Tag: Hillary Clinton

Tomasky thinks Obama should switch Biden's and Clinton's roles. Harry Enten smacks down the idea:

[H]istorical precedent is against such a move: even the desperate Herbert Hoover didn't change horses in 1932, despite knowing he faced certain defeat. Others have changed vice-presidents in the last 100 years, but never for desirable reasons: it happened in 1944 because Henry Wallace, as vice-presidential candidate, succeeded in alienating everyone; and in 1976, because Nelson Rockefeller actually refused to run. The real reason veep switches don't happen often is because vice-presidents don't make much of a difference. 

Massie is on the same page:

It projects weakness which, generally speaking, is the kind of thing a candidate seeks to avoid doing. It's the kind of thing that changes the lens through which the media filters its reporting. 

A reader writes:

Recently when a reader challenged your criticism of Hillary Clinton, you replied that, "nepotism – especially when her prodigious talents required none of it – is not feminism." However, it is not opposed to feminism either, and that is where you have erred. Did Hillary fail at feminism simply because she didn't run for governor before her husband did? Because she didn't insist that he let her "catch up" in political achievement before he then ran for president?

Also, let's be careful what we attribute to "nepotism" in Hillary's career. I haven't noticed any other First Ladies becoming Senators and then Secretary of State, especially First Ladies who were as disliked and criticized as Clinton was at that time. No, she could not have become the First Lady without Bill, but to a lot of people's surprise she created her own successful political career after that. She has been a tremendous Secretary of State, and she is the first woman in my lifetime who ever had a strong chance of winning the presidency. Being married to Bill simply doesn't get her there, but you give her no credit for it. That's not feminism, either.

Another writes:

As to the notion that she is a benficiary of nepotism, sorry – I suspect her marriage to Bill has been a liability at least as often as a benefit. Or are you forgetting all the nastiness said about her, of all people, during the Lewinsky affair?

Another:

I don’t think it was necessarily an anti-feminist choice in their marriage for Bill, perhaps the most natural politician on earth, to be the front and center candidate for most of their partnership. That makes business sense to me – to put the stronger candidate front and center, particularly since women in politics was still a fairly new phenomenon. Is that her fault?

Neither do I think it’s reasonable to assume she would not be in politics but for Bill Clinton. Say what you will, but she is very smart and capable, and there is a dearth of women in her age group in politics, or in politics – period. Would it have been more feminist of her to never run for office, just because her husband had a successful political career?

I’m a member of a "power couple" myself. My husband and I practice law together. Besides sharing our law practice, we are raising three children. Every day of our lives is a juggling act and a dance of compromise and shuffling the schedule. I think you’d better leave this topic to the women who actually have to deal with trying to "have it all", because even now, it’s not so simple.

Another asks:

Did Hillary ever advertise herself as a "feminist"? Why isn't she just a powerful woman who deserved to get there as much as any of the other powerful Washington types? I don't think every powerful woman has to be emblematic of feminism just like every black politician doesn't need to embrace critical race theory.

(Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the department's FY2013 international affairs budget February 28, 2012 in Washington, DC. Clinton faced questions ranging from the cost of embassies in Iraq and the Middle East to the START Treaty with Russia. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.)

Is not going to happen. But for some reason, Bill Keller and Bill O'Reilly want to talk about it. And yes, Keller is an awful columnist.

Robert Reich's dubious prediction is that Obama will swap out Biden for Clinton:

Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base that’s been disillusioned with his cave-ins to regressive Republicans. Hillary Clinton on the ticket can do that. Moreover, the economy won’t be in superb shape in the months leading up to Election Day. Indeed, if the European debt crisis grows worse and if China’s economy continues to slow, there’s a better than even chance we’ll be back in a recession. Clinton would help deflect attention from the bad economy and put it on foreign policy, where she and Obama have shined. The deal would also make Clinton the obvious Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 — offering the Democrats a shot at twelve (or more) years in the White House, something the Republicans had with Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush but which the Democrats haven’t had since FDR.

The Anchoress counters that Hillary should run this year as a third party candidate. Doug Mataconis throws cold water on both ideas:

[T]he Obama Administration has consistently shot down any of the Biden-Clinton swap rumors that have come up over the past three years. Moreover, Vice-President Biden has said more than once that he intends to run with the President in 2012, while Hillary Clinton has made clear that she considers Secretary of State to be her last public job and that she has no interest in running for political office again. … 

[I]t’s fairly clear that a Clinton candidacy in the General Election would take votes from Obama, possibly cost him most if not all of the battleground states that he needs to win the election, and hand the election to the Republicans. Why in the world would Hillary Clinton, who has been a loyal Democrat all her life, want to do that? 

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Question? askandrew@thedailybeast.com

A telling exchange from a Goldblog interview:

JG: Would you be sad if [Assad's] regime disappeared?

HRC: It depends upon what replaces it.

Funny how she never took that view on Libya, isn't it? The lesson the Arab dictatorships have learned is that if you go house-to-house and detain and torture dissidents, the West will look away. If you take tanks into urban areas and shell civilians … oh, wait! That analogy won't work either.

Yoni Brenner mocks idealistic diplomacy by imagining other Wikileaks cables:

DATE: 2010-10-21

SOURCE: Embassy Tel Aviv

SUBJECT: TWO-STATE SOLUTION

1. (S/NF) Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited post to review new State Department-sponsored peace initiative. After carefully reviewing the one-page, six-hundred-word document, Barak removed his reading glasses and whispered, “By God, you’ve done it. You’ve actually done it.” He continued in a quavering voice, “And who could have guessed it was so simple!”

2. Within two hours, Barak was joined by Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, who both reacted with the same combination of relief and euphoria, and Abbas estimated chances of success at somewhere between “one hundred per cent and one million per cent.”

She says that she won't run for president again. Doug Mataconis accepts this at face value:

Hillary Clinton will not run against Barack Obama in 2012, anyone who believes she will is simply ignoring reality, and she will be 69 years old when Election Day 2016 rolls around. Would she be willing to put all her energy into what is likely to be a wide open race regardless of what happens to Barack Obama in 2012? I tend to believe her when she says she’s done.

Which is why, given her skillset and ambition, it would be foolish to under-estimate her potential to make a mark as secretary of state. But if she did have a successful two-term run as secretary – imagine if we did get a two-state solution, withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, a reset with Russia and a Pacific/South Asian alliance to moderate Chinese ambition – I can see her being able to reconsider. 69 is younger than McCain was in 2008. And if my own feelings are in any way salient, my view of her has changed significantly given her professional and refreshing stint at State. I think she has won over many of her former foes.

An erstwhile Dish punching bag does some good:

Alvin McEwen is upset that the gay community "can't even thank someone without getting into an argument":

Unfortunately some have used this speech to either voice their disagreement with President Obama's movement on DADT and DOMA or criticize Mrs. Clinton for her husband's pushing of DADT when he was president. It's caused some arguments and frankly it's stupid. I don't care what Obama didn't do or what Bill Clinton did do. This is about our children and it says a lot that Mrs. Clinton took time out to show them some support.

I agree but I also can't help wondering if it's part of a campaign to solidify her hold over gay voters in 2016. (Bad Sully. No pot pie!)

As running mate, that is. I think she is far too valuable as a secretary of state. And the project she and Obama have constructed needs eight years together. That's tells you how ambitious he is; and how smart she is.