http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178318884054675.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
John McCain has made it clear this week he doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does. But on Thursday, he took his populist riffing up a notch and found his scapegoat for financial panic -- Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox.
To give readers a flavor of Mr. McCain untethered, we'll quote at length: "Mismanagement and greed became the operating standard while regulators were asleep at the switch. The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino. They allowed naked short selling -- which simply means that you can sell stock without ever owning it. They eliminated last year the uptick rule that has protected investors for 70 years. Speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground.
"The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public's trust. If I were President today, I would fire him."
Wow. "Betrayed the public's trust." Was Mr. Cox dishonest? No. He merely changed some minor rules, and didn't change others, on short-selling. String him up! Mr. McCain clearly wants to distance himself from the Bush Administration. But this assault on Mr. Cox is both false and deeply unfair. It's also un-Presidential.
Take "naked" shorting, in which an investor sells a stock short -- betting that it will fall in price -- without first borrowing the shares he is selling from an investor who owns them. The SEC has never condoned the practice, and since 2005 it has clamped down on short selling in any stock that shows evidence of naked shorting. The SEC further tightened its rules against naked shorting just hours before Mr. McCain excoriated Mr. Cox for doing nothing.
The rules announced Wednesday will increase penalties and close loopholes that exempted broker-dealers from the rules against naked shorting. They also make it clear that deliberately selling short a stock whose shares cannot be borrowed is fraud under the Securities Exchange Act. That's all to the good, we suppose; fraud is fraud. But regular short selling is not fraud. It adds valuable information to the market about what investors believe to be the price direction of a stock. Demonizing short-sellers as a band of criminals, or barring short-selling outright in financial stocks, as regulators in the U.K. did Thursday, removes information from the market.
Then there's Mr. McCain's tirade against the "uptick rule," a Depression-era chestnut that investors could only short stock after a rise in that stock's price. The SEC staff studied the effect of the uptick rule on prices for years, in a controlled experiment involving thousands of stocks. It found the rule had no effect. Other studies, including those that examined the uptick rule's effect on stocks disclosing bad news, also found that it "protected" no one. The SEC's permanent staff has long supported repeal and the SEC's commissioners voted to do so unanimously in June 2007.
While he was at it, Mr. McCain added the wholly unsupported assertion that "speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground." It wasn't very long ago that he blamed speculators on the long side for sky-high oil prices. Then oil prices fell. Now Mr. McCain wants voters to believe speculators are responsible for driving mismanaged financial companies to ruin. The irony is that this critique puts Mr. McCain in the same camp as some of the Wall Street CEOs who have led their firms so poorly. They also want someone (else) to blame.
In case Mr. McCain is interested, overall short interest in financial companies actually declined by 20% between July and the end of August. That's right: Far from driving this crisis, shorts were net buyers of financial stocks this summer, as they must buy stocks back to close their positions and realize their gains (or losses).
In a crisis, voters want steady, calm leadership, not easy, misleading answers that will do nothing to help. Mr. McCain is sounding like a candidate searching for a political foil rather than a genuine solution. He'll never beat Mr. Obama by running as an angry populist like Al Gore, circa 2000.
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Anybody who hasn't had a chance to watch this interview, here is link: Please give it a listen.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/30/hillary-clinton-takes-on_n_99524.html
Two important point she makes:
1. She says that she will not raise payroll tax over 109K to save social security. This is double talk, as she has said to an individual on a campaign trail that she would consider it (she did not know but press recorded her comments). Then Bill asks that he is Rich and would be OK to pay extra tax, to whic she responded below: Is this Elitest.? Double talk..?
"O'Reilly interjected. "I'm not middle class, I'm a rich guy." Clinton responded (in an awkward moment), "Rich people, God bless us. We deserve all the opportunities to make sure our country and our blessings continue until the next generation."
2. Then Bill asks about her being socialist in redistributing wealth from Rich to Poor, which she supported saying " we are all in this together" (here is where she flip flops from #1 above where she says, "Rich People, God Bless us..We deserve all the opportnities!
It will sure make a nice Ad.
Hi,
I was listening to HRC news conference on Potus. It was amazing that with all the Mark Penn's controversy in advising Colombian govenment while on Hillary's payroll, they were telling press that they have taken apropriate actions but the burden is on Obama campaign to take action on Austin Goolsbee..! How clever. There is no comparision here. Not to mention that Penn is still there and advising Hilary on strategy..!
