Letters to the Editor
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Yeesh
It boiled down to wanting to avoid the Kerry flip-flop label, as well as believing that the first serious female candidate for commander in chief needed to look resolute, and couldn't afford to admit a mistake. Whoever sold her on that idea must have been…a man.
Joan, I hope this was just a miserably botched attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor and not a serious attempt to get Hillary off the hook for her "never admit a mistake" attitude. I don't see how this statement is any less offensive than the right wing cracks about Hillary not wanting to be the first female president, but the first president in drag. Would you have said that Obama obviously struck such a heavy emotional note in speech on race because his wife talked him into it?
If Hillary confused intractability with strength, that's her own poor judgment showing. You'd think that after seven years of GWB, she'd have learned the difference by now. Or maybe her weak and impressionable female mind simply isn't able to resist the power of a strong masculine influence?
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Admitting her "mistake"
I agree that her authorization vote wasn't really a mistake, to her way of thinking. She did the "safe" thing and voted to support Bush so she wouldn't look like a "terrorist sympathizer," I'm guessing. Or maybe she really thought we should go in there and attack the place--this is why I'm uncomfortable with the thought of voting for her. I suspect she is a lot more hawkish than she lets on. As for flip-flopping, she is certainly not afraid of doing this re the Florida-Michigan "primaries." She is on record as agreeing that because FLA and MI broke the rules, the vote there wouldn't count. Now she is going back on what she said and pressuring Obama to count them. Is this what we can expect of her as President? Saying one thing to get elected and doing another when she is elected? Haven't we had 7+ years of this already? I saw a link to a study on DK that said the vote in FLA is misleading becasue more than 2 million people didn't vote because they thought it wouldn't count, so we have no way of knowing whether HRC "won" there. Also, didn't Obama really win Texas? More delegates and bigger popular vote from what I understand.
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Integrity
"She's not the orator Obama is, but while he was speaking about his decision to stand by Jeremiah Wright yesterday, while putting it in the context of America's often tragic but unfinished story of racial politics, I couldn't help imagining Clinton undertaking a similar risk, and laying out her own Iraq mistake in the context of her wider views about American security. It might be too late for a lot of Hillary haters, but who cares, really: The truth really does set us free."
Dear Joan,
I appreciate your point here. If the Democrats are to stand for something, then they must, indeed, be willing to stand by something, particularly their own mistakes.
This means not doing the politically expedient, but actually speaking the truth. Such a novel concept! We've gotten so used to the politics of "What will spin."
I've supported Obama in part because he seems to represent this new kind of rhetoric. And, as you note, it is a rhetoric that will politically make the Democrats strong and viable again as a party. (Now they are seen for what they generally are: a group of poll watchers.)
I would love to see Senator Clinton make the kind of speech you speak of (and along the way rid herself of a few advisors who seem to revel in divisive politics that are ultimately counterproductive, and which don't represent their candidate at all.)
I am an Obama supporter, but I would love to have a reason to find equal hope in Clinton, for I do admire her.
Thanks for your words.
All the best,
Laura
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Obamaton?
"For every Obama supporter I consider an Obamaton (they're out there)"
Can you please define an "Obamaton" for me? Is it those of us who support Obama for reasons besides his stance toward starting the war in Iraq? Do you think we have no other reasons for supporting Obama? Or do you simply believe the Obamatons are won over by empty rhetoric. Golly, we must be stooooooooopid.
One of the worst aspects of war is how we demonize our enemies, making them into caricatures of actual thinking human beings. We trivialize what they think and that in turn inhibits our ability to defeat them in any lasting way, because to kill and idea you must take it seriously. And of course we mock them with name-callling.
The demonizing and name-calling of Clinton and Obama supporters can easily be seen in the letter sections throughout Salon. I will hope that you will try to lead us away from further name-calling and keep discussions to a higher level.
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She can't take it back...
... without truthfully explaining why she voted as she did, and why she changed her mind.
Did she see that Rove and the Bushies wanted to use Iraq as a distraction from corporate scandals at home, as Obama said, or did she not?
Did she really believe that Iraq represented the kind of immediate danger to the US that would justify invasion?
And the big question: If she did not realize what a duplicitous liar George W. Bush was, what good will she be in dealing with foreign leaders?
It is more a question of competence than anything else. And although it is not directly connected, this comes on a day when John McCain has made a shocking gaffe over Al Quaida and Iran.
Nothing about the Republicans would shock me after Bush, but McCain is supposed to have EXPERT knowledge of foreign affairs issues and the Iraq war, yet it turns out that he is roughly in the position that Eisenhower would have been if he believed that Italy was an ally in World War II.
How can he lead?
Is Hillary's understanding of foreign affairs any better than McCain's?
She needs to show us that she does have an expert knowledge of geopolitics and that her knowledge and her political belief system are joined up. That is all.