Chutzpah

[libertango]

I saw the video clip of Ms. Clinton saying this the other day, but here's the transcript:

"So you decide which makes more sense: Entrust our country to someone who is ready on day one... or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience, who started running for president the day he arrived in the U.S. Senate."

Talk about projection -- except for the pronoun, she's almost perfectly described herself. Formal national experience: 1 term and a bit in the Senate. Formal international experience: Zip. Running for president since the day she arrived in the Senate: Check.

Most importantly, judgment. On Iraq, Clinton wrong; Obama right.

Comments

{wave}

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

You know that sign Truman had on his desk that said, "The buck stops here"? I won't dispute Ms. Clinton was a very important advisor. But First Lady is not a position that has any accountable responsibility. Not only did the buck not stop at her desk, it didn't even pause.

Even the President's Task Force on National Health Care Reform, which she chaired, was only an advisory panel. It didn't draft legislation -- eyewitness accounts state that was done from the White House.

"Despite all the attention it received, however, the President's Task Force -- consisting of members of the cabinet and several other senior officials -- proved to be useless for reaching decisions and drafting the plan. It immediately became the subject of litigation and dissolved at the end of May without making any recommendations. Bill Clinton actually never gave up control of the policy-making process, and the work fell to a small team of advisors and analysts that [Ira] Magaziner directed. Beginning in March and continuing in a stop-and-go fashion until September, the decision meetings about the plan took place outside the formal structure of the task force, usually in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, and the president ran the meetings himself.

My knowledge of this process is first-hand."

I wouldn't even go so far as to say Hillary's influence was unprecedented. That's mostly because I remember Edith Wilson and Eleanor Roosevelt. It's going to take a lot of persuading to convince me that Eleanor had less influence on Franklin, or on policy. (Check out Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time, if you haven't already done so.)

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I recognize the urge to interpret Sen. Clinton's national or international experience as "formal" in order to better dismiss it but the fact remains that her team is largely old Clinton hands from her husband's presidency, and they already have a great deal of experience at governance. She herself has experience that Sen. Obama doesn't (and this is her point). I don't understand why you are arguing that her experience somehow doesn't count.

K.

Experience

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

"I don't understand why you are arguing that her experience somehow doesn't count."

I'm not. I'm saying the nature of her experience is being misrepresented. She already has enough disturbing similarities to Mr. Bush -- she doesn't need to add puffing her record to them (ie, Bush represented his experience as Governor of Texas as being comparable to a typical state. The Governor of Texas is weak enough that, it ain't.)

I maintain there is a substantive, qualitative difference between being the president, and advising the president -- no matter how close one may be personally. She's representing her epxerience as if it's comparable to having been the president... and she wasn't, not by a long stretch.

Look, imagine a couple. Married. They're both astronauts by profession. She's been on the shuttle not just once, but twice. He, while qualified to be on the shuttle, and trained for the job, has never actually launched. Heck, he's even worked in Mission Control, being the main support link for his wife while she was on the shuttle.

Then, one day, he starts saying he should go on the next shuttle flight... because he's already been on two previous flights. His position is that he is so close to his wife, it was if he was really there, so his "experience" should include her two flights.

Not only that, but he starts denigrating other astronauts as being "less qualified," because they haven't been on shuttle flights the way he has -- even though the others in question have remarkably similar backgrounds, training, tenure in positions, drive for advancement, etc.

Gender is not the variable here, nor is training, nor is ability. It's the chutzpah.