I think Obama campaign needs to take some actions here. They are really getting a free pass here. If you see news today, you will hardly see Mark Penn mentioned, you will see more mention of Austin Goolsbee..! They have been successful in completely deflected this, even quoting Hoffa (his comment about clarifying Goolsbee situation) over and over again.
Just like HRC capitalized in on Goolsbee story in Ohio, this is an opportunity for our campaign to elevate this conversation and duly respond and clarify if needs to be on Goolsbee. You don't want our silence to be taken as admission of guilt. I think there is a response in bits and pieces from us but it needs to be more forceful and mainstream. My 2 cents.
(CNN) — Former President Jimmy Carter all but said Wednesday he plans to cast his superdelegate vote for Barack Obama.
Speaking with a Nigerian paper while in Abuja, Carter noted several reasons why he might be leaning toward the Illinois senator.
"Don’t forget that Obama won in my state of Georgia," Carter said. "My town, which is home to 625 people, is for Obama, my children and their spouses are pro-Obama. My grandchildren are also pro-Obama."
"As a superdelegate, I would not disclose who I am rooting for but I leave you to make that guess," Carter added.
The Carter Center confirmed to CNN the newspaper did quote Carter accurately.
Responding to the comments, Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said Thursday, "Both Senator Clinton and President Clinton have a great deal of respect for President Carter and have enjoyed their relationship with him over the years, and obviously he is free to make whatever decision he thinks is appropriate with regard to presidential choice."
Wolfson also acknowledged "people will be interested in the choice that he makes."
Carter's remarks are the latest from the former president that suggest he is backing Obama over rival Hillary Clinton, although he has made no official endorsement. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in January, Carter said Obama's campaign has been "extraordinary and titillating for me and my family."
He also said then that Obama "will be almost automatically a healing factor in the animosity now that exists, that relates to our country and its government."
Matthew Dowd has been a campaign strategist in races throughout the country. In 30 years, Dowd has worked for Democrats such as the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, and Republicans including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and President George W. Bush, for whom he was chief strategist in 2004.
March 24, 2008 8:43 AM
Opinion by Matthew Dowd, ABC News Political Contributor
There has been much discussion in the 2008 presidential campaign especially as it relates to the Democratic nomination process. And there seems to be a concerted effort by the Clinton campaign to point out weakness in the Obama effort related to November electability.
Let's take a look at some insights gleamed from the last 20 years of elections.
One argument being made is that there is a relationship between primary win in states and ability to win those states in the Fall.
For example, the Clinton campaign likes to point out they won Ohio and Obama lost it, and that this bodes badly for his chances of winning that state in the Fall. The Obama campaign points out wins in red states in the primary process trying to prove their strength.
To put it bluntly, there is no relationship between primary success in any given state and November success in those states.
The big reason is that, even with record turnouts in the primaries, only a small segment of the public goes to vote in the nomination process.
It looks like about 30 million people will vote in the Democratic nomination process; in November more than 130 million will vote!!! A much different electorate at stake.
And I can recall in the 2000 presidential campaign, George Bush won Iowa in the primary, then lost it in November. He lost New Hampshire by more than 17 points in the primary, but then carried it in the general election providing his electoral margin of victory.
There are many many similar examples of this in the last 20 years.
Mark Penn, Clinton's strategist this year and a major adviser for former President Clinton in the 1990s, and many other Clinton campaign folks, have stated many times recently that superdelegates (as well as Obama pledged delegates) should take into account electability in November in deciding who should be the nominee, and that Obama is the weakest candidate.
First, nearly every public poll out in last two weeks show Clinton and Obama with equal strength against McCain.
This is the case even after two very bad weeks of press for Obama. My guess is after a few weeks of favorable coverage, Obama will again be at an advantage over Clinton looking towards November.
Second, it is ironic the Clinton folks are raising this argument against Obama about electability.
They might recall that as Bill Clinton was headed towards winning the nomination in 1992, his electability in the fall was seriously in doubt. He was more than 15 points behind President Bush in May and June of that year, and in many polls he was in third place behind Ross Perot and President Bush!!!
And we know the end result of that campaign was Bill Clinton taking the oath of office in January 1993.
When talking about electability we should all keep in mind that each campaign will try to use arguments to show they are stronger, and that today’s polls are only a barometer of today.
Electability, like momentum, can be as fleeting a concept, as the deciding moments every week in this process.
This is still Obama’s race to lose at this point.
