Hillary Clinton lacks more than charisma. She lacks a large percentage of people who believe that she, and not some other Democrat, should be, must be, president.

Well put.

I could cite her objectionable Senate votes and dubious policy positions, but my main reason for not supporting Clinton is that I don't consider her a true leader.

For all that she talks about experience, Clinton's only real leadership role was her disastrous experience with Bill's healthcare reform in '93. And unfortunately, it seems that all she learned from that debacle was to make nice and rake in the healthcare lobby's donations.

Hillary Clinton enjoyed the power and influence that came with her husband's name and a SAFE seat in the Senate. With those assets, she could have been a leader in organizing Democratic opposition to the Bush-Cheney juggernaut. Instead, she spent her time on mostly non-controversial causes -- when she wasn't enraging the Democratic base with her triangulating.

Clinton is my senator and she's been hardworking and diligent, although often disappointing. She is a capable and intelligent legislator and diplomat. She is not a president.

Here is where Obama clearly trumps every Clinton argument. He makes leadership seem effortless while Clinton has to labor at playing the part.

I am not an Obama supporter either, but I can see his appeal to an electorate that is hungering not just for change, but for a leader to bring them out of this horrible nightmare that Bush/Cheney have inflicted on America. Obama doesn't need to give specifics for this; it's enough that he's promising change as if it's water in a parched desert.

Time will tell if he's the real deal and can serve up some backbone with the charisma. Clinton, though, will have a tough time trying to outshine Obama.

Posted at January 6, 2008 1:50 AM in response to A Regular Gal

I am fully aware of the scandals and lapses of the press in past eras, of yellow journalism, of Hearst's infamous quote, "I'll supply the war."

It was also a time of vigorous competition in the newspaper world. Larger cities had multiple dailies, morning and afternoon editions, and each was easily pegged for its slant on the news. Most communities had independently-owned dailies or weeklies. That variety of choice and opinion has been missing for a long time. Clear Channel has done the same for radio. The erosion of fairness standards and ownership limits in single markets has done the same for television. Please don't tell me about the internet or blogs. That's all great, but it is not mass communication at this point.

And yes, I do believe half the voting population lacks the wit and wisdom to figure anything out anymore. Nearly half simply don't vote. Of those that do, the results of the 2004 election speak volumes. George Bush corralled the fear and loathing vote. Fear of terrorist bogeymen, loathing of gays, Muslims, dark people, liberals, uppity women, foreigners, city folk, intellectuals.

I do think the Plame/CIA scandal is the worst scandal we've faced as a nation. "Remember the Maine?" We were still a relatively provincial power. We were on the rise. No longer. When we stumble now, the world is involved.

The Plame scandal is a single thread that leads to the labyrinth of lies that took this nation to war. It's a war that has done immense damage that we can not afford and at the worst possible time. The Iraq War has exposed the limits of our power at a time we need that power the most. It's bankrupting us at a time we are already weak from mortgaging our economy to the Chinese and pegging our way of life to cheap oil.

Few would dispute that the proliferation of WMD is the greatest threat to our nation after global climate change. And that's exactly what Valerie Plame and her CIA front company were involved with investigating. Contacts, sources, networks that were years in the making, of vital national security interest, were blown by careless treason to get a political enemy while protecting a tissue of administration lies.

This goes well beyond the venal scandals of the past. It rolls it all into one stinking ball--war for votes, electoral hijinks, war for profit, media complicity, executive power grabs, corrupt legislating and rubber-stamping, attempts to bypass established law, invention of dubious presidential prerogatives--and adds in the jeopardizing of national security and coverup.

So you may not approve, but I stand by what I wrote.

Posted at October 24, 2005 10:21 PM in response to The rule of law?

The rule of law is the chance of which I spoke.

The administration cabal, and the Republicans in general, did what they always do--they overreached. Plus, they were incompetent.

But this is a touch-and-go situation. The rule of law depends upon those who will uphold it as well as obey it.

I am enough of a realist to know that justice does not always prevail. The idealist in me believes justice must prevail.

In the end, we depend on courageous citizens who will do their duty in the face of the incipient mobocracy.

Posted at October 24, 2005 10:27 AM in response to The rule of law?

The Framers of our Constitution had pragmatic solutions in the form of checks and balances to deal with what I'm sure they recognized as universals: the desire of those in power to get their way; the tendency to lie and cheat; the impulse to cover up wrongdoing.

To our disgrace, politicians today have discovered and utilized sophisticated methods of thwarting any checks on abuse of power. They have taken advantage of social and economic entities that weren't dreamed of in the 18th century.

