Tag: Hillary Clinton

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Mrs. President

“She has very much got his back,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime strategist, in an interview. “When she thinks things have been mishandled or when things are off the track,” he continued, “she’ll raise it, because she’s hugely invested in him and has a sense of how hard he’s working, and wants to make sure everybody is doing their work properly.” NY Times 2012-01-06

There’s a lot of euphemism in there– she’s “invested” in him. She wants to make sure everybody is doing their work “properly”. She might think things have been “mishandled”.

Without a doubt, Michelle Obama is a smart lady. She might even be very smart about politics, but we’ll never know because it’s not likely she’ll ever run for office and be elected by voters to have authority and do things. No.

She reminds me of Hillary Clinton, another very smart lady, who didn’t actually run for any office until 2000 (when she ran for the Senate in New York), but wielded considerable influence, especially on the Clinton’s failed health care proposals… You could say that their husband’s “appointed” them to a kind of “position”.

The part that concerns me is this: it appears Obama’s advisors would sometimes meet with him and discuss possible strategies and goals and policies and reach some kind of decision and then Obama would go home that night and have dinner and read stories to his kids and go to bed and the next day, he would announce that he had changed his mind.

It was obvious to his aides and advisors that Michelle had spoken.

A lot of people will read about it in People Magazine– and look at the flattering photography to go with it’s article on the first lady– and think, this is wonderful. What a wonderful lady. She’s so… so… invested.

Personally, I find it appalling. Here’s the reason why: Michelle didn’t attend the meeting and raise her issues and debate them and deal with opposing ideas and contrary facts like everyone else. She gets to have her say one-on-one with the President, a circumstance any other aide or advisor would kill for. No one to contradict your view of things. No one to point out something you missed. No one to raise facts and information that do not support your view. Just you and the most powerful man in North America.

If I was one of those aides and I had participated in a meeting in which we made our case for a certain policy or strategy and heard all sides of it and then found out, the next day, that Michelle Obama had changed the President’s mind, I would move to Chicago and run for mayor– that’s what I’d do. Especially if I was good at my job. Especially. But also if I was bad at my job. If I was more concerned with political success– getting re-elected–than with policy objectives.

The story is that the Obamas accepted the idea that they might not be re-elected in 2012. Initially.

Now, if I sucked at my job, I would just spend a lot of time sucking up to the First Lady.

The inconvenient truth here is that Michelle might have been right about some issues– she felt that the aides were too concerned with the political side of things– but we are also hearing about this through a filter. Yes, exclusive access to Michelle Obama, for a book. “The Obamas” by Jodi Kantor.

Michelle Obama considered not moving to the White House immediately at Inauguration, so the children could finish their school year in Chicago and take more time to adjust to life under the bubble– just like Mrs. Santos in West Wing!

They always tell you that that sort of thing is just not possible, that the Secret Service would have to shut down the whole block and search every neighbor entering or re-entering the neighborhood and that she wouldn’t be able to walk the dog anymore and blah, blah, blah.

They would have you believe that sophisticated Al Qaeda agents would spring from the sky in black ninja suits, smash through the windows, and snatch the first family and hold them hostage until America turned over a nuclear bomb so they could solve the Israel problem for once and for all.

This attitude towards security is what creates the hysteria around certain public people in the first place. Check other countries and you will find that few of them engage in this kind of psychotic delusion about the importance of politicians or celebrities. It’s not the product of the public’s attitude towards famous people: it’s the product of famous people doing everything they can to convince people they they are so unbelievably different from you and I that they must be treated as gods.

Even as Mrs. Obama dazzled Americans with her warmth, glamour and hospitality early in the presidency, she was also deeply frustrated and insecure about her place in the White House. NY Times

The New York Times announces to the world that Mrs. Obama — not Ms., of course– Mrs. Obama “dazzled” Americans. Well, sure they were: the New York Times told them to be dazzled and they were.

Well, what can you do? John Edwards gets a $400 haircut and it causes a sensation! Wait– the New York Times makes it sound like people are idiots for making a big deal about a $400 haircut. Maybe they are. Then again, maybe Edwards should have gotten a $35 haircut like most other women do. Maybe he should have announced beforehand that because he was now a contender, he would have to spend a ridiculous amount of money on haircuts. And shrug.

I don’t mean anything here to suggest that Hillary Clinton was not incredibly qualified for whatever government positions or non-positions she has ever held. Check her out in Wikipedia. I doubt that a more qualified woman ever ran for president.

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The Disneyland George W. Bush

Let us all take a moment and celebrate the achievements of George Bush, now that the full moon wanes on his administration and the pardons are readied to be delivered. When George Bush came into office, America was troubled with a vast budget surplus, peace and stability, cheap oil prices, a decreasing crime rate, low unemployment, a functional but deficient social security system, modest but effective environmental regulations, and a split Supreme Court.

After George improved the education system so that America is now– what is it? 21st in the world? And then solved the social security crisis by doing nothing, he eased everyone’s health care concerns by providing elderly Americans with a confusing and expensive drug plan. He open the nation’s forests and wildlife preserves to oil drilling and forestry where-ever he could, and made it easier for America’s manufacturers to sell defective products without consequence, which didn’t stop them from shipping most of those jobs to China. Did I mention the trade deficit?