Halfway thru the interview, Gov Huckabee admires the speech Obama gave as Historic and also defends Rev Wright and relates to the experirnce he had growing up in segregated south. Worth watching and also use to counter any blogs...!
http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/03/huckabee-on-obama-and-wright-c.html
By Charles Pluckhahn
Special to The Times
PREV of NEXT
Charles Pluckhahn
Hillary Clinton, you sure don't make it easy.
Since 2005, I've written $7,100 worth of checks to the person I considered most qualified to be the junior senator from New York and, later, president of the United States. In February, I was elected a Clinton delegate in the neighborhood-level caucuses, and looked forward to trying to be appointed a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
It would have been my second Democratic Convention. In 1992, as the volunteer press secretary to the Wisconsin delegation, I led a march of happy cheeseheads up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to the National Republican Women's Club. We stood and chanted slogans at a Republican "truth squad" that had set up camp there. It was great, goofy fun, and the Daily News thought so, too.
I remember well the feeling on the last day of that convention, which nominated your husband and Al Gore. "I think we're actually going to win this election," I told my old friend, who as head of the state delegation had invited me to New York. "I don't know if I'm ready to be on the winning side!"
Oh, what times those were! And given what success your husband produced, and your impressive record in New York, it wasn't exactly hard for me to support you. My sister-in-law, a grocery clerk whom I brought to a fundraiser here in Seattle and who sat and chatted with you, is still in your corner. She'll be crushed when she reads this column.
Sen. Clinton, I can no longer count myself in your ranks. I've decided that, barring some stunning revelation, Barack Obama has earned the Democratic nomination, fair and square. More importantly, I've decided that your campaign's tactics have crossed a line that should never be crossed. I no longer want to be associated with your effort to become the Democratic nominee.
One of your surrogates, Geraldine Ferraro, has said that Obama wouldn't be where he is in the Democratic contest if he were white. When combined with your rejection of Obama's qualifications to be commander in chief, and your husband's disrespect for Obama's effort, I see an ugly undercurrent.
I grew up in white Milwaukee, which was very white indeed. But most of my heroes were black: Martin Luther King Jr., Hank Aaron, Bill Cosby, Ralph Ellison, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. When a kid, the sight of black people being mowed down with water hoses in Alabama made a Democrat out of me before I knew what a Democrat was.
Woe betide the politician, and especially the Democratic politician, who makes a racist appeal, no matter how artfully they think they've constructed it. When George Bush's campaign did it to Michael Dukakis in 1988, I expected it. That's what Republicans do.
When your campaign race-baits and disrespects Barack Obama in 2008, you can count me out. Democrats don't do that. We are better.
I fully realize that political campaigns are rough. The fact that you're a fighter is one of the reasons I've supported you. "Just wait until she goes up against the Republicans," I have told friends. "They are going to regret the day they ever used the B-word on that woman."
You've been attacked in the worst possible ways, and I've very much admired you for the way you've handled those attacks. Lesser people, myself included, would have long since crept away by now. I still consider you qualified to be president, and should you happen to win the Democratic nomination, you'd have my vote in November.
But I don't think it's going to happen that way. Instead, I think Obama might win Pennsylvania. At the end of the day, I think he will emerge with the most popular votes, the most states, and the most pledged delegates. If the so-called superdelegates should then deny him the nomination, you'll have won the most tarnished of prizes.
Sen. Clinton, you still have time to salvage your dignity and your reputation. Geraldine Ferraro's resignation from her fundraising role is a start, but it's only a start. You should fully apologize to Sen. Obama for the stream of insults that has come from your campaign, and then you should step aside. If you do that, then I'll know my money and my time were well spent.
From a blog:
AS OF 3-10-08 Big States vote breakdown:
State Obama ///Clinton
California 2,126,000 2,553,000 Texas 1,358,000 1,459,000 New York 698,000 1,003,000 Illinois 1,302,000 662,000 Ohio 982,000 1,212,000 Georgia 704,000 330,000 New Jersey 492,000 603,000 Virginia 627,000 350,000 Washington 354,000 316,000
Final Total Obama Clinton
8,643,000 8,487,000=========156,000 LEAD for OBAMA
Barack Obama LEADS: a) Delegates b) Primaries c) Caucuses d) Money Raised e) Donors f) Votes from big states g) Popular votes h) Senator endorsements i) Governor endorsements j) Most states won
Look at these numbers carefully. Obama is winning. And he isn't running for Vice President.
This was an interesting article from NY Times. Ms Clinton did not even have security clearance and was never involved in decision making. Obama campaign should leverage this to anser her 3 AM Ad.