Disinformation campaigns spread by the corporate media have almost nullified the spread of reliable information that citizens need if they are to hold officials to account.

The vast sums of money needed to campaign have made every--EVERY--politician potentially bribable by those with the dough.

I could go on, but it's clear the system envisioned by the Framers isn't working. Currently, the only remedy is a return to divided government via elections. But I frankly doubt that half the voting population has the wit or wisdom to figure anything out anymore. They're exhausted from working harder while still slipping behind. They're whipped into emotional frenzies over nonsense by a media that serves the interests of the corporate elite.

The truly scary thing about the rise of our secretive, imperial presidency is that so much of what's happened was decided by a tiny group of players. They planned in secret while broadcasting lies. There was never any honest debate for the benefit of those of us who are paying for their decisions.

Each abuse-of-power scandal has gotten worse than the last. We have a chance, perhaps, to save the nation from Bushism today. But who knows what high-tech tyrannies we'll be faced with tomorrow, when the next potential tyrant might actually be competent.

If and when this long national nightmare ends, will there be a real post-mortem? Will we have the wisdom to face what went wrong with the system and find a way to fix it?

We've tried certain ineffective fixes in the past--term limits for thee but not for me, toothless campaign finance reform, and so on. We'll have to drill down a lot further and confront the will to power and its partner, greed. I'm not optimistic.

Posted at October 24, 2005 8:20 AM in response to The rule of law?

To answer the first question--was the train wreck that occurred an inevitable result of the invasion--I would have to answer, "Yes".

It was the invasion that destabilized and then destroyed the forces that kept a mutually antagonistic population under control.

The question was never whether or not the U.S. would prevail against Saddam's military forces. Our military victory was a foregone conclusion, particularly since Saddam did not have the WMD we purportedly invaded to destroy.

In securing the peace, however, we did not commit nor did we have the forces necessary. It's not just a matter of numbers, it's a matter of specialization.

Had we followed the tanks with regiments of police fluent in Arabic, there might have been some chance. And I am not convinced the Iraqi army, which we precipitously disbanded, would have been the magic bullet some claim.

As for the second question--was there any reason to believe that the Bush administration would handle things better--I don't see any reason to stretch my imagination that far.

I think it was impossible for the administration to do better because there were so many disparate goals hitched to a mission that was hardly rational to begin with.

Rummy wanted to pursue a neocon agenda while proving pet theories about military transformation.

Bush wanted a war to pave the way for a "successful" presidency. He also wanted the oil, the elusive profits, and to go one better than Poppy.

Rove wanted a war club with which to beat opponents over the head.

Cheney wanted the oil, the Halliburton profits, and the opportunity to advance the neocon agenda while cementing Republican political hegemony.

The neocons wanted to make their dreams come true of transformation in the Middle East and perfect security for Israel.

Everybody at the time bandied phrases like "cakewalk". It's clear their plotting and planning was never reality-based.

It is, I think, long past time for hawks from every part of the political spectrum to face reality and admit defeat. Stop trying to sugar-coat it. Stop trying to make excuses. Take responsibility for being wrong.

Posted at October 19, 2005 8:01 PM in response to A Turtle's Lament

Thank you, tib, for pointing out how the liberal hawks were played--masterfully--by Makiya.

During the runup to the invasion, he popped up frequently on Charlie Rose and other venues to sell his dreamy brand of snake oil to ignorant Americans yearning for one--just one--Muslim who liked us. He flattered us and courted us and sold us his Iraqi version of the American Dream. He was charismatic on tv; how much more so in person?

But Republican hawks are just as susceptible to cheap sentimentalism. They've been just as snowed. Just as delusional. Just as...emotional.

And that "high level of empathy" for our troops? Hogwash and lip service. "Support Our Troops" magnets to adorn the ass-end of half the SUVs in America are the height of cheap and easy sentimentalism, not to mention monumental hypocrisy. But what does it mean?

Oh, virtuous heartlanders run a bake sale to collect a few dollars "for the troops." But ask them if they want the draft reinstated, or taxes raised, or gas rationing, or curtailment of any part of their good lives that have been made possible only by cheap oil that now must be won by the blood of those same troops?

So much for the "average" American who believes Republicans value troops' lives and Democrats' don't.

Of course, the idea of calling anybody who favored the invasion of Iraq an "intellectual" is hilarious. There were many motives and reasons to support war, but none--NONE!--were intellectual. Fear, hope, greed, hubris, hunger for power, revenge, sorrow and pity all played a part. But nobody involved was actually using his or her head.

