I thought a quick summary of the positions of Senators Clinton and Obama on the current war in Iraq might be useful (my editorials in parentheses).
Past. Obama has consistently opposed the invasion of Iraq. Clinton voted for the invasion. She now claims that is not what she was doing (about as convincing as John Kerry – Bob). Per the Washington Post’s FactChecker:
Obama has been consistent in his opposition to the Iraq war. His Oct. 2, 2002, speech opposing the war stands in clear contrast to Clinton’s vote later that same month to authorize military action.
Present. Obama and Clinton have effectively identical Senate voting records on Iraq over the past three years.
TPM has a comparative chart through March 2007 here. The Post’s FactChecker continues:
Both senators waited until May 2007 before they finally voted to cut off funds for the war, on the grounds that the administration had not agreed to a firm timetable for withdrawal. They both voted against a June 2006 amendment proposed by John Kerry (D-Mass.) for the redeployment of U.S. troops.
In January 2007, Obama introduced legislation in the Senate to remove all combat troops from Iraq by March 2008. Clinton’s major 2007 effort appears to have been a May letter in which she asked the Pentagon to tell Congress its withdrawal plans. The brass replied this would be, “inappropriate.” (Hat tip, JoelPatterson)
On Election. Clinton offers no specifics, only a general promise to have a plan for withdrawal, “within 60 days,” of taking office (“Deliberately deceptive,” I wrote in my Obama endorsement last December, because it allows her to say she wants to withdraw without actually committing to anything). Obama: “He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.” That’s pretty specific. Obama backed away from this position on 21 January, however, in his South Carolina debate with Clinton, as pointed out by David here on BMG. His campaign has not changed his website, so I assume he mis-spoke in South Carolina (oh MSM, where art thou?).
Long term. Both candidates say that some U.S. troops should remain in Iraq indefinitely. Again, however, Clinton is vague: she hides behind her promised, “plan.” Obama is specific: “Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.”
(For me, this offers a real choice: Clinton is politics as usual — changing with the times and being deceptively vague. Obama is more consistent, more specific, and more impressive on this issue.)
How anyone can look at their voting records in their Senate term and expect them to differ one iota when it comes to the situation in Iraq is beyond me. With both, I think you could expect to see modest to intermediate reduction in the numbers of soldiers deployed over the course of the year. I highly doubt those numbers will be very different.
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p>The whole fact that Obama tried to run as an antiwar candidate seemed disingenuous at best, which is probably why he doesn’t really talk about Iraq all that much. If he was truly antiwar, it would almost certainly be the issue numero uno of the campaign and a message unto itself. Also, I would have voted for that candidate.
Back in May, in her committee work, she asked the Pentagon to tell Congress its withdrawal plans. She wrote to the SecDef:
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p>This is one way to push the Pentagon toward withdrawal. This sort of oversight pressure is at least as effective as the legislation written by Obama that never passed the Senate. So, Bob, when you write, “Clinton claims nothing comparable,” that’s wrong.
It doesn’t seem particularly impressive to me compared to introducing legislation like Obama did, but I happy to put it into the non-editorial laying-it-out part (as opposed to the parenthetical parts).
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p>I might add that despite claims to the contrary it is not a completely straightforward matter to be clear about differences between the two candidates on this matter!
A Senator has NO power over the Pentagon to release any information.
Proposed legislation is the REAL power that Senators have, and Barack tried to use it.
Suggesting that a stern letter is in any way comparable to proposed legislation is (insert rookie comment here).
..been specific. How is he going to do it? What are the exigencies and complexities of the situation? Who first and why? Who last and why? What about the Iraqis who assisted us, the drivers and translators?
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p>”I specifically promise to do something that I am incapable of promising because I am not privy to all relevant information” is not specificity, it is a campaign promise. How much is that worth to you? It is worth very little to me.
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p>HRC on the other hand has been specific that she must assume the role of President, assess the situation with all of the available information (that only the President is actually privy to do) and that a plan using all of the information will be devised as immediately as is possible to safely protect our assets, resources, soldiers and assistants, the human aid workers and American and western civilians working in Iraq. Reasoned, well informed, measured withdrawal as quickly as is possible taking into account the interests of the US and all of our allies. How dare she.
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p>The difference?? Honesty. Obama has promised that which he is incapable of promising. Hillary has not.
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p>Too many people are eating his pabulum with a spoon and are going to be very, very disappointed when and if they get the opportunity to realized just how hollow his promise was.
angential to the Iraq votes:
1. Kyl-Lieberman
2. Clinton’s refusal to vote for a ban on the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas (remember Bill’s unwillingness to sign an international treaty banning land-mines) — Obama voted in favor of the cluster-bomb ban
“if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.”
