Hillery, Obama, Edwards and the Democrates

TURKEY-INSPIRED WONKING.

TAPPED
November 21, 2007

• As I've mentioned a few times now, Edwards has been all over the Thanksgiving hook this week to talk about his policies on poverty and hunger. Today he released his plan to fight hunger in America, which includes some of the obvious ideas - raise the minimum wage, cut taxes for low-income workers, improve public schools, increase affordable housing offerings, provide universal health care, and improve unemployment. It also includes some of the less obvious ideas, like passing a farm bill with strong nutrition programs, improving school meals (and providing more of them for children from low-income families free of charge), improving meal plans for seniors, improving the food security of poor neighborhoods, and providing energy assistance so families don't have to choose between buying food or paying the heating bill.
  
  
• Obama put out a statement on food shortage today as well, though not the same sort of comprehensive plan. In it, he made several legislative requests: "To help address this, we need to stand up to the special interests, bring Republicans and Democrats together, and pass the Farm Bill immediately. And while we're at it, let's strengthen the Emergency Food Assistance Program, the Food Stamp Program and the Commodity Supplemental Food Programs and launch additional anti-hunger initiatives to help ensure that no American goes hungry." The statement didn't mention specifics about what that Farm Bill should look like, however.
  
  
• Clinton's campaign offices are accepting donations of nonperishable foods to be delivered to local food programs.

Hillary's World Tour As Qualification for the Presidency?

Alex Massie
November 06, 2007

Hillary Clinton makes a great deal of her experience as First Lady, suggesting that the eight years she spent in the White house constitute an ideal training programme for the Presidency. Where Hillary was not actively involved in making decisions, she had the opportunity to see how the White House operates in good times and bad. Those lessons, she says, have been digested.

Doubtless there is something to this, even if it's not he traditional apprenticeship. But how are we to know how Hillary the First Lady would translate to President Hillary?

Returning to her book Living History is not quite as helpful as it might be. You'll recall that this book was written for Hillary as an important part of her pre-campaign strategy. It was designed to clear the air and draw a line under the impeachment years and her husband's infidelity. I don't think anyone pretended that it was as candid as it might have been, but still, it is what it is...

In light of recent events - both in Pakistan and Washington - it's interesting to return to Hillary's account of her trip to the Sub-Continent in 1995. Now, clearly, security issues were not then what they have since become. Nor were they the focus of Hilary's visit to Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Nonetheless, it may be worth noting that her memoir- published in 2003 remember - makes only one brief mention of Wahhabism or Osama bin Laden in relation to her trip to Pakistan. Nor, for that matter, is there any mention anywhere in her memoir of Kashmir...

Instead Hillary concentrates on the position and what she would doubtless term the emancipation of women in south asia. Fair enough, even if, nice though positive (from a western perspective) developments on this front would be, they're scarcely the most significant issue from the point of US national interest today. (this isn't to say these issues are unimportant, merely that they're not the most pressing - as, in fact, they were not in the mid-1990s either)

Still, there are some interesting passages in which we can see Hillary preparing her fortifications in advance of her run for the Presidency:

At the luncheon she hosted for me, Benazir [Bhutto] led a discussion about the changing roles of women in her country and told a joke about her husband's status as a political spouse. "According to newspapers in Pakistan," she said, "Mr Asif Zardari is de facto Prime Minister of the country. My husband tells me, 'Only the First Lady can appreciate it's not true.'"

Then there's Hillary on Wahhabism:

Like the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Quran is open to different interpretations, most of which promote peaceful coexistence with people of other religions; some, like Wahhabism, do not... While I deeply respect the basic tenets of Islam, Wahhabism troubles me because it is a fast-spreading frm of Islamic fundamentalism that excludes women from full participation in their societies, promotes religious intolerance and, in its most extreme version, as we learned with Osama bin Laden, advocates terror and violence."

Well, fair enough. But that's all she says. In a memoir published in 2003. The book is not a policy manifesto of course. But even making that allowance it is striking how much of Hillary's memoir is taken up with fluff - "I had given a lot of thought to how Chelsea and I should dress on the trip. We wanted to be comfortable, and under the sun's heat, I was glad for the hats and cotton clothes I had packed" - and how little is concerned with affairs of state.

Now again, this is reasonable: after all she was First Lady not President. Nonetheless, it seems that it is an effort to have her cake and eat it (surprise!) for Hillary to talk up her foreign policy expertese based upon her travels as First Lady when her own autobiography confirms that her overseas travels scarcely touched upon the major issues of the day. Micro-finance is grand, but it's not nuclear proliferation. [..]

Perhaps it's unfair to judge Hillary by the evidence published in a book she didn't write. Then again, it did appear under her name and judging from Living History there was lots of travel but precious little real policy. If that's an unfair conclusion then Hillary will, doubtless, tell us why and how and where this verdict is unwarranted.

HILLARY AND POLITICS....

Kevin Drum
November 19, 2007

Sean Wilentz echoes some of my own feeling about how presidential politics plays out every four years:

There's always a Stevenson candidate. Bradley was one of them. Tsongas was one of them. They're the people who are kind of ambivalent about power. "Should I be in this or not... well, yes, because I'm going to represent something new." It's beautiful loserdom. [..]

