wasn't much to report on.

It's the holidays. Healy or his editors came up with the reasonable idea of, "Let's fill some white space after Christmas by looking into HRC's White House foreign policy record."

Which sounds good, except that, like most first ladies, HRC had little to do with the nuts and bolts of foreign policy. On the other hand, she did meet lots of world leaders and, apparently, didn't insult their gods or throw up on them, so that's something.

The bottom line is that, really, she doesn't have all that much more relevant experience than Obama and Edwards. What she does have is experience with facing the Viguerie-Rovie hate machine.

To some extent, I think the current primary competition is a shame. HRC, Edwards and Obama really have an awful lot in common, and I think any differences have more to do with rhetoric (of course Edwards is right about the "two Americas," and of course HRC and Obama must wish they'd said that first) or practical reactions to specific, difficult problems (e.g., when HRC and Edwards voted for the Iraq war authorization resolution).

To back up: when I think about it, Kerry was a lot more different from Dean and Wesley Clark than HRC, Edwards and Obama are from one another. But, really, that had more to do with sheer communications skills than any huge differences in outlook, and I wish we were seeing Kerry, Dean and Clark showing up more often along with the primary candidates and talking about ways to divvy up the work of saving the world from environmental destruction and our socioeconomic system from the current anti-free-market robber baronism.

It's fun to see your name listed in the almanac under "president," but, seriously, the prize this time around is ensuring that it's physically possible for your children to have great-grandchildren who live Star Trek kinds of lives rather than Soylent Green or Mad Max kinds of lives.

Mickey Kantor who supports Clinton's candidacy says that Clinton was informed and involved.

Susan Rice, who works for the Obama campaign. says that she was not.

And Warren Christopher who says that she wasn't in the Oval office when certain policy decisons were made, but supports her candidacy.

That's remarkably thin sourcing for such a broad piece.

Regardless of where you stand on Clinton's candidacy, this kind of thin reporting does not serve progressives well.  

How will you feel if and when the NYT does such a thinly sourced piece on Edwards or Obama?

Let's not let our candidate preferences get in the way of our wariness about this kind of bullshit-reporting.

Hillary Clinton for sure has some unique experience that none of the other candidates can bring to the table BUT it's a far sight short of being 'the face of foreign policy'.  How so many people can be falling for that bullshit is amazing.  How she can keep blathering about it with a straight face is even more amazing.

She hasn't had some level of experience that supports a run based on that purported experience.  She - like Obama - has to be able to point to specific examples of her sound foreign policy judgment and be very specific about how she would handle some current situations.  I have to be honest:  her AUMF and K-L votes, combined with her using the Pakistan/Al Queda intervention question as an opportunity to score disingenuous political points rather than to actually discuss how she would handle this kind of situation do not combine to give me a lot of comfort.  I think a lot of people feel she should win because she has this "experience," and it will hurt her to the extent that that bubble is burst.

That's far more than Biden or Dodd. Don't tell me you don't believe her.

I don't like her, but I think she is qualified to be president. However, this co-president notion they're trying to sell is absurd and I'm glad someone has taken on the debunking of it.  Obama is on level field with her on experience and if you want a real foreign policy expert, vote for Biden or Richardson.

Or wait for my diary on Edwards having the right right kind of experience. :-)

Especially when after all this claimed experience not only as the "second president" but as a senator who voted for war not once a, after it was seen as gross manipulation, but twice. Experience is only a valid plus if one has learned from it. She has shown no indication she has learned anything from her experience in the Senate and the inverse is true in the WH.

She pushed a health plan in 1993. She experienced a determined opposition. Instead of recalibrating and going at it again. She gave up entirely and then went on to accept a fair sum of money from the people that financed the opposition of a plan that is apparent to anyone who has to pay for health insurance and isn't rich is something we needed to start the debate on 14 years ago - as she did- and finish it with a plan- not give up - as she did.

One could write off 1993 as inexperience. But try to explain the next 14 years to me. Where has she learned from her experience to the benefit of constituents not to her or husbands benefit?

The NYT did a fair to middling job and I hope it helps the other candidates completely obliterate any vestiges of the inevitability of her nomination. Let her run on her own record like the other candidates did.

Presidential Politics should never be a family business. If we allow it to be , we've learned nothing from our collective experience. Then we deserve everything we aren't going to get.  

for that matter, you haven't denied having coitus with sheep, so should we take that as a given?

other. They talk. Arguing that these conversations are required to be divulged because they're "business-related" is humorous.

do you want to see the semen stains on her clothing, too? LOL