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p>what if iraq et al. don’t want our troops there? sounds to me like obama willing to continue bush’s offensive in foreign, sovereign nations, uninvited.
That’s the smell of coffee đŸ˜‰
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p>Both Clinton and Obama say they want to keep some U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely. They just want to withdraw all combat forces, whoever those are.
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p>Have you considered Ron Paul?
Taunting from an Editor of the site who has significantly more power in our conversation here than Laurel — or most anyone else — comes across much harsher than taunting from someone else.
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p>Bob, you are not just one of us.
I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess. I wonder who you speak for?
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p>Anyway, I wasn’t taunting Laurel, or at least I don’t think I was, or didn’t mean to be, and Laurel if you felt offended I apologize.
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p>I was just pointing out, and to respond here to your comment below as well Laurel, that of course both Obama and Clinton want to keep some U.S. troops in Iraq even if the Iraqis don’t want them there, so long as they perceive that to do so would be in U.S. interests. They’ve never wavered on that so far as I can see.
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p>Obama has said he doesn’t think we should have permanent bases. I’m not sure about Clinton’s position on that issue. I suppose she agrees with him.
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p>There are candidates that have said they would withdraw from Iraq under all circumstances, like Ron Paul I believe (he does have some good ideas on some things, after all, however distasteful other aspects may be) but so far as I can tell Obama and Clinton aren’t among them. There is your answer as best I can give it.
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p>And, heck, since it is late I’ll join you in a cup of coffee: cU.
what if iraq (or other countries we want to operate from) doesn’t want our troops there? is obama willing to ignore what those governments want?
I infer that destroying the hypothetical base he mentions would take priority over the wishes of the Iraqi government. That would match up pretty well with his suggestion that we should attack known terrorists in Pakistan if we could find them, even without the approval of the Pakistani government. He got some flack for that as I recall — but I suspect a good majority of Americans agree with him.
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p>With respect to the current situation in Iraq, as I wrote above, considering that the country is in practice under armed occupation by thousands of our troops at the moment I suspect the priority for both Clinton and Obama is what is in U.S. interests as opposed to what Iraqis want, assuming that can be determined.
Let’s see. Al Qaeda was able to maintain bases in Afghanistan near its border with Pakistan. The Taliban sponsored Al Qaeda and Pakistan used to be very, very, very friendly with Al Qaeda.
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p>Iraq could be just like that.
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p>Only it won’t ever be just like that.
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p>Iraqi Shiia are enemies of Al Qaeda. Neighboring Iran is hostile to Al Qaeda too. None of the other neighbors hold memberships in Friends of Al Qaeda. The chances of Al Qaeda erecting an industrial park somewhere in Iraq border on the impossible.
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p>I don’t understand why Obama is worrying us about this. There are enough things to worry about regarding Iraq without buying the Bush Administration’s inventions.
The al Qaeda problem in Iraq was our creation. In fact, without dismissing it completely, it was greatly exaggerated by the Bush attempt to conflate all opposition to the occupation with al Qaeda for political reasons. The overwhelming problem in Iraq is reconciliation among the three major ethnic groups.
They’re just not. He said so again recently.
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p>Perfectly sensible position, IMHO. Also, one that is indistinguishable from Clinton’s. He didn’t misspeak in the SC debate — his website is wrong.
What you just quoted implies some understandings of Iraq that seem wrong. It imagines that there is some kind of national identity, the national identity is eager for a secure country to emerge, and the government needs some cajoling to achieve that.
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p>Iraq was founded to the strains of the British anthem “God Save the King” as the British installed their handpicked king on a throne for three disparate provinces of the Ottoman Empire that had never been a unit before but that the British magically declared to be a country. Britain’s main geopolitical concern was their colony in India not what would make a successful state in Mesopotamia. Those who report on Iraqi national identity acknowledge how weak an identity it is.
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p>It’s certainly not clear that these three former provinces wish to remain united. It’s certainly not the case that the government is some unified organization like, say the Democratic Party, that can be cajoled one way or the other. It’s a stitched together coalition.
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p>Withdrawing troops on a timetable pressures who again to do what again?
Well, I guess one sees what one wants to see. To your point, the last two lines. To my point, he says of his deadline, “Yeah, absolutely.” He also repeats the claim on his website. Why wouldn’t he change that if he really had adopted a new policy in South Carolina that “maybe” he would withdraw 1-2 brigades per month.