Here is link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/26/us/politics/26clinton.html?scp=1&sq=security+clearance%2C+clinton&st=nyt
As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton jaw-boned the authoritarian president of Uzbekistan to leave his car and shake hands with people. She argued with the Czech prime minister about democracy. She cajoled Roman Catholic and Protestant women to talk to one another in Northern Ireland. She traveled to 79 countries in total, little of it leisure; one meeting with mutilated Rwandan refugees so unsettled her that she threw up afterward.
Hillary Rodham Clinton flew to Uzbekistan in 1997 and was met by President Islam A. Karimov.
This is part of a series of articles about the life and careers of contenders for the 2008 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.
The latest political news from around the nation. Join the discussion.
At a cafe in downtown Prague in 1998, the first lady met with the Czech president, Vaclav Havel, left.
But during those two terms in the White House, Mrs. Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president’s daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.
And during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled.
In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: a full partner to her husband in his administration, and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her “eight years with a front-row seat on history.”
Her rivals scoff at the idea that her background gives her any special qualifications for the presidency. Senator Barack Obama has especially questioned “what experiences she’s claiming” as first lady, noting that the job is not the same as being a cabinet member, much less president.
And late last week, Mr. Obama suggested that more foreign policy experts from the Clinton administration were supporting his candidacy than hers; his campaign released a list naming about 45 of them, and said that others were not ready to go public. Mrs. Clinton quickly put out a list of 80 who were supporting her, and plans to release another 75 names on Wednesday.
Mrs. Clinton’s role in her most high-profile assignment as first lady, the failed health care initiative of the early 1990s, has been well documented. Yet little has been made public about her involvement in foreign policy and national security as first lady. Documents about her work remain classified at the National Archives. Mrs. Clinton has declined to divulge the private advice she gave her husband.
An interview with Mrs. Clinton, conversations with 35 Clinton administration officials and a review of books about her White House years suggest that she was more of a sounding board than a policy maker, who learned through osmosis rather than decision-making, and who grew gradually more comfortable with the use of military power.
Her time in the White House was a period of transition in foreign policy and national security, with the cold war over and the threat of Islamic terrorism still emerging. As a result, while in the White House, she was never fully a part of either the old school that had been focused on the Soviet Union and the possibility of nuclear war or the more recent strain of national security thinking defined by issues like nonstate threats and the proliferation of nuclear technology.
Associates from that time said that she was aware of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and what her husband has in recent years characterized as his intense focus on them, but that she made no aggressive independent effort to shape policy or gather information about the threat of terrorism.
She did not wrestle directly with many of the other challenges the next president will face, including managing a large-scale deployment — or withdrawal — of troops abroad, an overhaul of the intelligence agencies or the effort to halt the spread of nuclear weapons technology. Most of her exposure to the military has come since she left the White House through her seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
When it came to the regional conflicts in the Balkans, she, along with many officials, was cautious at first about supporting American military intervention, though she later backed air strikes against the Serbs and the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
Her role mostly involved what diplomats call “soft power” — converting cold war foes into friends, supporting nonprofit work and good-will endeavors, and pressing her agenda on women’s rights, human trafficking and the expanded use of microcredits, tiny loans to help individuals in poor countries start small businesses.
Asked to name three major foreign policy decisions where she played a decisive role as first lady, Mrs. Clinton responded in generalities more than specifics, describing her strategic roles on trips to Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, India, Africa and Latin America.
Asked to cite a significant foreign policy object lesson from the 1990s, Mrs. Clinton also replied with broad observations. “There are a lot of them,” she said. “The whole unfortunate experience we’ve had with the Bush administration, where they haven’t done what we’ve needed to do to reach out to the rest of the world, reinforces my experience in the 1990s that public diplomacy, showing respect and understanding of people’s different perspectives — it’s more likely to at least create the conditions where we can exercise our values and pursue our interests.”
Crisis at Home and Terror Afar
There were times, though, when Mrs. Clinton did not appear deeply involved in some of Mr. Clinton’s hardest moments on national security. He faced a major one in 1998 — the bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and subsequently whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan. Just days after he acknowledged to his wife, the public and a grand jury that he had had a relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Mr. Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes on targets suspected to be a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and a chemical weapons factory in Sudan.
“It was the height of Monica, and they were barely talking to each other, if at all,” said one senior national security official who spoke with both Clintons during that time.
Asked if she talked to the president about the military choices or advised him, regardless of their personal problems, Mrs. Clinton was elliptical.
I was very proud of him, he did what he thought he was supposed to do as president based on the best intelligence he had,” she said. “And he was well aware that there would be those that would certainly criticize him for it.”
