Letters to the Editor
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So?
How on earth can saying that his plan will be based on the current circumstances and the kind of information only the President will be privy to, be construed as being bad. Do we actually want the future President of the US to follow a plan he put together a year earlier, with limited information? The point of their plans is to show what their goals are. Both Clinton and Obama want the US to have as little military presence in Iraq as possible and believe that there can be no military solution there. McCain on the other hand, along with the other chickenhawks maintain that there is a military solution and that we will maintain large number of troops there indefiently. Neither Clinton or Obama can guarentee that we will have every single troop out of Iraq, by a certain date and no reasonable person with any understanding of the situation expects them to. However, we do know they do not want us to be there any longer than we have to, while McCain has indicated that has not intention of going anywhere. The truth of course lies somewhere in the middle. McCain can not possible maintain the current troop levels without a draft so he will be foreced to drawdown, while Clinton and Obama can not completely remove us from the area in the near term without creating havoc. So in the end McCain will be fighting to maintain troop levels while Clinton and Obama will be struggling to reduce them.
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Did they purposely use a World of Warcraft background stage?
British media is even more bizarre than American.
I'm writing in Samantha Power for president if Clinton somehow pulls off her coup for the nomination.
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HUH back
Excuse me. There are people volunteering for both campaigns who have said things the candidates have not said, and have not told them to say. That's actually a normal thing. I think we could easily stack up things that people in Hillary's campaign -- including Bill -- have said that Hillary herself would not have said and would not have authorized in advance.
So, in the speeches and answers that Barack Obama himself has given, in his own words, I have not heard contradiction nor have I heard deception. I have heard him speaking clearly and plainly. The same was true of Hillary, until recently, when she turned nasty. But negativity does work -- it's been proven year after year in campaigns, so maybe it's foolish to hope that politics could change and there could be actual, meaningful civil discourse between candidates for an entire campaign season.
It's too bad the press and the bloggers parse every word candidate's supporters say without paying any attention whatsoever to what the candidates themselves say and the consistency of their message.
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Will I Get My Money Back?
To Sen. Obama: I'm a contributor - maxed out for the primary - intend to do same for the G/E. But here's a warning to you Mr. Barack Obama: I've read and memorized every word of "Blueprint for Change" and I will be watching - if you do not implement your plans for Iraq, healthcare, the economy, the environment, et cetera exactly as you have presented them in the Blueprint, I will DEMAND my $4600 back!!
And don't think that this kind of nonsense will fly:
"He will of course not rely upon some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or as a U.S. senator. He will rely upon a plan, an operational plan that he pulls together, in consultation with people who are on the ground, to whom he doesn't have daily access now, as a result of not being the president."
Do you think I was born yesterday? That you can pull a "bait and switch" on me? Nope - when you are President I expect you to implement, exactly, the plans you crafted as a candidate. And I don't want to hear any excuses about reality and having to adjust plans to fit cirumstances on the ground, etc., etc.
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Dizzy
The Obama spin in here is getting me all dizzy. Clinton has said all along that she would make her best effort to get the troops out as quickly as possible. Obama was extremely clear that he would start the withdrawal immediately, and that this was a major difference with Clinton. Now it turns out that he was just taking a position that he hoped would get him elected, but that he doesn't really believe in. Must be that new politics of hope.
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What Obama said...and what is the truth
in all the debates where he was asked the question as to how long he would take getting us out of Iraq, he said, "16 months." Absolutely, unequivocably, PERIOD. 16 MONTHS!!!!! No ifs, no ands and no buts!! He said it like it was solid gold truth from his mouth --- never bothering to tell people that what is printed on his website is just a bit slightly different in that it could take longer...
But Clinton, in the same debate, said EXACTLY what this Obama advisor said, that it may take longer depending upon the situation and, of course, everyone criticized and demonized her for it.
Hypocrisy, anyone?
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I think the problem with Hillary supporters
Is that they don't know how to process the thought of an advisor actually having their own opinion. When you look at the Clinton campaign it is like VH1 put together "The Surreal Life- I love the 90's edition". It is natural that they expect that every surrogate is speaking off of an Obama talking points memo because that is how the Clinton campaign does business.
If you want an example of why surrounding yourself with cronies that never offer a contrary opinion is bad look at the current occupant of the White House.
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While I certainly can't disagree with you, Asher,
don't you wish that moderators like Tim Russert would stop bullying candidates into bumper sticker promises? I'm quite sure that almost all of their precarious positions--and Clinton was forced into a "review" of NAFTA, too, that she clearly didn't want--came at the hands of moderators in debates.
Like most people, I feel strongly in the abstract that journalists should demand truth but I get uncomfortable when "my" team gets the scrutiny. Overall, though, I do want scrutiny. But the particular method of Tim Russert strikes me as bad for America in the same way that Jon Stewart thinks that Crossfire was bad for America. It reduces complex subjects to sound bites, forcing candidates into small boxes. What you say makes perfect sense--they shouldn't allow themselves into those small boxes. That is the definitive answer. (But I do remember very precisely the fallout from that very debate where one or the other of the pack of Dem candidates didn't promise whatever tiny window Russert was demanding and they got reamed the next day by Rush and others. "Can you believe after all their whining and moaning about the Bush war in Iraq, most of the Dems last night couldn't promise to get out of Iraq?" or some nonsense. I suppose a studious person (AKA or X, can you get right on that?) would check to see which exact candidates from that June debate last year refused to play the game. I wonder if in some part, that is why they are out. Americans can be really hoodwinked by that simplistic talk.)
As a final point, related to my parenthetical, wouldn't it also be nice if Americans just didn't fall for such nonsense to begin with? In other words, if it was always understood that facts on the ground might change a candidate's policy? That way, candidates could perhaps get more real in the first place, knowing that it was understood that a future hard reality would be taken into account by the public.