A first(?) thread on 2008: McCain,Giuliani & the Republicans

The questioner was right: Mr. Obama, like Mrs. Clinton, has indeed turned to former Clintonites for foreign-policy advice. But the Clinton players were not homogeneous, and who ended up with which '08 candidate is instructive.

The principal foreign-policy Clinton alumni in Mr. Obama's campaign include Susan Rice, a former assistant secretary of state, and Tony Lake, the former national security adviser and a prewar skeptic who said publicly in February 2003 that the Bush administration had not made the case that Saddam was an "imminent threat." Ms. Rice, in an eloquent speech in November 2002, said that the Bush administration was "trying to change the subject to Iraq" from the war against Al Qaeda and warned that if it tried to fight both wars at once, "one, if not both, will suffer." Her text now reads as a bookend to Mr. Obama's senatorial campaign speech challenging the wisdom of the war only weeks earlier that same fall.

Mrs. Clinton's current team was less prescient. Though it includes one of the earlier military critics of Bush policy, Gen. Wesley Clark, he is balanced by Gen. Jack Keane, an author of the Bush "surge." The Clinton campaign's foreign policy and national security director is a former Madeleine Albright aide, Lee Feinstein, who in November 2002 was gullible enough to say on CNBC that "we should take the president at his word, which is that he sees war as a last resort" ?- an argument anticipating the one Mrs. Clinton still uses to defend her vote on the Iraq war authorization.

In late April 2003, a week before "Mission Accomplished," Mr. Feinstein could be found on CNN saying that he was "fairly confident" that W.M.D. would turn up in Iraq. Asked if the war would be a failure if no weapons were found, he said, "I don't think that that's a situation we'll confront." Forced to confront exactly that situation over the next year, he dug in deeper, co-writing an essay for Foreign Affairs (available on its Web site) arguing that "the biggest problem with the Bush pre-emption strategy may be that it does not go far enough."

I certainly don't disagree. She's cold and calculating. Hope I don't have to choose between her and one of the Republicans who isn't McCain.

Cycloptichorn

I don't expect her to do a damn thing, once in office, that won't profit corporations.

Note To Dowd And Other Media Figures: Could Hillary's Public Guardedness Be Because Of ... You?
December 19, 2007 -- 8:35 AM EST // link //
Normally Maureen Dowd is not worth the bother, but today's column is worth a look, because it neatly showcases one of the stranger facets of anti-Clinton irrationality: The refusal or inability of many pundits to draw a link between their profession's deep-seated hostility to Hillary and her consequent aloofness and guardedness in public.

Dowd's effort concerns the fact that Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh have been ridiculing Hillary for looking wrinkled and old in that photo of her that I blogged about below. Dowd quite reasonably is critical of this attack for much of the column. But then she suddenly feels compelled to veer into this:

Hillary doesn't have to worry about her face. She has to worry about her mask. Back in the '92 race, Clinton pollsters devised strategies to humanize her and make her seem more warm and maternal. Fifteen years later, her campaign is devising strategies to humanize her and make her seem more warm and maternal.

The public still has no idea of what part of her is stage-managed and focus-grouped, and what part is legit. It's pretty pathetic, at this stage of her career, that she has to wage a major offensive, by helicopter and Web testimonials, to make herself appear warm-blooded.

Right, right -- Hillary is cold and calculating and doesn't reveal her true self in public. But surely this is partly because of the very thing the rest of Dowd's column reflects -- the fact that the media, which is to say, people like Rush and Maureen, have been unremittingly hostile to her for years, and years and years, heaping contempt and derision on her every public utterance, on her laugh, and now, on her wrinkles.

Now, I don't know what came first, Hillary's public guardedness -- her decision to wear a "mask" -- or the media and punditry's entrenched hostility towards her. But quite clearly these two chicken-and-egg phenomena are linked to one another. As this column reflects, however, Dowd and her cohorts won't acknowledge this link -- because to do so would be to take an honest look at their own conduct. Which they'll never, ever do.


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-- Greg Sargent

A comment I heard on the telly this morning, don't know who said it but "the function of political campaign reporters is to aid and abet hostilities."

Romney's English
Dec 21, 07 11:39 AM • By Matthew Continetti
As he mentioned the other day, Mitt Romney graduated at the top of his class at BYU with a degree in English.

Yet his favorite novel is the L. Ron Hubbard potboiler Battlefield Earth.

dyslexia wrote:

A comment I heard on the telly this morning, don't know who said it but "the function of political campaign reporters is to aid and abet hostilities."

That's VERY good, dys. If you manage to recall who said it, I'd really appreciate finding that out.

If it was his favorite movie, we can torch his trousers now.

I understand that it is a great tragedy you fellas can't look into Hillary's heart to see what's there.

blatham wrote:

dyslexia wrote:

A comment I heard on the telly this morning, don't know who said it but "the function of political campaign reporters is to aid and abet hostilities."

That's VERY good, dys. If you manage to recall who said it, I'd really appreciate finding that out.

I was in the office/puter room at the time and the telly, well you know where the telly is, I have no idea who said it.

Bernie wrote-

Quote:

I understand that it is a great tragedy you fellas can't look into Hillary's heart to see what's there.

We've read the source books Bernie. Rider Haggard, Ovid, Homer, Frank Harris, Henry Miller--you know the sort of thing.

We don't do Cosmopolitan.

Judge Bork makes a Romney radio ad to air in Iowa.

Listen here. Text is (here exclusively for a few for NRO readers):

ANNOUNCER: "Robert Bork was Ronald Reagan's conservative nominee to the Supreme Court."


JUDGE ROBERT BORK: "Hello, this is Judge Robert Bork.


"These are very important times, and our next President will be called upon to make decisions on some big issues.


"The National Review endorsed Governor Romney, calling him a 'full-spectrum conservative.' I agree. Mitt Romney is the best person to unite the strong Reagan coalition of social, economic, and foreign policy conservatives.


"We need strong leadership on the economy, taxes, immigration, and foreign policy.


"And our next President may be called upon to make more than one Supreme Court nomination. Governor Romney will appoint judges who interpret the law, not activists who legislate from the bench.


"I admire that Governor Romney stood up to the activist court's ruling on legalizing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. His strong leadership served as a model for the nation.


"This is Judge Robert Bork. I urge you to join me in supporting Mitt Romney for President."


GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: "I'm Mitt Romney, and I approved this message."


ANNOUNCER: "To learn more, log onto MittRomney.com. Paid for by Romney for President."

Some of Romney's critics allow that all politicians change their positions over time, but say that Romney stands out for changing his very political identity. Supposedly he ran as a moderate technocrat in Massachusetts, but is running as a culture warrior in the Republican primaries. We think both halves of this characterization are overstated, but in any case it is not a critique that John McCain's supporters can credibly make. McCain was a reliably conservative legislator for 15 years. Then he moved left for three years, so much so that liberals began urging him to change parties. Then he zigged back to the right.

For us, the most important question about a flip-flop is whether the movement is in the right direction. We are glad that Romney has changed his mind about abortion and McCain has changed his about taxes, although we prefer Romney's open admission that he was wrong in the past to McCain's evasiveness. We hope McCain comes around some more on immigration, and campaign-finance reform, and a lot of other issues ?- and we will not attack him as a flip-flopper if he does. Voters who hold flip-flops against politicians, however, should be warned: McCain is every bit as much of one as Romney is, and all the bile of New Hampshire's editorialists cannot change the fact.