Hillary Rodham Clinton visited a Kosovo refugee camp in Macedonia in May 1999.
In 1999, the first lady and President Bill Clinton heard a Rwandan refugee tell of surviving the massacres.
Friends of Mrs. Clinton say that she acted as adviser, analyst, devil’s advocate, problem-solver and gut check for her husband, and that she has an intuitive sense of how brutal the job can be. What is clear, she and others say, is that Mr. Clinton often consulted her, and that Mrs. Clinton gained experience that Mr. Obama, John Edwards and every other candidate lack — indeed, that most incoming presidents did not have.
“In the end, she was the last court of appeal for him when he was making a decision,” said Mickey Kantor, a close Clinton friend who served as trade representative and commerce secretary. “I would be surprised if there was any major decision he made that she didn’t weigh in on.” (Mr. Clinton declined an interview request.)
But other administration officials, as well as opponents of Mrs. Clinton, are skeptical that the couple’s conversations and her 79 trips add up to unique experience that voters should reward. She was not independently judging intelligence, for the most part, or mediating the data, egos and agendas of a national security team. And, in the end, she did not feel or process the weight of responsibility.
Susan Rice, a National Security Council senior aide and State Department official under Mr. Clinton who now advises Mr. Obama, said Mrs. Clinton was not involved in “the heavy lifting of foreign policy.” Ms. Rice also took issue with a recent comment by a Clinton campaign official that Mrs. Clinton was “the face of the administration in foreign affairs.”
“Making tough decisions, responding to crises, making the bureaucracy implement decisions that they may not want to implement — that’s the hard part of foreign policy,” Ms. Rice said. “That’s not what Mrs. Clinton was asked or expected to do as first lady.”
Not Overstepping Her Bounds
Mrs. Clinton said in the interview that she was careful not to overstep her bounds on national security, relying instead on informal access. During the preinaugural transition, for instance, she sat in on some meetings about presidential appointments at the invitation of Warren Christopher, who directed the transition and became secretary of state in the first Clinton term. Participants recalled that she would mostly speak when Mr. Christopher called on her, and tended to make points about placing more women, minority members and allies in key jobs.
She said she did not attend National Security Council meetings, nor did she have a security clearance — though she was briefed on classified intelligence before going on some important diplomatic trips.
“I don’t recall attending anything formal like the National Security Council,” she said, “because I had direct access to all of the principals. I spent a lot of time with the national security adviser, the secretary of state, other officials on the security team for the president. I thought that was both more appropriate, but also more efficient.”
Mrs. Clinton declined to say if she ever read the President’s Daily Brief, a rundown of the latest intelligence and threats to national security provided to the president each day. “I would put that in the category of I-never-talk-about-what-I-talk-to-my-husband-about,” she said. But she indicated, and other administration officials confirmed, that Mr. Clinton would sometimes talk to her about contents of the briefing.
“Let me say generally, I’m very aware of and familiar with what the P.D.B.’s actually are, how they work, what they include,” she said. “And it wasn’t always through the Clinton administration — when I went to Bosnia, for example, I had a full briefing from the military commanders there about what the situation was like.”
Mrs. Clinton said she was “only tangentially involved” in Mr. Clinton’s first major overseas test, whether to send American soldiers after the Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid and his forces, a raid that ended in 18 American deaths. Asked if she had pressed for an invasion, she said she had acted “more as a sounding board” for Mr. Clinton.
The same was true during the military confrontation in Haiti in 1994, over restoring the exiled president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which she favored and drew lessons from about joint command of American armed forces.
Asked about her role in Somalia and Haiti, Mr. Christopher said in an interview, “She wasn’t at any of the meetings in the Oval Office or cabinet room, and didn’t take any formal role that I saw.” Mr. Christopher is supporting Mrs. Clinton for president
Nor was Mrs. Clinton a memorable player on Rwanda. Former White House officials say that no one — not the national security team, not the president, not the first lady — was seriously pushing for American military intervention to stop or slow the unfolding genocide there; the administration’s focus was on confronting the ethnic bloodshed in the Balkans. Mrs. Clinton declined to comment on Rwanda.
A Stand for Women’s Rights
The foreign policy achievement most often credited to Mrs. Clinton came in 1995, with her speech to the United Nations conference on women in Beijing, where she declared that “human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” She also tangled with Chinese officials, she said, and refused to bow to pressure to soften her remarks.
“She had a good balance of being firm on these issues, even if they clearly covered Chinese sins, but also understanding the need for good relations with China,” said Winston Lord, then the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, who briefed and accompanied her on the trip.
