Since March 3, the day before her dramatic “comeback,” Hillary Clinton has repeatedly described herself and John McCain as the only candidates with the experience necessary to be commander in chief while simultaneously denigrating her Democratic rival Barack Obama. For some of the video clips see: http://www.americablog.com/200…
Well today (March 6), she went even saying that both she and McCain had crossed the commander-in-chief threshold while suggesting that Obama had not:
“I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.
“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.
http://weblogs.chicagotribune….
It would be one thing for Clinton to argue that she is more qualified than Obama to be commander in chief, but in setting up a line of attack for the Republican nominee she demonstrates that electing a Democrat as President only matters if Hillary Clinton is the candidate.
Moreover, Senator’s Clinton’s claim only makes sense if her key votes are ignored.
Here’s how Senator McCain and Clinton crossed a threshold together:
Ocotober 10, 2002
The Levin Amendment
Clinton (D-NY), Nay
McCain (R-AZ), Nay
http://www.senate.gov/legislat…
October 11, 2002
A joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.
Clinton (D-NY), Yea
McCain (R-AZ), Yea
http://www.senate.gov/legislat…
I am certain that Senator Clinton did not desire the catastrophe that ensued.
The results of crossing that threshold:
US Deaths confirmed by the DOD: 3974
http://icasualties.org/oif/def…
(Not to mention deaths of soldiers from Britain and other countries and Iraqis)
Total ultimate cost: $3 trillion from The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict by Joseph Stiglitz
http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/f…
This is the same Joseph Stiglitz who served as one of President Clinton’s top economic advisors-Stiglitz chaired the Council of Ecnomic Advisers from 1995-1997, and he is also the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in Economics
$3 trillion would pay for a lot of health care and economic investment.
why in jeebus’s name would she prop up mccain? that makes absolutely no sense to me. what an asinine and potentially very destructive tactic.
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p>here is the only thing i can figure:
she thinks america does see mccain but not her as having “crossed that threshold”*. thus, she is weirdly riding mccains coattails across the threshold.
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p>*i fully anticipate the political cartoonists tomorrow to draw hillery carrying her bride mccain over the white house threshold. could she have set it the creepy image for us any more perfectly? yuckus.
is to move independents toward McCain in the primaries, those who were deciding between McCain and Obama. Those who were deciding between McCain and Clinton, not sure of the impact. If this is the case then this is very shortsighted, then on the other side you have what the hell are you doing?
Thanks, Historian, for so clearly pointing out this match made by the devil.
Basically, Hillary’s saying what McCain’s line of attack is on Obama, and McCain can’t use that same line on Hillary. While Obama does have a counter to this line of attack, Hillary’s downplaying it. If Dem voters think about how Hillary could beat back McCain’s attacks, they’ll start to assume she should be the nominee–it’s kind of link the “Don’t Think of An Elephant.”
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p>It’s just political speechifying. She has not crossed any threshold/line.
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p>The general tone of Obama’s campaign has been that Hillary is too old & set in Washington’s ways, as is McCain. He wants to people to think she’s not different enough from the Republicans, so voters will assume Obama is the way to vote for change.
I’ve never understood what “experience” Hillary is talking about.
Obama, McCain and Hillary are all Senators. None has any executive experience.
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p>Is Hillary just saying she and McCain are older than Obama? Or is she trying to claim that somehow sleeping in the same bed with the President gives her executive experience?
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p>I just don’t buy that argument. It makes me think of this movie line:
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Joan Cusack as Cynthia in Working Girl
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p>Why is Hillary Clinton vouching for McCain? As a true Democrat, this just p**ses me off.
Beyond the Obama campaign and supporter thinking:
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p>The ABC/Washington Post polling out on Wednesday does show Obama perceived remarkably weak on dealing with terrorism, which is part of a larger category with “strong(er) leader” rating. McCain leads Obama 58-33 in the first, and 51-40 in the second. The generic D/R split on ‘handling terrorism’ in polling is in fact in favor of Democrats at 50/47 or so. (I can try to justify/explain this in another post.) Which is to say, Obama lags badly on the “issue”. Leaving out some justifications, it’s probably because unlike Clinton- he didn’t work to define himself as a “hard” Democrat on the issue. So he defaults to “soft” Democrat to the people who care about that.
