I wish John Edwards were still in the race. Not only did I want the chance to vote for him, but because he elevated the level of discourse among Democrats. Whilst Obama waxed rhapsodic about "hope" and coming together, Edwards was campaigning on the plight of the poor. While Clinton was running on the incompetence of the Republicans, Edwards was talking about the economy, economic parity, and the financial crisis in America.
Senator Edwards got drowned out by the media obsession with the two rock star candidates. This is not his first failure in a bid for national office. He also lost his senate seat in 2004 in a race he could never have won. I have doubts about Edwards abilities as a campaigner, but I know he was and would have continued to be a wonderful public servant.
Enough hand wringing, though. The field is narrowed down to two and I have to just deal with it. My vote for Edwards will now be transferred to Clinton.
Hillary Clinton would be a better president than Barack Obama. Her line about "35 years of experience" does not really impress me because it does not tell me much. That said, she has been in the Senate longer than Barack Obama, has more experience in drafting legislation, and she has relationships with foreign leaders. Hillary Clinton met people when she was First Lady Hillary Clinton and as Senator Hillary Clinton. She has a prestige abroad that Barack Obama does not. I am not saying that he would not be or isn't currently hugely popular, but that is not the same as Hillary Clinton's prestige. We can argue over whether or not it is because she is married to a man beloved all over the world, but it is what it is.
Senator Obama's two year tenure is really one year. Like anyone running for president, he has to be all over the place. But Obama was not elected to the Senate so that he could collect a salary to run for president. For example, since he has been Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations' Subcommittee on Europe, Obama has held zero hearings. That is outrageous. Among other security matters, this committee deals with NATO, the same NATO that is fighting the war in Afghanistan, the war Obama (quite rightly) says we should be focusing on. Under his watchful eye, NATO has diminished in Afghanistan. NATO as a fighting force is in jeopardy due to a constellation of issues. I believe Obama when he says that any military force we use should be aimed at Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. But I get concerned when I see that he has not convened a single hearing when his counterparts in the House are holding hearings everyday. Senator Obama does not have his priorities in order. It is true that he needed to get on the ground around the country to launch his campaign, but by putting that before his job in the Senate, he is being negligent.
Find me another example of this in either chamber of Congress. Senator Clinton, on the other hand, is known as being unusually hard working by both friends and foe alike. She often convenes hearings and holds them by herself when the rest of her committee doesn't show up. Since she is my Senator, I like the fact that she takes her job seriously. Senator Clinton showed up for the vote on Iran and stupidly voted in favor of it. Senator Obama did not show up. Did he fail to appear because he did not care or because he did not want to be compelled to defend his vote to Democrats in the primaries or take hits for it in the general election? Was cutting out of the vote his new way of pressing the "present" button in the Illinois state senate? He did say he was against the Iraq war in 2003, but had he been in the Senate, how would he have voted? Since his arrival he has voted the same way Hillary Clinton has on Iraq, so I wonder if he can only play the contrarian when it isn't on the record. I thought that a cynical move worthy of the Clintons.
Caroline Kennedy said that Barack Obama would be a president like her daddy, and I could not agree more. No, I do not think Obama would continue the misguided foreign policy of the previous administration the way Kennedy did by authorizing the Bay of Pigs. But I do think Obama is naive the same way Kennedy was when he came into office. Kennedy thought that Nikita Khrushchev was a reasonable, more liberal man with whom he could negotiate. Kennedy fell for his own fairytale hook, line, and sinker. Khrushchev saw the Bay of Pigs fiasco as a confirmation of his notion that Kennedy was weak and could not play the game. This lead to Khrushchev trying to set up missile sites in Cuba which almost resulted in a nuclear war aka the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is true that all ended well but only after Kennedy made it clear that the US was willing to go all out and thus mutually assured destruction improved our national security. But seeing as our current enemies seek our both our destruction and are not a conventional army or nation state, Obama's stated preferences for president level negotiations with the likes Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-Il (both of whom are deceitful and destructive like Khrushchev) could end in disaster.
Hillary Clinton has the type of nuanced view of foreign affairs that would help her avoid such pitfalls. For example, during one of the Democratic debate the question was posed "If you had intelligence that indicated where Osama Bin Laden is in Pakistan, would you launch a missile attack?" Everyone said yes. Everyone also said that they would avoid telling the Pakistanis because there are members of their security services who are in cahoots with Bin Laden. Only Senator Clinton pointed out the glaring issue of India in all of this. India and Pakistan are looking for any excuse to fight and if the Pakistanis launched a retaliatory attack before we fessed up, there would likely be a nuclear war. It is that sort of attention to detail (though the hatred between India and Pakistan is not exactly a state secret) that has been missing in American foreign policy for 7 years.
Hillary Clinton may have only been the First Lady, but I am willing to bet good money that she did more than give garden parties. The failure of her health care plan in 1993 was more a reaction to her than it. We should note that 15 years before reforming health care become the in thing, Hillary Clinton was trying to do it. I cannot speak with specificity on what Senator Clinton was in on during her husband's administration, but I can say that she most certainly had a front row seat to the show. Her work habits in the Senate are reflective of the work habits the Clinton Administration was criticized for. I remember back to when the Bush Administration had yet to be revealed to be incompetent. The opinion of the news corps was that the Bush people would be better than the Clintons because they were so efficient that at 6 o'clock everyone went home. The Clinton White House did indeed run 24 hours a day. Critics called it obsessed; I call it the right way to run a government. Hillary Clinton shows that she will keep up that tradition and I like that.
Hillary Clinton has voted in favor of bills I dislike. I think she has made choices that were intended to get and then solidify a power position in the Senate. The only thing that keeps me from dismissing her out of hand is that none of these votes was remotely close, so she did not use her vote to swing a bill in a different direction. She is very boxed in by the fact that she is hated for being who she is. As a woman she has to "make her bones" so people don't project spinelessness onto her. I have every confidence that if she is elected and she has a genuine majority in the Senate she will behave in a manner truer to her liberal views because she will be acting from power not seeking it. Even Bush looked like he had heard of the Constitution before he got the big chair.
Some of you who read my diaries know that I would never vote for Obama for reasons other than those discussed here. I do have genuine concerns about his commitment to doing the work of a president, like listening to boring financial projections from Chad. He seems to be more enamored of "hope" that his being the first half not white man to be a serious candidate for president. I think he should get used to being in the Senate, learn a few things there, and prove himself a more diligent civil servant.
Oh, allow me to have a sports fanatic moment:
GO BIG BLUE!! KILL THOSE PUNK PATRIOTS!! NEW YORK FOREVER!