I respect that Senator Clinton knows her way around Washington, D.C. But I resent the way she touts her "experience" as though she outright deserves the presidency, and that John Edwards and Barack Obama simply wandered in off the streets one day and said, "I’d like to be president now."
Today, CNN's political ticker posed the question, "Is ‘experience’ a liability in politics"? Not always. Take George W. Bush, who had less foreign policy experience than Dora the Explorer when he took office. His entire presidency has been a liability.
But take Hillary’s husband Bill Clinton, who also had no significant foreign policy experience, save some study abroad experience. During his presidency, he proved to be such a skilled foreign diplomacy operative that there has since been talk in Washington circles of naming him to an ambassador or United Nations post. Lack of experience could have been a liability, but because Clinton appointed brilliant foreign policy advisers like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, he had a room full of intelligent minds to take recommendations from.
Experience, as far as the presidency is concerned, is relative and does not a great commander-in-chief guarantee. But the media and Hillary’s talking heads are mistaken if they believe experience is her liability. Her increasingly insincere and aggressive political tactics are her liability.
In the past two weeks alone, I’ve drawn attention to numerous questionable tactics in Clinton’s campaign.
- Repeatedly,
she falsely insinuated that Barack Obama voted for the Patriot Act.
- Her husband, a man for whom I once had tremendous respect who has become Hillary’s most important spokesperson, publicly insulted Obama’s campaign, saying:
"Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen."
- She gets introduced at her campaign events by ignorant supporters like Francine Torge, who share such historically inaccurate and prepostorous tidbits such as:
"Some people compare one of the other candidates to John F. Kennedy. But he was assassinated. And Lyndon Baines Johnson was the one who actually" [passed the civil rights legislation]."
- The whole crying on the campaign trail thing? I don’t know if I buy it.
Particularly when the woman who asked the question that prompted the tears recalls: "I went to see Hillary. I was undecided and I was moved by her response to me... We saw ten seconds of Hillary, the caring woman... But then when she turned away from me, I noticed that she stiffened up and took on that political posture again... And the woman that I noticed for ten seconds was gone." By the way, this woman, 64-year-old Pernold Young ended up voting for Obama in the New Hampshire Primaries.
- After attacking Obama’s platform of hope and change, she has adopted a new campaign slogan: "
Ready for Change, Ready to Lead!"
I don’t dislike Hillary Clinton. I dislike her campaign. It isn’t about her crying at a campaign event, or yelling at everyone during debates and then wishing she was more likeable, or being the subject of inflammatory Gloria Steinem editorials, or sending her husband out to denounce Barack Obama. It’s about the overall message she is conveying to this country. It isn’t a positive one.
The problem she has with Barack Obama isn’t is alleged lack of experience (last time I checked, community organizers got a lot more hands-on, real world experience than First Ladies), it’s that he can beat her. She is firing from every angle, arguing that Obama is both too liberal and not liberal enough; sounding rather like Dick Cheney in implying that America would be safer in the event of an attack under a more experienced leader than Obama; he’s too hopeful, he’s too young, etc., etc.
She complains that he’s all talk. But lately, all Hillary has done is talk about Barack Obama and what’s wrong with him. She infers that she is the only candidate who gives a damn about health care, when both Edwards and Obama have comprehensive, clearly-outlined plans that would be a step in the right direction.
Likeability and electability are all fine and good. But it is character that defines a leader. And frankly, Senator Clinton, your character is not impressing me.
Cross-posted in my blog.