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p>I think the more sensible conclusion, based on the plain meaning of the text you know, is that he is indeed promising to withdraw 1-2 brigades per month and to have almost all of the troops out within 16 months, unless something unexpected happens. This is the same position as he has had for some time.
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p>Most important, that’s different from Clinton insofar as she’s not even willing to adopt any hard timetable beyond her vague “60 days to a plan” promise.
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p>Thus, as I’ve argued I think in sum Obama is being more detailed and specific about his plans on this issue than Clinton.
Aye, and there’s the rub. I mean, we are talking about Iraq.
Thank the stars above.
for either Hillary or Obama as President, due to immense bureaucratic pressures. Large Western corporations have invested in that country and may not feel safe with Iraqi police being in charge. The Pentagon may not want to withdraw.
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p>And, of course, in the American Media, on the big three newscasts and in papers like the NYT and WaPo, it is morally unacceptable to say that because a majority of the Iraqi people want our troops out and a majority of American people want our troops out our President should remove the troops. Whichever Democrat wins is going to take a beating in the press for trying to bring home our troops. It’s perfect valid to rely on majority rule for picking a person to hold office, but majority rule is no justification to enact a policy that affects people’s lives.
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p>Unless, of course, that liar John McCain (“Corrupt since the 80s!”) gets propelled to victory by Nick Kristof and the TeeVee pundits.
There are some things majority rule does a poor job determining. Social policy for one (youd agree we shouldnt vote on gay marriage) and wartime policy among many others.
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p>This war should be managed by the military and I would give them the freedom to make the recommendations they want to now out and front. This war has been mismanaged by neocon bueracrats who have never served in the uniform and have very little civilian experience in the military either. Most worked for universities, think tanks, or corporations before joining the Bush White House and the Rumsfeld Pentagon.
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p>Gates while well intentioned is still stuck with what is essentially the Rumsfeld Pentagon, Wolfowitz is still employed there, and these neocons are unwilling to give up on the war.
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p>Most generals want out we have bigger fish to fry in Afghanistan and the Chinese and Russians to worry about down the road. But we must withdraw sensibly, simply abandoning the Iraqi people to wholesale ethnic slaughter is about as sensible as the war was in the first place.
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p>If it was justifiable for Bill Clinton to use our military to stop a genocide and save ethnic Albanians and eventually create a free Kosovo state than it is completely justifiable to use our military to stop a genocide that we inadvertedly created. Just because its Bushs war and you want to forgot about it does not mean America has no responsibility to fix what it broke.
will have to be with an international mandate with a strong UN oversight role. Anything less is a unacceptable.
It must be made clear to the world that the US is turning the page on the neocon mentality that got us into this mess and led to the catastrophe that we are witnessing.
But at this stage it would be incredibly difficult to get the UN mandate. Perhaps with Koffi Annan out it might be easier since there will be less personal politics involved. The next President should go before the UN, apologize for the war, and then say pretty persuasively why the whole international community needs to help us to clean up this mess since leaving it by itself will create mass chaos and instability in the Middle East.
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p>Those that say here and elsewhere that if we left tomorrow all of Iraqs problems would be solved are living a pipe dream fantasy and the blood will be on our hands when that fantasy is quickly dashed by the genocide and human misery that follows in the wake of our retreat.
It may not be that the UN will be willing to be involved in this war. Perhaps the surrounding countries would be best positioned to provide oversight to prevent a (more) violent dissolution of this artificially constructed country. The surrounding countries have strong vested interests in and allegiances to the people and resources of Iraq. But at this point there seems to be no incentive or trusted party to broker a compromise that I believe, ultimately divides the country into the three parts that already exist – Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. This may be the role a new American administration can play, as trusted broker, even if the UN has no stomach for it.
Notably absent from the news are reports about the internals of Iraqi politics. The U.S. media reports little about the different factions, Sunni and Shiite, extremely religious and moderately religious.
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p>Why?
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p>Because the Bush Administration doesn’t have a clue about diplomacy.
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p>If the Bush Administration actually wanted to make anything better in Iraq, they’d engage actual Iraqis. We’d hear about it. We’d know who the players are. The Secretary of State would be meeting with them. The President would be talking about them. He’d even be able to pronounce their names! And, by the way, we’d be spared the exaggeration about the role of Al Qaeda in Iraq. (There’s abundant evidence for stupidity with respect to diplomacy in the Bush Administration’s rebuffing Iranian offers.)
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p>Any new President will have a lot to learn about Iraq that the Bush Administration has never attempted to learn. There will be problems we didn’t know existed and opportunities that the Bush bozos passed up.