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p>My sense of what the distinction between “hard” and “soft” Democrat in the mind of political moderates is…it’s not pretty. The distinction is about the determination to kill Al Qaeda people. Political moderates (the 36% of American voting populace not part of the 32% and 32% blocs at each end of the American political spectrum) try to present themselves as nice people, and they themselves wouldn’t pull the trigger or advocate killing outright. But as concerns Al Qaeda, I believe the way to look at it is that as a group they’ve decided on giving minimal or no benefits of the doubt to any people responsible for or associated with the September 11 attacks. Which is to say, it’s about a guilty until proven innocent approach, a when-in-doubt-just-kill-them point of view. I.e., just get the people responsible six feet under, we don’t really want to kill innocents but we are unwilling to suffer the pain of long, minutiae-filled, unsatisfactory dealings with the perps.
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p>And so they vote for “hard” politicians who accept that attitude and approach as guiding in all things Al Qaeda. Yes, Bush probably revulses them in his enthusiasm to kill without significant judicial process. And they don’t see the need to break laws to do it, though they’ll tolerate a measure of it as long as Bush keeps his eye on the ball (Al Qaeda). But they’re still intolerant of ‘soft’ politicians who seem to them likely bog down the process of resolution and not give them the affirmation (death sentences) they want. It’s not a completely moral position or attitude, so the talk about it is mostly in euphemisms and codes and lots of inexact language. Which makes it hard to parse- I certainly found it hard to make sense of, it took me years, and I may not have gotten it right here. (Attitudinally I’m a mostly “soft” Democrat myself, but the 2002/04/06 election politics and polling and death penalty politics and pollings lead me to this interpretation.)
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p>Clinton wasn’t polled out in the ABC/WaPo polling, but she has all along run up to the ceiling number for Democrats on ‘handling terrorism’ and ‘strong leader’ within m.o.e.- at the price of having to run “hard” line on terrorism/crime/Al Qaeda. Which bought her all kinds of slagging and excoriation and punishment by classical Left activists for years, of course. And allegations that she’s “a Republican” and “willing to do anything”, and whatever else. To me, she did what used to be acceptable, which is to span politically from the liberals to moderate Republicans for purposes of the election mandate. (Which is followed by governing from the middle of that span- at the point of nexus of liberal, Left, and moderate Democratic blocs.)
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p>The present moment is the point where Clinton’s long term strategy of absorbing the hits from Left activists on terrorism-related policy by running on the “hard” line (I think as a person she’s actually more with the “soft” line) to keep moderate voter cred starts giving her the edge over Obama, who went along with the activists.
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p>None of it is hidden from the McCain team- the ABC/WaPo numbers are glaring. Of course they’ll exploit it- Bush led Kerry on ‘handling terrorism’ by the same 60/40, and that was half the reason Bush prevailed. (The other half was a 60/40 on social issues, Kerry conversely had economic issues in his favor 60/40 then). It’s the only one of 4-5 major issue areas in which McCain has a probably durable edge on Obama, where Obama has only one (economic issues) utterly in the clear against McCain. So of course Team McCain’s only viable strategy against Obama is precisely to utterly crucify Obama as ‘weak on terrorism’ and ‘weak leader’, distracting from and overwhelming Iraq and social and economic concerns, where there are moderate leans to Democrats.
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p>Clinton’s team looks at the numbers they see in their own polling, and it presents an opportunity to split the moderates/conservatives that went to Obama (many Indies) away from him. It will lead to the hardcore classical Left activists aligned with Obama to attack her viciously- which works in her favor with former Republican leaners. See Samantha Power today.
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p>Oh, and the “experience” thing. That, I would suggest, is actually a code or reference to Hillary being a veteran, fairly scarred, of the Culture War and a person who took and still takes the Cold War (i.e. its residues) and the American duties in it seriously.
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p>The Obama line is that the Cold War is over, or just a problem of Evil People To Throw Out like the neocons (“Change”), and the Culture War isn’t one we should take too seriously either- we have to take charge, which is mostly about money and foreign policy/Iraq, leaving icky social issues to the the “extremists” and “single issue activists” to fight out (“Hope”).
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p>Both views have much truth, and each side has had to exaggerate its views to create contrast. But there is a degree of denial in the Obama line, in my view, about the Cold War remains’ and Culture War’s relevance/priority. The Clinton line is not about the absolute or philosophical importance of these things, it’s that they are pragmatic impediments to things we want and would rather do- so we have to deal with them, willingly or not.
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p>I am a Clinton partisan, but those are the best explanations I can come up with in generally objective language. My apologies for the length, but as others have said, I didn’t have the time to write a short post. đŸ™‚