My little politics blog

Honolulu is no utopia; its socioeconomic climate is far from Edenic. However, Honolulu's complexity and diversity are great gifts for a reflective future leader. To grow up in Hawaii is to see the United States from the inside and the outside. The inside view comes from pride in statehood and military tradition. Long before September 11, residents of Hawaii knew what foreign attack was like and valued American protection--Pearl Harbor remains a vital piece of Hawaiian history. The outside view of the United States comes from geographic distance. The Hawaiian islands stand as tiny meeting points for immigrants from Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines, and the far reaches of Polynesia. Hawaii is an outpost among many nations, not a state connected by highways to other states. As a meeting place, the islands are cosmopolitan. As an isolated island chain, the islands are also parochial. The haves in Hawaii travel and see the world. The have-nots, many of them native Hawaiians, lack the means to get away. To grow up in Hawaii is to envision the future of a multiracial society, and also to view up close the disappointment of those left behind.

Oh, you went to a rally!! That's awesome.

Tell me all about it!

BOISE, Idaho - This is a geographically big state. But despite its rapid growth in recent years, there are just 1.5 million people (and a lot fewer Democrats).

Still, Sen. Barack Obama brought his presidential campaign here Saturday morning, drawing what his campaign said was about 15,000 to the Taco Bell Arena on the campus of Boise State University.

That's about three times as many people who participated in the state's Democratic caucuses in 2004, when Idaho was not among early and important contests.

Hillary tells us, in no uncertain terms, she's smart enough and tough enough to serve as our first female president. From Day One. And she's absolutely right. Nobody knows the issues any better and nobody seeking the nomination, on either side, is quicker with a sharp comeback or an equally sharp elbow to the ribs. Like the low blow or not, "This is politics, not bean bag..." as the HRC team likes to say.

Point taken. But she can't have it both ways and here's where Clinton campaign ambivalence kicks in. The gender game is in play, and HRC won't pick a side.

We have loathsome, mindless misogyny on one side of the bell curve and gender ambivalence on the far side. We have woman-bashing "Get thee to the kitchen, wench!" on the one hand and "I'm as tough as you are, buster, get out of my way!" coupled with "I'm vulerable, too--and that ain't no way to treat a lady!" on the other. Both are destructive and dishonest. Both are bad for the process and bad for the country. Intellect, strength, character and capability know no gender. There's no logical or practical reason a woman can't run this nation as well as any man. Better than most.

That said, a strong, smart woman who's well-qualified to serve as president doesn't need to play the game on both sides of Gender Street. If she does, she gets the disrespect she's got coming, adds momentum to the misogynist movement. The Clinton campaign cannot control the knuckle-dragging misogynist. What they can control is an unfortunate pattern of ambivalent behavior that feeds the beast-- and take their campaign setbacks on the chin, like the other guy has always had to do.

In the Promised Land of enlightenment and gender parity, what's good for the goose is, after all, good for the gander.

Here's an interesting tidbit from Mark Penn's latest strategy memo: "No one believes that if Hillary had been president she would have started the war."

I don't have an incredibly firm view on the counterfactual here. After all, it's a bit hard to specify a scenario in which Hillary Clinton would have been president in the spring of 2003. But when Bush did start the war, Hillary surely could have said that despite her vote to authorize him to start a war she believed he was making a mistake in doing so. She didn't do that. She didn't say that in March of 2003, and she didn't say it in April of 2003 and she didn't say it in May of 2003. To the best of my knowledge, she didn't start saying anything of the sort until years after the invasion had happened. So I hardly think it's wildly unreasonable to take her statements, actions, and silences at face value and say she thought Bush was more-or-less doing what she would have done in his position.

Or maybe not. I lot of people I know are convinced that Hillary did, in fact, all along believe that Bush was committing a huge strategic blunder but that she pretended not to believe that because she thought it was important to her presidential ambitions. I don't think I really buy that. Among other things, I don't think Clinton would have thought that backing a huge strategic blunder would help her presidential ambitions. Insofar as she thought the war was politically savvy, that would almost certainly have been related to a view that the war wasn't a huge substantive error. But either way, if Mark Penn thinks his candidate was only pretending to approve of Bush's conduct he ought to say so plainly. Clearly, she wasn't a major critic of his conduct at the time.