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p>Given that, it seems just plain inane to expect specifics on Iraq from a Democratic primary contender. Hillary Clinton’s 60 days to a plan seems like a minimum you’d expect from a sensible President.
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p>The question shouldn’t be what gimmick for Iraqi withdrawal sounds best. A more telling question is who is advising Obama and Clinton. Are these men and women of good judgment?
You’ve got Richard Holbrooke for Hillary and Zbigniew Brzezinksi for Obama.
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p>Which do you prefer?
The Nation strongly prefers Obama’s advisers. They offered some strong evidence that Holbrooke has been an Iraq War supporter longer than Senator Clinton.
Brzezinksi since he is a realist. Realists are hated by liberals since they often advocate higher defense budgets, offensive detterence policies, etc. but they often advocate against more foolish ideas such as missile defense or preventative war since they know they are wrong sighted. Realists realize that nationalism is a force more potent than democracy or trade liberalization, they realize that occupations take away precious time and resources and mire us in unwinnable situations, and they also realize that great powers like China and Russia rather than minor ones like Iraq pose the bigger threat to US security.
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p>Clintons people, Holbrooke, Albright, Cohen, were all liberal hawks that favored and essentially agreed with the foolish concept of democratic peace theory and embraced the neocon agenda of regime change. Dont forget Wolfowitz was an advisor to the Clinton administration on WMDs in Iraq or that Richard Pearle was close to both the Clintons and supported their moves against Saddam in the 1990s. Both Clintons remember were also avid supporters of the war mainly because they too swallowed the liberal hawk Kool-Aid of a messianic Wilsonian foreign policy grounded in spreading liberalism by the sword.
I thought realists were the ones willing to jettison human rights considerations in favor of using force to push economic interests.
To be fair realists don’t place a high priority on human rights considerations and in my view do not understand how globalization has fundamentally altered relationships amongst great power states.
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p>But the whole point of realism is NOT to use force unless it is vital to protecting national interests. They favor a big military and a big budget so they can deter potential enemies from deciding to mess with the US, but they oppose wars fought for human rights like the Iraq war or the Kosovo war as liberal or neo-con fantasies and they tend to oppose any kind of unilaterlism since coalition and alliances have a better balance and chance of defeating an enemy. The view the world in strict black and white terms regarding whats good for the state, in this case the US, and that can occasionally be dangerous but it also puts things in perspective i.e that the Iraq war was bad for America, Vietnam was bad for America, and they typically have a more pacifist record than liberals (in a broad definition as people that favor free trade and liberal democracy) who tend to lead the US into crusading wars from Korea through Iraq.
Find your comments quite interesting. But, I get stuck on this: Kissinger = Realism = Chile.
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p>I guess the issue for me becomes who decides what is in our vital national (state) interests.
I think Obama always spoke out against the war. To do so was terribly risky, and was hardly the first or last time he has done what’s right, as opposed to what was politically expedient. But he did it. This book, I think, tells everything:
http://dealstudio.com/searchde…
Specifics on the issues are, I think, overrated, particularly now that we have made the “flip-flop” the one unforgivable policital sin. Even if you start, as I do, from the proposition that the war in Iraq was a mistake from the beginning and that we cannot win a military victory there, I don’t see how a candidate is wise to commit himself or herself to a course of action a year from now. Who knows what the region or the world will look like a year from now? The same is true on major domestic issues. I can’t imagine a dumber position to stake out than the position Sen. McCain has taken on taxes, saying he won’t raise taxes under any circumstances. What is the sense in this kind of commitment, and didn’t Sen. McCain get the memo from the first President Bush about how pesky promises can get in the way of responsible government?
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p>Let me also say that I find the “style versus substance” critique of Sen. Obama by Sen. Clinton’s camp to be unpersuasive. Martha Burk, chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, was quoted today as saying that Sen. Clinton “characterizes herself as being a workhorse and not a show horse.” And according to the Globe, “women’s activists are maddened and baffled that Clinton’s policy-heavy message – ‘solutions for America’ – has not eclipsed a candidate whose central themes are hope and change.”
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p>It seems that Sen. Clinton’s supporters are saying: “our candidate talks about issues [or policies or substance] while Sen. Obama talks about hope.” But when I read this, the emphasis comes across differently: “our candidate talks about issues, while Sen. Obama talks about hope.” Isn’t this whole debate just a question of which of two styles of political rhetoric are more effective? Now, as Bob as done here, you could do an issue-by-issue, point-by-point comparison of the two candidates on the specifics of any policy question, and maybe you would find that Sen. Clinton has more specifics, or specifics that seem better than Sen. Obama’s in 2008 (who knows about 2009?) but as I suggested above, I don’t view that as necessarily a good thing.
