All The Right Enemies
It was often said of Bill Clinton that one of his great political assets was good fortune in terms of his enemies. The same is much more true of his wife. As Kevin Drum and Steve Benen note, Dick Morris' furious hostility to New York's junior senator can't but make you like her. And his threat to actually leave the country if she wins, well, that's icing on the cake. And then, of course, there's Martin Peretz:
Hillary has been scheming for the presidency since the day her husband entered the White House, which is why she didn't much take to Al Gore. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she conspired with James Baker--or is that just me?The same column's praise of Barack Obama, meanwhile, is giving me doubts. He's "a latter-day Martin Luther King Jr.," and "a picture of America's future, black and white" as well as "Supple in mind and bearing, evoking energy and thoughtfulness." Peretz asks, "what, for heaven's sake, is there to criticize about Obama? Nothing." As I say, troubling. Maybe Petey wants to give me some Edwards '08 bumper stickers.
UPDATE: In case of confusion, put this case against Obama in the "light-hearted" file.
Comments
Remember when Robert Altman said he'd leave for France if Bush was elected... then, after Bush actually was elected, said he really meant he'd go to Paris, Texas rather than Paris, France? I presume Dick Morris means, by "leave the country", move back from his country house to an apartment in the city. I mean, with Hillary elected, living in the city would improve markedly, right? So why would one live way out in the boonies of the country anymore? Heeeee...
The best argument against Hillary is that it might be good, for Democracy's sake, to give another family (besides the Bushs and the Clintons) our most powerful office. Also, Bill in the "First Spouse" role strikes me as problematic.
I do wonder how the Founding Fathers would have reacted to something that feels like Ancient Rome in the days just before the Ceasars.
Who takes Dick Morris seriously, except Sean Hannity?
"He's 'a latter-day Martin Luther King Jr.'" Say what?
Stanley Crouch is already all over Obama's ass for not being an "authentic" African-American, in the sense that Obama's relatives were not actual slaves, see http://tinyurl.com/y8kxpq
I think Crouch is wrong about this stuff but Crouch probably knows more about these things than me.
The original Fox transcript is a little ambiguous, but it seems to me Morris at the beginning is actually saying he'll leave the country if HRC is *nominated* by the Dems -- not just if she wins the presidency. *That* certainly makes me more likely to vote for her in a primary than I otherwise would have been.
(Transcript here http://mediamatters.org/items/200612210001)
I remember David Brooks gushing about Obama in 2004. Now he's getting all this free media buildup. This was all already fishy, but the Peretz quote is the clincher. Obama is considered reliable by AIPAC.
"And then, of course, there's Martin Peretz ... The same column's praise of Barack Obama, meanwhile, is giving me doubts. "
For the one millionth time, just because Maniacal Marty likes or doesn't like something doesn't mean the opposite position is correct.
If Marty didn't jump off the Empire State Building, would you jump?
(And, of course, Marty would crawl over broken glass for algore, so just cuz he likes someone doesn't mean they should be disqualified.)
"Maybe Petey wants to give me some Edwards '08 bumper stickers."
All the cool kids are figuring out that Johnny Sunshine's got this season's #1 hit song. It's got a beat and melody that sound better and better every time you hear it.
(And Matthew, you, especially, should support Edwards so you can witness first-hand the kind of partisan re-alignment you currently think is a mirage.)
"The best argument against Hillary is that it might be good, for Democracy's sake, to give another family"
The best argument against Hillary is that she's a godawful lousy candidate, personally regionally, and through her public story-arc.
I'd enjoy seeing a woman elected President, but HRC ain't the one.
She might be able to win, if the Democratic wind in '08 is gale force, but even if she sneaks her way into taking the oath of office, she'd preside over a very weak administration able to accomplish very little for the left.
"what, for heaven's sake, is there to criticize about Obama? Nothing."
Summing up in one sentence exactly why I'm not an Obama supporter yet. He hasn't really done much of anything but make (admittedly quite good) speeches. He hasn't shown that he has executive leadership abilities. And he hasn't stuck his neck out on anything remotely controversial to take a stand. Of these, the lack of executive leadership makes me the queasiest (we're still working through a President who couldn't govern his way out of a paper bag - can we please get a candidate who's proven that they have some level of proven governance skills to run - pretty please?)
Obama could be quite good, but I haven't seen anything in his career that says one way or the other. He says all of the right things at the right times, and he's a great public speaker, but the next President is going to be in the middle of a huge mess and I think someone with a lot of expertise is going to be needed to dig us out of this hole. I'd be afraid that he'd end up much like Jimmy Carter - a brilliant man, stuck in the wrong job at the wrong time and taking the blame for what multiple folks before him fucked up as it all comes to a head on his watch.
