest of his wife, he brought in Dick Morris to calculate what he needed to do to win again. His style of governance proved similar to his campaign as he again and again pleaded with Democrats to trust him as he promoted NAFTA, welfare reform, school uniforms, and balanced budgets while pushing for incremental liberal measures. In many ways, Clinton did the best he could in a hostile environment. His appeal to liberals was always the same: “Trust me, I’m doing the best that I can. I believe what you do, but I can’t do anything about it or say anything about it.” I still believe he was telling the truth about this. But the difference with Lincoln is telling: while Lincoln was willing to make a moral and pragmatic comprise to attain political power, Clinton wanted power and was willing to do whatever he needed to get it. The difference is one of degree and reflection.

Hillary is making the same argument to liberals now that her husband did in his presidency: Trust me, because I’m one of you; if I screw you guys over, it’s only because I have no choice. The scene from Primary Colors is fictional, but it gets at the heart of Clintonism – a philosophy of governance and politics that Bill and Hillary Clinton together embody. The problem is that the moment to “show true leadership,” to appeal to the better angels of our nature, never comes – because there is always another election, always another scandal. Clintonism is about postponing progress. It is about first and foremost making sure the Clintons win.

It’s time to try something new, to turn the page.

…while we breathe, we hope; and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people in three simple words:

Yes. We. Can.

Obama, like every other human being, is not perfect. He will make and has made mistakes. But the overwhelming evidence of his character, his history, his public record, and his campaign demonstrate that he represents something very different than the Clintons.

Reinhold Niebuhr, a 20th century theologian and political activist, wrote about exercising power thus:

We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized.

The fact that taking any action involves moral compromise does not absolve us of our responsibility to make informed judgments. Some compromises are more basic than others. If we cannot differentiate between the many shades of grey, then we are lost without a moral compass. That is what I imagine has happened to the Clintons.