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p>TedF
…let just give up and let the delegates decide for us, since specifics are bad.
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p>I’m sorry, but that is just silly. It is possible to be specific withough locking yourself in to a course of action. Promising no new taxes is not being specific, it is pandering. Promising to get all the troops out of Iraq in a certain time frame when you are ill equipped to make such a promise is not being specific, it is pandering.
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p>Being specific means taking the time to educate the voters on how you see our government in context, what you think would be the best course of action to improve on problems and maintain successes, how that would best be achieved, how best to pay for it and how are things prioritized to deal with all of this in a very fast paced, mutable global political/economic world.
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p>The flip-flop moniker sticks best on those who are not specific. If you give a sound-bite in the first instance and change that sound bite in the second instance you are wide open for crticism. If you give specific, contextual examples of positions and policies and they must change to meet changing circumstances that can be easily demonstrated.
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p>It is very sad to me that we seem prepared to embrace this broken political paradigm just because it seems perhaps now to be stacked in our favor.
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p>This is no longer about Obama vs. Clinton for me. This is about the health of our political system. We are in a heap mess of trouble and way too many people seem way too happy about it.
Anthony, I am glad we agree that candidates shouldn’t make promises they shouldn’t expect to be able to keep!
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p>I guess what I am saying is that given that the future is uncertain, we should vote for candidates based on what we think about their good judgment (I say this within the context of the Democratic party–obviously one’s overall political orientation towards the left or the right is important, and for most, it probably trumps other considerations, so Democrats who believe Sen. McCain has good judgment are probably not jumping ship). This is not a starry-eyed, pro-Obama point. In some ways (the candidates’ positions at the beginning of the Iraq war), it cuts in Obama’s favor, at least for me, but in other ways (Senator Clinton’s decision to keep her options open on Iraq–though I agree with Bob that she has phrased this disingenousouly–versus Senator Obama’s perhaps now repudiated promise to withdraw troops from Iraq on an established schedule) it cuts in Clinton’s favor.
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p>I am also saying that simply saying “I am the candidate of substance and policy” does not make it so, any more than saying “I am the candidate of hope and change” makes it so.
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p>Lastly, you write:
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p>I wish that what you say were true, but I am not sure that it is or really ever was. I don’t think any candidate of either party has done what you suggest. Political campaigns are not policy seminars, and I think you give too much credit to the voters’ ability to resist the “flip-flop” attacks from various quarters of the media, which, I think we will agree, have bene bad for the polity insofar as they have forced candidates to an unhealthy consistency.
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p>TedF
…to say that this statement…
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p>….seems self defeatists to me.
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p>Politcal campaigns are policy seminars. Sadly, really bad ones, for the most part.
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p>Have you read all of Obama’s speeches and all of Clinton’s speeches available online?
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p>I have. Clinton is not just saying she is more substantial in terms of experience and policy, she is exceedingly more specific than Obama. I must refute your assertion that they are both “talking” about being something.
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p>That being said, I don’t think Clinton goes far enough either, I still want more.
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p>We have an opportunity right now, as both Candidates are going to be holding on to this for the next several months, to actually insist that our politicians submit themselves to a thorough and unprecedented vetting of their knowledge and ideas. Real, positive change. Instead people are defending the front runner’s right not to submit to such a crucible because, hey that’s the way it has always been. And he is supposed to be the change guy.
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p>I don’t buy it. I don’t support it. I for one want the kind of real political change that gurantees we know our candidates as well as possible before we vote for them.
Obama flipped on the issue and is not credible, he gave a “nice” speech in 2002, they when he had the authority to do something while in the Senate he did absolutely nothing, he voted continually to fund the war. He did so for his own political future. He ran away and hid in 2004 elections about Iraq and said that he could see why Kerry/Edwards would vote for the war (because of his own political future). Then after the elections, he still did jack-sh** (for his own political future). Then when Iraq was so bad and it was politically expedient to come out against Iraq, super human, Obama-man came out against the the war (for his own political future). Clinton on the other side, continued to vote horribly for the war the entire time. I’m fairly convinced that she thought it was the correct thing to do. So Obama is better? There is absolutely no way in hell I’d vote for Obama if the sole issue is Iraq. The thing that benefits him is McCain the the Republican nominee, that also helps Clinton. Iraq is not a plus here for either candidate. Let’s not pretend that it is.