Letters to the Editor
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Is that being presidential?
So being evasive on difficult questions is being presidential? Does acting like the current president qualify you to be the next president? Will Hillary Clinton now lie to the American people, send thousands to die in an unnecessary war, spy on us beyond the limits of the law and promote the use of torture to look more "presidential"?
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Does this about sum it up?
So, to paraphrse: "Stonewalling, equivocating, obfuscating-- now THAT sounds like what we're used to seeing in a President. You'll be great at this job."
"Clarity, honesty, and courage are for wimps!"
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Clinton Is Just Bush in a Skirt
I watched the debate too and found Clinton to be arrogant, boring and devoid of any new ideas. She sucked all of the energy out of the room. Clinton is, like Bush, a puppet, differing only in that she is managed by different puppet masters.
After the debate, Russert mentioned that "her people" manage every move she makes in and out of debates like this. It shows. I don't think that they are "her people" so much as she is their shill.
I hope the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire WAKE UP and vote for someone else. I thought Edwards "won" the debate. I thought the most important moment was learning, that Clinton, once again, voted for a bill that gives Bush more power to invade Iran. That alone makes her unqualified to be president.
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She should have taken it further . . .
Tim, why are you are trying to prompt a discussion which will add to our media's depiction of conflict with Iran as an inevitability, when the same issue can be discussed without hypotheticals or mention of Iran?
Russert has shown himself to be another neo-con/administration shill.
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Of course, if you listen to her answer
She said yes.
She said that she supports Israel's attack on Syria in spite of knowing nothing more than rudimentary details and hearsay.
Clearly, if the attack had been on Iran with the same sketchy justification she would have been in favor of that as well.
Nice ploy on Clinton's part. Downplaying the IRAN issue for those who do not want to hear it being discussed as an inevitability while sending a message to the warmongers that she would be just fine with Israel doing whatever it deems necessary.
Presidential, indeed.
Terrifying stuff.
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Let's hope the Red Sox get
"swift boated" too...Sorry. I was weaned on the Yankees. Don't be too critical, as I am a Notre Dame fan too so my saturdays are always lousy, at least over the past 20 years when last they won a National Championship...
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what does that even mean?
So "presidential" is when you cut off questioners to better dodge, and weave a pat answer? What a pavlovian, Belway Pundit type of response. Dig a little deeper, I don't come to Salon for Establishment tripe.
I watched the debate too, and came away nauseated and quite disturbed by the emptiness, arrogance and flippancy of Clinton's "BushCheneyLite" overall performance, particularly that response that so impressed you.
I felt Edwards did very well indeed, eloquently and politely stirring up the pot a little; and Obama clearly is not playing to Beltway Pundits, of which, sadly, Salon's "War Room" seems to have become a member.
"Thin and tired"? Well, maybe those two actually have to work hard to gain the confidence of their voters, not having the Clinton machine going full-speed in all directions on their behalf. They ought to be commended for it.
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Clinton's presidential? By whose standards, exactly? Bush's?
Wow, that non-answer answer sounded like she'd taken a play straight out of Bush/Cheney's playbook, the whole "let's not deal with hypotheticals." At least Russert, who I don't like, tried to draw some attention to the secret bombing of Syria -- I'd love to see how that criminal act gets parsed in international law(lessness), along with Israel's secret arsenal of nuclear weapons -- the American double-standard is really striking, and won't serve our long-term security nor Israel's at all, as we pretend to be for international law when it suits us, and ignore it when it doesn't. She could see that, if she weren't Bush Lite -- or perhaps she does see it, and like Bush/Cheney, doesn't care.
That Clinton's the frontrunner on such a staggeringly un-Democratic Democratic platform is amazing. I doubt Obama and Edwards could've scored a "knockout blow" regardless of what happened -- even if they had, if Clinton was staring slack-jawed and silent at the camera for a minute or two, the press, who've already voted Clinton into the White House as surely as they painted John McCain as a maverick and Joe "Blow" Lieberman as an independent, would have somehow spun it around to make it look like Clinton had won the debate.
I just dearly hope that the first primaries and caucuses don't succumb to the Clinton steamroller. All of the front-loading of the primaries with this election seems tailored to limit our choices, not expand them, to try to get somebody anointed and nominated as early in the game as possible, which benefits candidates with the best name recognition, like Clinton.
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Laughable
I thought Hillary was a poor example of a presidential contender.
She was evasive and never spoke directly to the questions asked. (I'm with Gravel, ashamed of her performance.)
John Edwards in my opinion did a lot better than she did and even forced her to respond to him on several occasions (the Iraq war comment etc.) He seemed like a leader and was not afraid to answer a question, not flat out saying, "I'm not going to answer that." I believe we have had enough of that.
Finally its quite obvious now that HC has drank the kool-aid. Saying that Israel is justified in attacking another country (Syria) and that she thinks its JUSTIFIED!? WTF is she the reincarnation of all of the worst republican warmongering talking points!? Troops not out until 2013!?
No she was not presidential she was a collection of well rehearsed no answers and talking points and I was glad for one to see someone push her on these. The more she spoke the more shrill and completely undemocratic she sounded.
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I'll Answer for Hillary, Tim ...
Absolutely, I support an Israeli strike, but why wait for them? We just passed Kyl-Lieberman with my vote firmly in favor (along with the votes of 29 of my fellow Democratic senators), so we've given the President, whom I stand shoulder to shoulder with in this war on terrorism, regardless of the number of American lives lost, the go-ahead to do what he feels necessary to keep the threat of Iran at bay.
With all due respect, Sen. Clinton, if I wanted a warhawking nutjob in the Oval Office, I'd vote for Giuliani. At least he isn't being two-faced about his desire for wars of choice.