Posted at October 18, 2005 3:17 PM in response to The Intellectuals' War

I can't help but wonder if the Indonesians would be willing to overlook the dubious nature of our invasion of Afghanistan if we had been more competent in execution and outcome.

This is another reminder, and consequence, of the Bushies' obsession with Iraq.

If the neocons truly believed that a functioning democracy in the region would be an example to others, they would have concentrated their efforts in Afghanistan. Instead, we now have a failed narco-state, the creeping resurgence of the Taliban, our hand-picked surrogate Karzai under constant threat, unpredictable warlords dominating the countryside and our own troops there virtually forgotten by us but not by Muslims who are watching closely.

I'm sure most Americans believe that our invasion of Afghanistan was well within our rights of self-defense and, at the time, we certainly had the support of most of the world despite areas of questionable legality.

The tragedy, to me, is that we might have lifted the Afghanis--who had suffered so much under the Soviets, the warlords and the Taliban--into a better world if we had devoted the energy, thought and resources they deserved. It was always a long shot, given Afghanistan's ethnic divisions and history of strife, but our half-hearted effort doomed us to failure from the start.

Posted at October 4, 2005 6:18 AM in response to Observations from Jakarta

Nick, I take exception to your characterization of Democrats' talking about where we are and how we fix it to be "kvetching".

To wait until some hypothetically perfect time to start talking about the glaring disaster of the Bushists' Iraq policy is to be reactive, hesitant, weak and, ultimately, irrelevent when elections come around. Voters are gathering impressions of the most likely candidates long before the conventions. It's leaders that stand out, not those who have been quietly keeping their own council until they feel they can dare to speak without ruffling feathers.

You say withdrawal can't be an official party position if it lacks predictions for the future of Iraq.

I say it's time to tell the American public that we are hardly in a position to predict, let alone guarantee, any particular future for Iraq, and to say otherwise is the height of arrogance. The sooner Americans understand that Iraqis are driving their own future, the better. It is true that our ham-handed incompetence has made Iraq's future demonstrably worse than it might have been, but there is no--repeat, no--evidence that we have the power to make it better by sticking around.

You say that since Democrats don't currently control policy, that the "predictive utility" of Democrats' plans is difficult, i.e., useless. So your alternative is that we keep our mouths completely shut? Since when is it useless to advance sound options, or at least open public debate for all to consider--whether or not one is currently in a position to implement a good plan?

You say that this administration is a disaster that most already acknowledge and about which Democrats have already spoken.

So do you think it doesn't bear repeating? Do you think that the Republicans will take a nap? The first rule of marketing is to repeat, repeat, repeat and to never stop hammering the facts home.

Besides, Democrats must not be satisfied with merely showing the Bush Administration to be corrupt and incompetent. The dots must be connected--it's not just the administration, but the entire Republican philosophy of Bushist governance that has brought this country to the brink of political and economic ruin. It's a message that must be repeated every day, by every Democrat, on every issue.

I am all for Democrats finally articulating a coherent philosophy of core principles and using it to hammer the Republicans in 2006 and beyond. But I am mystified as to how you expect this miracle to become manifest if every potential Democratic leader is busy keeping his or her powder dry, or whatever.

Leadership is not snatching up a rousing slogan come election time. It's living and speaking your core principles every day, in power and out.

Posted at September 30, 2005 11:31 PM in response to Democrats?

"Dealing with realities pragmatically and strategically makes the world a better place."

I agree. Unfortunately, few Democrats in office have stated the obvious: There has been no public debate about the real (as opposed to imaginary) options before us.

Presumably, this is because the Republicans have made any such discussion akin to treason or "cutting and running." And few Democrats have had the courage to call them on it.

There are a lot of heated opinions but precious little real analysis about the risks, rewards and costs of any of the courses of action open to us.

I would dearly love to see a Democrat--any Democrat--stand up and say as much.

Eh, but who am I to say? Didn't Nixon manage to squeak into office with a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War?

Perhaps the great American public will never have the wit or maturity to face facts and choose wisely. Maybe the best political course is to fudge the issues and play to the lowest common denominator while waiting for some great awakening of the masses.

Don't call it leadership, though.

Posted at September 30, 2005 8:54 PM in response to Democrats?

I totally concur with your concerns about data-mining. I had read that Able Ranger was using "open-source" data, but what actually is open-source data these days? As it is, this is an excruciating story. On the one hand, data-mining gets a boost. On the other, Bush administration incompetence gets headlines.

Posted at August 10, 2005 1:54 PM in response to What do you Mean "Data Mining?": Rethinking Mohammad Atta