In visits to Bosnia and Kosovo after the American-led bombing of Serbia, she entered war zones before officials believed it was safe for her husband to go and acted as a spokeswoman for American interests rather than as a negotiator. Mrs. Clinton had become a champion of the bombing campaign, and many officials — including Madeleine K. Albright and Richard Holbrooke in the administration and Tony Blair, then Britain’s prime minister — turned to her at times to stiffen Mr. Clinton’s resolve to take on Serbia.
“Bill, you’re the president,” was a refrain that several administration officials said she used when Mr. Clinton was torn between his advisers.
Mrs. Clinton has disagreed with Mr. Obama’s support for presidential-level talks with leaders of nations like Iran and North Korea, but she said that the Balkans had taught her another lesson: know your enemy. She praised Gen. Wesley K. Clark, then the NATO commander, and Mr. Holbrooke, the administration’s envoy on the Balkans, for socializing and drinking with Serbia’s leader, Slobodan Milosevic, as a means of gauging his strengths.
“He’s there — you don’t learn something about him by pointing at him across the ocean,” she said. “If you do have to engage in a bombing campaign, you’re going to have a much better idea of how much pressure it’s going to take to finally break him.”
Her personal interests also drew her to Northern Ireland, where she believed she could help foster peace as a female leader bringing together women split by the sectarian divide. She played host to a memorable meeting, one of the first of its kind, of Catholic and Protestant women in Belfast. “It gave everybody a safe place to come together and start talking about what they had in common,” Mrs. Clinton said.
As she prepared to run for the Senate, Mrs. Clinton took increasing interest in Israel and Middle East peace, touchstones for Jewish voters, among others, in New York. She was not at the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000, but she did pepper the Middle East peace envoy, Dennis Ross, with questions, like whether the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat was too much the revolutionary to ever make peace, Mr. Ross recalled.
The Middle East situation led to Mrs. Clinton’s first big foreign policy-related problem as a candidate. In 1999, she sat silently, but with apparent discomfort, through an event on the West Bank as Suha Arafat, the wife of Mr. Arafat, accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian women and children with toxic gases.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who at that point seemed likely to be her Republican opponent in the 2000 Senate race, sharply criticized Mrs. Clinton for not confronting Mrs. Arafat over her remarks and for kissing her goodbye afterward; the incident also led some Jewish groups to be critical of the first lady.
Mrs. Clinton has often said that she learned from the experience and would not make the same mistake again.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/19106551/a_new_hope
A New Hope JANN S. WENNERPosted Mar 20, 2008 3:00 PM Page 1 2 The tides of history are rising higher and faster these days. Read them right and ride them, or be crushed. And then along comes Barack Obama, with the kinds of gifts that appear in politics but once every few generations. There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him, and underneath that ease lies a resolute discipline. It's not just that he is eloquent — with that ability to speak both to you and to speak for you — it's that he has a quality of thinking and intellectual and emotional honesty that is extraordinary. I first learned of Barack Obama from a man who was at the highest level of George W. Bush's political organization through two presidential campaigns. He described the first-term senator from Illinois as "a walking hope machine" and told me that he would not work for any Republican candidate in 2008 if Obama was nominated. He challenged me to read Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father. The book was a revelation. Here was a man whose honesty about himself and understanding of the human condition are both deep and compassionate. Born to a white mother and an African father, he was raised in multiracial Hawaii and for several years in Indonesia. He drifted through some druggy teenage years — no apologies! — before emerging as a star at Harvard Law School. He chose to work as a community organizer in the projects of Chicago rather than join the wealthy insider world of corporate law. And as a young adult, he searched, in the distant villages of Kenya, for the father and family he never knew. As I read all this, so elegantly written, my mind kept rolling over: Might it be possible? Is there some fate by which we could have this man as president of the United States? Throughout the primaries, and during a visit he paid to our offices, we have come to know Barack Obama, his toughness and his grace. He would not be intimidated, and he declined to back down, when Senator Clinton called him "frankly, naive" for his willingness to meet leaders of hostile nations. When one of her top campaign officials tried to smear him for his earlier drug use, he did not equivocate or backtrack. On the matter of experience and capability, he has run an impressive, nearly flawless campaign — one that whupped America's most hard-boiled political infighters. Indeed, Obama was far more prepared to run a presidential campaign — from Day One — than Senator Clinton. And at no point did he go negative with personal attacks or character assassination; as much as they might have been justified, they didn't even seem tempting to him.