The Defining Moment right now, a very engaging book about FDR in the years 1932-33, and one of the things that comes through clearly is that during the 1932 campaign the press felt pretty much the same way about Roosevelt as they do now about Hillary Clinton. He was a waffler, a triangulator, and a politico. You had to parse everything he said with care, and even then you couldn't be sure you'd pinned him down on anything. He could be personally engaging when he wanted to be, but it was mostly an act. Behind it, he was a ruthless manipulator.

This is all conventional wisdom these days, but Alter does a better than usual job of making it come alive. And of course, reading it today you mostly just laugh along. What a rascal that FDR was! But that's not how it struck people in real time. (At least, not at first.) For obvious reasons, most of us dislike people who not only manipulate the political process but seem to actively enjoy doing so.

At the same time, we're also routinely disappointed when we elect someone who doesn't

While we found many people who hated Mrs Clinton, those who loved her were few and far between. Certainly, many said they would vote for her, but the reasons cited tended to be her status as the top Democrat, the fact that she was battle-tested against Republicans and - for some women - the fact that she would be the first female president.

"I'm always amazed how we can screw things up," said Steve Ayers, a coffee-shop owner in Hannibal. "Maybe the way we screw it up this time is by nominating Hillary - across the Midwest that would be the only way of unifying Republicans."

But the anti-Hillary mood does not necessarily translate into happy days for her Democratic rival, Barack Obama, or the Republicans such as Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney queueing up to take her on. Beyond the coasts and outside the college towns, Obamamania was difficult to find. His lofty, professorial manner has made it difficult for him to connect with ordinary Americans and he could well go the way of earlier "outsider" Democrats running on a platform of change, including Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas and Bill Bradley. Obama's lack of experience was a staple of conversations about him.

"It's a man's world," said Hugh Laflin, 62, a Kansas truck driver. "Would a Middle East sheikh talk to a lady president?"

Not a curious man, Bush.

His incuriousness is a matter of public record. He used to brag about not reading any newspapers. Blathams's assertion that he had barely left the continental US until he was president is true.

This is slime Bernie-

Quote:

Not a curious man, Bush.

He may well exercise his curiosity on other things and if those things don't meet with your approval it does not mean his curiosity is in any way stunted.

You simply can't get yourself out of the way.

And why not "Mr Bush"?

snood wrote:

His incuriousness is a matter of public record. He used to brag about not reading any newspapers. Blathams's assertion that he had barely left the continental US until he was president is true.

Must a candidate have left the US to be President?

I fail to see how having been outside the country qualifies a person to be President?

Let's forward this proposition, spendi. Bob Dylan and Mozart and The Spice Girls demonstrate an equal level of curiosity regarding their art form. Would you sign on to that statement?

mysteryman wrote:

snood wrote:

His incuriousness is a matter of public record. He used to brag about not reading any newspapers. Blathams's assertion that he had barely left the continental US until he was president is true.

Must a candidate have left the US to be President?

I fail to see how having been outside the country qualifies a person to be President?

And how about if the prospective candidate had never opened a book on US history, and had no interest in the constitution, and didn't think any state above the maxon dixon line likely merited attention but loved just loved country music and bowling. Yer perfect sort of candidate?

I think Mr Bush' type of curiosity has been proved to be popular at two elections.

blatham wrote:

mysteryman wrote:

snood wrote:

His incuriousness is a matter of public record. He used to brag about not reading any newspapers. Blathams's assertion that he had barely left the continental US until he was president is true.

Must a candidate have left the US to be President?

I fail to see how having been outside the country qualifies a person to be President?

And how about if the prospective candidate had never opened a book on US history, and had no interest in the constitution, and didn't think any state above the maxon dixon line likely merited attention but loved just loved country music and bowling. Yer perfect sort of candidate?

There is no candidate running that has never studied US History.
It is taught in EVERY school in the US, from grade school thru college.
Most people have no "interest" in the constitution, if by that you mean they dont spend 24 hours a day studying it or have it memorized.
Yet we all know its there and we all have a passing familiarity with it.

I have no idea what the "maxon dixon line is,so I cant comment on that.
If you mean the MASON-DIXON LINE, that is something totally different.
Since you are so concerned about it, let me ask you if you even know where it is?

As for liking country music and bowling, that is totally irrelevant to being elected president.

mysteryman wrote:

blatham wrote:

mysteryman wrote:

snood wrote:

His incuriousness is a matter of public record. He used to brag about not reading any newspapers. Blathams's assertion that he had barely left the continental US until he was president is true.

Must a candidate have left the US to be President?

I fail to see how having been outside the country qualifies a person to be President?

And how about if the prospective candidate had never opened a book on US history, and had no interest in the constitution, and didn't think any state above the maxon dixon line likely merited attention but loved just loved country music and bowling. Yer perfect sort of candidate?

There is no candidate running that has never studied US History.
It is taught in EVERY school in the US, from grade school thru college.
Most people have no "interest" in the constitution, if by that you mean they dont spend 24 hours a day studying it or have it memorized.
Yet we all know its there and we all have a passing familiarity with it.

I have no idea what the "maxon dixon line is,so I cant comment on that.
If you mean the MASON-DIXON LINE, that is something totally different.
Since you are so concerned about it, let me ask you if you even know where it is?

As for liking country music and bowling, that is totally irrelevant to being elected president.

If, at some point in the future, you decide to be more than a bag of hammers, let me know and we'll talk further.

Quote:
I think Mr Bush' type of curiosity has been proved to be popular at two elections.
True for the Spice Girls as well.