(Now, as a VP, I could see it - it would give him 4-8 years of executive experience, especially if he's an active VP the way that Gore was under Clinton. But at the top of the ticket? I'd be worried.)
"Just because Maniacal Marty likes or doesn't like something doesn't mean the opposite position is correct."
In fact this is a pretty useful rule of thumb.
Marty loves Gore too, don't forget.
Personally, I'd like Obama for VP, Chris Rock notwithstanding.
Obama is a very impressive guy, but he's no saint. Cf. Ken Silverstein's piece in the November Harper's: a good, balanced portrait.
Obama combines two traits that are not often found together: (1)high character; and (2)a very astute political sense.
From my standpoint, the fact that Obama isn't going to be a Fred Harris or William Proximire (two of Silverstein's model saints) is a positive rather than negative.
If one is not an Inc. today, one is quickly rendered irrelevant!
She is also lucky with her enemies on the left. Much of the vituperation from left blogs comes off as adolescent misogyny, which helps her define herself and improves her standing among women with children. White, married women are our largest and broadest demographic opportunity for eroding Republican support in presidentials.
Petey is mistaken about her campaign skills, but Edwards is probably best positioned to undermine her strengths without appearing to attack her. It will be interesting to see if Obama can pull that off.
Peretz asks, "what, for heaven's sake, is there to criticize about Obama? Nothing."
'Whatever Peretz likes, I dislike' may be a juvenile and non-nuanced point of view, but 'Whatever Peretz finds no fault in is flawed' has a bit more substance to it.
"The same column's praise of Barack Obama, meanwhile, is giving me doubts."
I agree. How come so many liberal haters (Joe Klein, Marty Peretz) fawn over him. Very suspicious.
I also agree about Clintons being lucky in their enemies. I was neutral on Clinton until Kenneth Starr came along. After he launched his jihad I became a die hard Clinton supporter.
I have been neutral on Hillary. She seems to be doing a decent job as a senator but beyond that I am not sure. I kinda like Edwards but officially I'd call myself undecided. That said a few more Marty Peretz columns like this in "even the liberal New Republic" and I might become a cheerleader for Hillary.
Marty Peretz has become a parody. In a way he is the only reason to read TNR. You are guaranteed a good laugh reading his blog. He seems to have no self awareness. For some reason he seems to think only he and people he approves of should make money and have rich friends. Not the Clintons. Not Kerry. Not Lamont. Why is he so resentful of Clinton making money? By presidential standards Clinton isn't even rich.
Peretz can't accept the fact that Clinton left office with 66% approval rating and he is still popular with "regular Americans" as opposed to the TNR and Washington pundit crowd.
And then there is the misogyny. He doesn't even try to hide it. Hillary "schemed", probably "conspired" with Jim Baker. A modern day Lady Macbeth.
Hillary won't say she is running for President. That is because she is not candid. Unlike Obama, McCain and the rest who also won't say they are running for president but somehow they are considered candid.
The entire column could have been written by Ann Coulter. What a sad decline for TNR.
What I want to know is why people subscribe to TNR. Why pay money to hear what Charles Krauthammer has to say. You can get it free on FOX.
BTW, despite all the media hype I don't see Barack Obama as a serious threat to Hillary. He is flavor of the month. The primaries are more than a year away. The press can't fawn over him forever. He is no John McCain.
Edwards is a serious threat to Hillary. Mark Warner would have been too. So would Al Gore. I suspect Hillary knows this.
Marty likes him which is a reliable barometer of exactly one thing, his position on Israel.
Well, Clinton still got tangled up by his enemies, and Al Gore wasted some time and energy, back in 2000, trying to pretend that he didn't know that Clinton guy. So it worked pretty well; the GOP took the presidency back during a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Some cheating and law-breaking was required, but it was close enough to do that, as opposed to 1988, when Bush I jogged a victory lap.
Ever since his annus mirabilis of 1996, Dick Morris has been the single most consistently wrong pundit in the business, and there's a lot of competition for that title! Of course, anything he predicts about Hillary is practically guaranteed to come out 180 degrees wrong, but he's wrong about simple factual stuff, too, like saying that blacks and Hispanics cast 25% of the vote in 2004. (It doesn't help his devotion to truth on that issue that Vicente Fox was a client.)
Marty likes him which is a reliable barometer of exactly one thing, his position on Israel.
Hillary Clinton's an enemy of AIPAC, then? Most Democratic politicians are in the same place on Israel.