All this was made clearer by the contrast with Hillary Clinton, a capable and personable senator who has run the kind of campaign that reminds us of what makes us so discouraged about our politics. Her campaign certainly proved her experience didn't count for much: She was a bad manager and a bad strategist who naturally and easily engaged in the politics of distraction, trivialization and personal attack. She never convinced us that her vote for the war in Iraq was anything other than a strategic political calculation that placed her presidential ambitions above the horrifying consequences of a war. Her calibrated course corrections over the past three years were painful. Like John Kerry — who also voted for the war while planning a presidential run — it helped cost her that goal.
Although Obama declined to attack her personally for her vote for the war in Iraq, he did call it, devastatingly enough, a clear demonstration of her so-called experience and "judgment." He has also spoken forcefully about the need to break the grip of lobbyists — at a time when Clinton is the largest recipient of drug-company donations of anyone in Congress. Clinton could not address this issue at all, and neither will John McCain, who is equally a player in Washington's lobbyist culture.
Obama also denounced the Republican campaign of fear. Early in the campaign, John Edwards took the lead, calling the War on Terror a campaign slogan, not a policy. Obama rejected the subtle imagery of false patriotism by not wearing a flag pin in his lapel, and he dismissed the broader notion that the Democratic Party had to find a way to buy into this entire load of fear-mongering War on Terror bullshit — to out-Republican the Republicans — and thus become, in his description of Hillary Clinton's macho posturing on foreign policy, little more than "Bush-Cheney lite."
The similarities between John Kennedy and Barack Obama come to mind easily: the youth, the magnetism, the natural grace, the eloquence, the wit, the intelligence, the hope of a new generation.
But it might be more to the point to view Obama as Lincolnesque in his own origins, his sobriety and what history now demands.
We have a deeply divided nation, driven apart by economic policies that have deliberately created the largest income disparities in our history, with stunning tax breaks for the wealthiest and subsidies for giant industries. The income of the average citizen is stagnant, and his quality of life continues to slowly erode from inflation.
We are embittered and hobbled by the unnecessary and failed war in Iraq. We have been worn down by long years of fear- and hate-filled political strategies, assaults on constitutional freedoms, and levels of greed and cynicism, that — once seen for what they are — no people of moral values or ethics can tolerate.
A new president must heal these divides, must at long last face the hypocrisy and inequity of unprecedented government handouts to oil giants, hedge-fund barons, agriculture combines and drug companies. At the same time, the new president must transform our lethal energy economy — replacing oil and coal and the ethanol fraud with green alternatives and strict rain-forest preservation and tough international standards — before the planet becomes inhospitable for most human life. Although Obama has been slow to address global warming, I feel confident that his intelligence and morality will lead him clearly on this issue.
We need to recover the spiritual and moral direction that should describe our country and ourselves. We see this in Obama, and we see the promise he represents to bring factions together, to achieve again the unity that drives great change and faces difficult, and inconvenient, truths and peril.
We need to send a message to ourselves and to the world that we truly do stand for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And in electing an African-American, we also profoundly renounce an ugliness and violence in our national character that have been further stoked by our president in these last eight years.
Like Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama challenges America to rise up, to do what so many of us long to do: to summon "the better angels of our nature."
Yes we can..!
February 11, 2008 2:30 PM
Hi folks, I just sent a letter to Sen John Edwards to endorse Sen Obama. As you know, they are scheduled to meet tonight.
http://www.johnedwards.com/about/contact/form/
Key points:
1. They both share the fight against special interest and Lobbyists
2. They both stand for Chnage
3. They both are committed to fight against poverty
Edwards was quoted on Charlie Rose show that he believes that Obama's supporters will go to him as 2nd choice and vice versa during Iowa caucuses. He has also said that Clinton represent Status Quo" and accepts money from Lobbyists two of his main causes.
Please send him letter now..!
The winning combo: Hillary's toast. Getty Images
The only winning ticket for Democrats is Barack Obama for President with Hillary as his running mate. Obama swept the weekend caucus and primaries and will continue to do so. He wins everywhere. His momentum is growing.
