By JIM VANDEHEI & DAVID PAUL KUHN | 4/9/08 4:38 AM EST
Hillary Rodham Clinton wants voters to decide the nomination based on who can coolly and competently run the country. She had better hope they don’t study her recent campaign too closely for the answer.
Clinton has overseen two major staff shake-ups in two months. She has left a trail of unpaid bills and unhappy vendors and had to loan her own campaign $5 million to keep it afloat in January. Her campaign badly underestimated her main adversary, Barack Obama, miscalculated the importance of organizing caucus states and was caught flat-footed after failing to lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday.
It would be easy to dismiss all of this as fairly conventional political stumbling — if she hadn’t made her supreme readiness and managerial competence the central issue of her presidential campaign.
<...>
Obama can rightly claim he has run a more consistent, disciplined and technologically savvy campaign. While Clinton has blown though nearly a half-dozen campaign slogans and failed to put concerns about her credibility to rest, he has clung to essentially the same leadership and governing message he outlined in his 2004 speech at the Democratic convention. There has been little drama inside his operation — or at least if there was, it has been kept largely concealed.
link*** A Clinton house divided: So Bill Clinton, it turns out, supports the Colombian free trade agreement that his wife opposes. In fact, according to our count, this is at least the fourth policy disagreement Bill and Hillary have had -- Colombia, NAFTA,
whether to boycott the opening Olympics ceremony, and torture (as we found out at the September debate at Dartmouth). "Like other married couples who disagree on issues from time to time, she disagrees with her husband,” Clinton spokesman Jay Carson told the AP, regarding Bill’s support for the Colombian deal. Those of us who are married know that Jay is right: Married couples can disagree on almost anything, including policy. But then again, not every spouse is Bill Clinton, a former president who would be his wife’s most important adviser and confidante if she wins the White House. His positions on issues -- even when they disagree -- do matter, especially when groups supporting one side
give him $800,000 in speaking fees.
*** Embracing their differences: Differences with Bill, in fact, should have been a badge of honor for Hillary at some point in this campaign. Perhaps the strategy was to showcase her "Sister Souljah" moments with her husband during the general, because Dem primary voters were happy with Bill's years in the White House. Hindsight indicates that maybe she should have bragged about these policy differences a lot sooner so she could be her own candidate sooner. Eight years ago, George W. Bush had the luxury of being forced to prove his differences with his former presidential father in the primary, while hugging him in the general (as he did a bit).
*** A North Carolina blowout? Seriously, the two Dem gubernatorial candidates in North Carolina are fighting over who supports Obama more. In fact, one candidate (Richard Moore) is using paid advertising to tout his Obama support. Maybe we should stop pretending North Carolina is going to be competitive; it's not. The problem now for Clinton is what will the delegate count and popular vote count look like after May 6 if North Carolina is a blowout for Obama -- and if Clinton wins narrowly in Pennsylvania and Indiana. Will Obama net more delegates out of North Carolina than Clinton nets out of Pennsylvania and Indiana combined (if she wins them both)? Will Obama's popular vote lead actually grow after North Carolina, because his win there is bigger than hypothetical combined Clinton victories in PA and IN? This is the dilemma for Clinton's campaign in the Tar Heel State. It may be unwinnable, but campaigning seriously in the state and attempting to close the gap is an absolute must because of the state's potential effect on delegates and total votes.
*** Politics means you always have to say you're sorry: Looking back on the presidential contest, five of most important themes/storylines have been (so far) race and gender, Iraq, the economy, the fundraising, and the role of the superdelegates. If you were to add a sixth, it might have to be the apology. As we've noted before, there have been a plethora of apologies this cycle -- from Edwards (for his 2002 war vote), Bob Johnson and Billy Shaheen (for references to Obama's teenage drug use), Samantha Power (for her "monster" comment), and the list goes on and on. Well, you can now add
one more to the list: Obama supporter Jay Rockefeller, for saying that McCain’s days as a Navy pilot didn’t prepare him for an understanding of everyday issues. “McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they get to the ground? He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.” When’s the next apology…?
link By MICHAEL ZELDIN
April 9, 2008
<...>
Recently the Clinton campaign released a portion Sen. Clinton's White House daily activity logs. These logs provide the first independent means to evaluate her claim that her White House years provided her the relevant national security/commander-in-chief experience to be president.
A preliminary analysis of these logs has begun to reveal Mrs. Clinton's claims of experience to be overstated. If these logs continue to bear out that she is less experienced than she has claimed, she will, at best, be branded as an exaggerator. She then will face an onslaught that will make the Gore and Kerry attacks look like a walk in the park.
On a related point, Mrs. Clinton has been arguing to primary voters that she is more electable than Barack Obama because "she has been vetted fully so there will be no general election surprises." Well, the recently released tax returns appear to undermine this argument as well.
Specifically, these returns demonstrate the former President Clinton made tens of millions of dollars on the speaking circuit and by helping to broker business deals or make introductions around the world. This is his prerogative as a private citizen. What the returns do not tell us, however, is who paid for these speeches; who his clients were/are; whether he can unwind his business relationships (he is being sued by one of his clients for fraud in state court in California); what conflicts of interest or appearances of conflict reside in his seven-year, private-sector career. (Remember the difficulty Geraldine Ferraro's husband created for her candidacy?). A lot more openness and transparency will be required by Bill Clinton before it is known just how vulnerable Hillary Clinton is as a general election candidate.
more
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