Ken Silverstein's piece in the November Harper's: a good, balanced portrait.
You might be interested in Obama's reaction to that on a Minnesota radio show in late October, something I haven't seen any reporters ask him about:
Senator, did you see the – have you had a chance to read the article about you in Harpers yet?
Obama: I did, and –
What did you think of that?
Obama: Well, it was a good case in point. It was interesting, because you could tell the reporter had sort of an initial thesis, couldn’t really find much to support the thesis – which was, essentially, that “Mr. Smith goes to Washington, is going to be slowly corrupted by the special interests” – was kind of casting about for examples.
Ended up finding, I think, for example, the fact that I’d voted for the class action bill. This was a class action reform bill that had been supported by the financial industry, and then found a couple of guys who’d given me $500 checks, not noting that I had actually – the biggest opponents of this bill were trial lawyers, who had given me tens of thousands of dollars. So, according to his thesis, this was a bill that I would have adamantly opposed, because I received a lot more money from trial lawyers than I ever did from financial services.
So, you know, he mentions that my support of ethanol, indicating that, well, it must be Archer-Daniels-Midland, big ethanol company, not noting that there’s a lot of corn in Illinois and a lot of farmers in Illinois, and that, if anything, my views on ethanol are shaped by my constituents, which is supposed to be the job.
"(1)high character; and (2)a very astute political sense."
Since this is a sports-politics blog, let's use a good sports comparison. A lot of teams are beautiful to behold when they are able to play their game. But some then self-destruct when faced with a bit of adversity. How is Obama when he faced adversity? He hasn't faced any of it yet, so we don't know. He's done very well while being adored. Let's see how he looks after going a few rounds in a serious campaign.
"High character", to put it cynically, is sometimes in politics another way of saying "has never been attacked yet". John Kerry may not be a great candidate but looking at his life history he's about as "high character" an American as one can get. And yet people tend not to think of him that way anymore because of the successful campaign against him.
"(1)high character; and (2)a very astute political sense."
High character and astute political sense can be judged after a person has been tested.
Obama has been a senator less than 2 years. He has not been subjected to meaningful scrutiny.
"John Kerry may not be a great candidate but looking at his life history he's about as "high character" an American as one can get."
Agree.
Is this a joke? Bill Clinton's best luck was in his enemies?
This is a guy who made no big policy mistakes, who led the country in a time of record prosperity, who followed policy priorities supported by a vast majority of the public, who made very tough and responsible decisions when it came to long-term investments in our country's financial future...and he got impeached.
The guy was a solid president and his enemies' demonizing of him was enough to keep a very sane, sensible centrist successor from his own party who promised to continue his priorities, from taking office.
His luck in his political opponents is NOTHING compared to the current President's shocking good fortune in them. He's still holding office, in spite of Katrina, losing Iraq, declaring class war on working people, and OH--not finding Osama bin Laden. If Clinton were in office, he'd be lucky to get off with just impeachment.
If you're doing anything worthwhile, someone is going to criticize you. I'm sure Obama presidency would be fine, but it's not what we need. This country's government has real problems and Obama ain't the cure.
I'd vote for Capt' O over Hillary, though. But I live in an early primary state, so I'll likely get a chance to vote for Edwards or (hopefully) Gore.
Almost whenever I think of Hillary Clinton, I think of this play called Cereal written by people who went to my college.
There was this character called 90210 who as I recall was an amalgam of every intolerable chick on TV at the time.
One of her lines was: hi, I'm a bitch, and I play one on TV.
Hi, I'm a bitch and I play one on TV.
Chris, thanks for the Obama excerpt responding to the Harpers piece. If I'd been the interviewer, I'd have followed up by asking why exactly he did stiff the trial lawyers on the class action bill. And point out that the financial industry isn't the only corporate lobby pushing the class action "reform".
Obama, Edwards, character, etc.
We indeed will see about Obama and character as the campaign progresses.
Thanks, Chris, for the posting regarding Obama and Harper's. Also responses by Obama to Silverstein are in Obama's responses posted on Harper's site.
I don't happen to share the view that Kerry was a high-character guy who was just brought down by the evil-doers.
I do share the view expressed by Nan that Edwards is a high-character guy. I do happen to Edwards him a very attractive candidate. It is very interesting to note that the latest poll in Iowa has Obama pulled into a tie with Edwards at 22%, well ahead of Hillary!
Who takes Dick Morris seriously, except Sean Hannity?
Washington DC prostitutes specializing in foot-fetishes who would lose a steady source of income if Dick Morris left town.
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