Or the unimaginable increase in military spending which has succeeded in creating millions of new enemies in Pakistan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia? He did nothing for peace in Palestine but that’s a lost cause anyway. He corrected the crazy perception that most independent scientists believe that humans are causing global warming by arranging an overwhelming number of oil industry employees to say they’re not.

He appointed partisan political hacks to the Justice Department to correct fears most Americans have that the justice system is above partisan politics.

He managed the mortgage crisis so effortlessly that naive observers are still convinced he did nothing. He managed health care so effectively using competition to drive down costs so precipitously that most Americans now claim they don’t need health insurance.

The inevitable George Bush presidential library should have one volume in it, with the title, written in crayon. “How I helped a small number of wealthy Americans become even more wealthy.”

Added December 2008:  How much was Bill Clinton paid? He and Hillary have together collected over $109 million in the eight years since leaving office.  “Pretty good wages, for one little kiss….”

Americans, this is how your government works.

Paying Off George Bush

[2022-05-12: I am leaving this in because I was wrong, and I admit it, and you should know it.  George W. Bush has had a generally honorable post-presidency life, painting, and giving anodyne speeches here and there, and showing up for appropriate ceremonial events.  Of course, the election of Trump, which gave us one of SNL’s better jokes in recent years: the Will Ferrell as Bush going “how do you like me now” has transformed everyone’s appreciation what we now see as a fundamental decency in George W. Bush utterly lacking in the current Republican Party.  It should also be acknowledged that the Clintons were far more avaricious in cashing in the post-presidency boom in speeches and fund-raising events.]

You will not have seen the likes of this before– when George Bush leaves office, he will embark on the greatest orgy of corporate pay offs in the history of Capitalism.

George’s corporate Svengali’s can’t pay him now, of course. That would be unseemly. And illegal, of course. But they are waiting in the wings flush with gratitude for the President who delivered more to them they could even have imagined in their wildest dreams. He gave them tax breaks, deregulation, corporate-friendly judicial appointments. He gave them Alito and Roberts and the ironically titled “Clear Skies” act. He gave them oil and ethanol and mythologized global warming. He gave his friendly military contractors billions and billions of dollars in fat government contracts with embarrassingly little oversight. He gave them everything they asked for.

And now, the reward.

The reward will look like partnerships and speaking engagements for unprecedented amounts of cash– he won’t even really have to move his lips– just show up and smile and cavort. The reward will look like Board appointments and investment opportunities and parties and jets and jewels and medals and awards and statues and presidential libraries in the name of the president who never reads or learns or studies or thinks.

Perhaps Laura, a former librarian, might find something to do at his.

There will be highways and airports and bridges named for the man without the slightest interest in building anything that would benefit anyone except his corporate cronies.

 

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Media Perception

“The Media” is an amorphous term that seems to mean, as Alice says, whatever you want it to mean. “The Media”, according to Hillary Clinton, has been soft on Obama. It wasn’t “soft” on her when it nearly led the coronation back in September– that was simple inevitability. Hillary was enchanted. How rude of “The Media” to betray her trust. And she has always put her confidence in strangers.

Gloria Steinem, in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, opines that it would be somehow unjust if a woman were not the nominee this year because, after all a woman, has never been the nominee before, and this is the best chance ever of that happening.

So, so unjust.

Why, I never!

Who is this… this interloper!

Clinton has been steadily feeding the perception that Obama is a charismatic pretty boy without substance. That’s kind of odd– I first became aware of Obama when some journalists began writing about his new, broad-minded, non-partisan approach to politics– a rather daring approach given the eight years of Bush’s intensive partisan and vindictive approach to policy. What is more substantive? To challenge political orthodoxy like Obama, or to immerse yourself completely in the “the game” like the Clintons?

I’m liking Hillary Clinton less and less as the campaign wears on. Her attacks on Obama seem petty and mean-spirited. Her determined insistence that she has “experience” is ridiculous and tiresome– it is based on poll results, not on any kind of reality.

If the media themselves swallow the canard about the media being “soft” on Obama, it might also spare some indigestion for the idea that Clinton represents “experience”.

When Clinton’s team showed their “3:00 a.m.” ad to the media, a curious reporter asked when Ms. Clinton had ever experienced a “3:00 a.m. moment” in her career. Apparently, you could hear the crickets chirp in response.

I expect that a Hillary Clinton presidency will get the U.S. into a new shooting war within 18 months of her taking office. She will be out to prove to the generals and the Republicans that she has the toughness to take on America’s enemies, and she doesn’t have the creative independence of an Obama to stand up the maestros of international conflict.

 

[2022-05: well, Hillary got her chance, and lost the most winnable election in U.S. history.  Would Steinem have you believe it was because she was a woman?  Or was it because she campaigned badly, ignored the advice of her own husband, and used her own private email server — illegally– instead of the official White House server?  Or maybe the most repulsive fact of all: she was the wife of a former president.  The whole idea of a former President’s wife running for President is really, really appalling.]