Hillary is on the ropesThe fact that she has had to "loan" herself $5 million to keep her campaign oiled is the beginning of the end. Obama is raising $30 million a month through small contributions.The fact that Bill Clinton has been forced to disappear from the campaign in order to keep his foot out of his mouth is an admission that the couples' two-for-one candidacy is now a negative. Nobody wants a President with a First Lady (Bill Clinton) who does his own thing, socially and financially, or is invited to cabinet meetings.Obama with Hillary at his side would be unbeatable ticket. She would remove his one vulnerability: Lack of experience. She cannot beat him and will not, if she does, keep his supporters who are drawn to him and him alone.She must do what Romney did for the sake of the cause and the party -- make a deal, suspend her campaign, duck-tape her husband and let her kid go back to work. She must stop attacking Obama and vice versa so that Democrats can unite and get their house in order just as the Republicans may be doing if McCain makes a deal with Romney or another arch-conservative.
Obama's the manI believe Barack Obama is unstoppable and deserves to be: He's attracting independents, young people and the disaffected in a way that's unheard of. He thinks out of the box. He is collaborative not polarizing. He is brilliant not cunning. He is optimistic not angry. He's the President America deserves. I have felt that, and written that for weeks.At the same time, Americans in general, and Democrats in particular, have had big problems with Bill and Hillary's past behaviour, current lifestyle arrangement and arrogance, acquired post-Presidency. Now it shows.It must be remembered that Obama was sought out and recruited by Oprah and others who wanted an alternative to the Clintons. Then what began as a "dump Billary" exercise turned into a movement headed by a new, charismatic leader. Hillary just hasn't got the right stuff. Never did. Or the right husband.
Al Gore an alternativeAnother Democrat with huge stature and experience that could run with Obama is Al Gore. He has stayed above the fray and has achieved world-class status as a Nobel Prize winner and environmental leader. He is no friend of the Clintons and his disdain has been another nail in their coffin over the years.However, his candidacy would alienate the Clinton supporters who would stay away or cause trouble.
Republicans would be crazy to pick HuckMeanwhile, Huckabee continues to make his bid to run with McCain. He crowed about his "victory" in Kansas over the weekend. But only 11,000 out of 18,000 people who voted in the Kansas caucus on Saturday voted for Huck, roughly equivalent to a small neighborhood in California where six million voters reside.The Kansas turnout is probably the crazies who supported laws that allowed 13-year-olds to marry or that, since recanted, placed creationism on the same academic footing in public schools as biology. Then there's Louisiana, another non-event.Huckabee seems nice, but is totally out of his depth as are his supporters.
Very nice article.
Democrats are debating who would do better against Sen. John McCain, the GOP front-runner.
Two polls this month have asked registered voters nationwide how they would vote if the choice were between McCain and Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton.
A CNN poll, conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation February 1-3, shows Clinton three points ahead of McCain, 50 percent to 47 percent. That's within the poll's margin of error of 3 percentage points, meaning that the race is statistically tied..
A Time magazine poll, conducted February 1-4, also shows a dead heat between Clinton and McCain. Each was backed by 46 percent of those polled.
Sen. Barack Obama believes he can do better, arguing "I've got appeal that goes beyond our party."
In the CNN poll, Obama leads McCain by 8 points, 52 percent to 44 percent. That's outside the margin of error, meaning that Obama has the lead.
And in the Time poll, Obama leads McCain by 7 points, 48 percent to 41 percent -- a lead also outside of the poll's margin of error of 3 percentage points.
In both polls, Obama looks stronger than Clinton. Why?
Obama's explanation: "I think there is no doubt that she has higher negatives than any of the remaining Democratic candidates. That's just a fact, and there are some who will not vote for her."
That was three weeks ago. Now, only two Democratic candidates remain.
Clinton does have higher negatives than Obama -- and McCain. Forty-four percent of the public say they don't like Clinton, compared with 36 percent who don't like McCain and 31 percent who don't like Obama, according to the CNN poll conducted February 1-3.
Why does Obama do better against McCain than Clinton? Obama does do a little better than Clinton with independents and Republicans.
But the big difference is men: Men give McCain an 18-point lead over Clinton, 57 percent to 39 percent, according to the CNN poll. The margin of error for that question was plus or minus 5 percentage points.
But if McCain and Obama went head to head, McCain's lead among men shrinks to three, 49 percent to 46 percent -- statistically a tie.
Women, on the other hand, vote for either Clinton or Obama by similar margins.
Some Democrats may be worried about how Obama will fare with white voters. Whites give McCain a 15-point lead over Clinton, (56 percent for McCain, 41 percent for Clinton).
But Obama actually fares better than Clinton with white voters. McCain still leads, but by a smaller margin, (52 to 43 percent).
Obama argues that he can reach across party lines. And he does do a little better than Clinton with Independents and Republicans, at least in these polls.
![[McCain's Scapegoat]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-CJ294_oj_1co_D_20080918201521.jpg)
