Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Hillary-Clinton

  • Not so Much with the Cabinet Surprises

    I’ve been watching television with a certain amount of amusement as various reporters try to create news and then discuss the news they’ve created with reference to President-Elect Obama’s cabinet and other appointments.

    But what interests me is the great surprise that the president-elect may appoint former rival Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Besides the fact that their foreign policy views are really quite close despite efforts to distinguish them during the primaries, she clearly has strong leadership skills. At first I wondered why she would want the position, but then I considered that, should she run for president again, it would be nice resume padding. That is besides the basic notion of public service.

    But what most of the commentators, even those who strongly supported Obama during the campaign seem to be doing is assuming that he can’t lead a strong cabinet. They’re concerned about how she’s going to take foreign policy leadership away from him.

    Now I have no way of being sure that he can manage the nation effectively. There is a certain amount of risk in voting for anyone for president, because there really isn’t anywhere to get experience of the same type. But I wouldn’t vote for someone if I didn’t at least have strong hope that they’d be able to do the job.

    I’m sure the the president-elect wants Hillary Clinton in his cabinet because he believes she can provide strong leadership in foreign policy. I think he is not afraid to appoint her because, unlike some of his supporters, he actually believes he has the leadership skill not just to run for president, but to be president. I think he believes that he can shape the group of strong personalities he is gathering into fulfilling his vision.

    I could be wrong, obviously, but I also think he can do it. If I hadn’t have thought he could do it, I wouldn’t have marked a ballot for him on November 4, apparently unlike some vocal supporters today.

    We all need to chill out and actually let this new leader take some actions as president before we start to panic because he’s not going to fulfill his promises, or because strong subordinates in government are going to run away with policy.

  • Yes, Race Influences my Vote

    There! That should be provocative enough as a title. Actually this post will be more of a gathering of election thoughts at this point in the campaign.

    But first, to honor the title, I think that there are very few people in this country who can honestly claim that race has no influence on their vote at all. That 1 in 5 thing from West Virginia just catches honest folks. I’m not saying that the vast majority of people are racists. What I’m saying is that we don’t have race issues so thoroughly removed from our systems that we don’t even think about it.

    At a minimum, I’m guessing most Democrats have at least discussed whether Barack Obama can win because of the prejudice of other people. That’s a dangerous argument to have, because in some ways it’s allowing the bigots a veto without even having to make the effort to vote. Perhaps a better plan would be to make a positive effort to educate wherever possible and then hope that there are enough people of good will to make the difference.

    For me, however, there is an additional point. I think the nation benefits from some diversity in government. Thus both Democratic candidates entered the race with a positive bias from my point of view. If Hillary Clinton were elected, she would be the first woman president, and that would be a positive model for girls and women across the nation. If Barack Obama is elected he will be the first African-American president, and that speaks of a whole other set of barriers being broken. I don’t put diversity very high on my list of priorities, but other things being equal, it could tip the scales to one or another candidate. In this case, the scales are tipped by the Iraq war. I believe Obama is right about it, and continues to be right about it, and that’s why I continue to support him despite a number of economic policies with which I am less pleased.

    I think we ought to be honest and admit that issues of race and gender are still functioning. The statistics don’t prove it as they can’t give us the real reasons for a person’s vote, but they are very suggestive. It’s probably not a policy issue that is causing the vast majority of African-American voters to support Obama, and it’s not policy that is doing the same thing amongst women for Hillary Clinton. As far as I’m concerned, I think that’s nothing either group needs to be ashamed of.

    It’s easy to pontificate about voting pure issues, but the fact is that our perception of a candidate’s personal integrity, and whether we trust that person is part of most people’s thinking. I try to be more objective, and go through lists of issues, comparing my own position with that of the candidate, but there will still be other elements.

    Voting is a good area for a bit of affirmative action, and I would say highly visible political appointments are as well. It is important that the justice system, for example, not only operate impartially insofar as possible, but it needs to be seen to do so. An all white judiciary, however well qualified, would leave an impression of unfairness. Those in cabinet positions are often seen representing our country. I have appreciated the way in which George Bush’s cabinet has shown better than average diversity. I don’t like much else about it, but I give him points for that!

    Those who might claim that race or gender is extraneous on these types of appointments would probably suggest that we take the person who is the best candidate, irrespective of such irrelevant factors. But such a selection occurs only in imaginary worlds. In practice, such appointments have to do with community relations, personal interaction, and subjective impressions. Just as the campaign staffs for Obama and Clinton can each provide a spin for just about anything that means it’s good for their candidate, so one can spin the job application or the list of candidates for an appointment. One might as well admit the subjective factors and use them out in the sunlight.

    Finally, I’m not with the folks, even now, who urge Clinton to quit the race. Yes, I support her opponent. Yes, I want him to beat her. But if I were a Clinton supporter and she were running, I’d want my chance to cast my ballot and at least have my say, even if victory was already impossible or incredibly improbable. Electability is low on my list of reasons to support a candidate anyhow.

  • HRC Panders on Oil

    There is always profit for politicians in pandering to the short term interests of the voters. That’s because there are enough voters who simply don’t understand their long term interest or who don’t care enough about the future to take it into consideration.

    The stimulus package is one such case of pandering, and all the politicians got on board. Why? It would be political suicide to refuse to send the poor voters some more money. In the short term, I appreciate this money that will land in my bank account, but it’s not going to solve much in the long term. Long term economic growth will result from accumulation of capital, entrepreneurship, and inventiveness. Unfortunately, the politicians can’t transmit those to my bank account or send them out in an envelope.

    Now McCain started, and Hillary Clinton has taken up the call for another short term way to make the voters temporarily happy without solving any of the underlying problems–the gas tax holiday. Gas prices hit me pretty hard in my business, because I do work at my customers’ businesses. What that means is that I have to drive a good deal, and often can’t plan my driving because it’s in response to emergencies. So gas prices have hurt me. But a gas tax holiday will provide some short term relief at the long term cost. We are already not paying for what we are doing. We’re charging it all to the future when some other congress can create a short term solution until, as will inevitably happen, we run out of such short term solutions.

    In an election year, this is to be expected. Yet I would urge my fellow voters not to make your decisions based upon this type of vote buying. We need to work toward effective energy independence in this country. That will take a great deal of time and effort, and there are many different ways in which we will have to work. But the technology is getting better all the time, and the potential is there. One silver lining to the cloud of higher gas prices is that the higher those prices go the more incentive there is to develop alternatives.

    That type of economic incentive will produce better alternatives. Right now the government is trying to mandate particular alternatives that we need to develop. But technology moves much faster than the speed of government. What the government is mandating today may be tomorrow’s rejected option. You have to research in order to find that out, but the government can’t get in and out of such market’s fast enough.

    Similarly, a government windfall profits tax on the oil companies for such research is not the best way to bring about innovation. Robert Reich proposed such a tax here, after writing an excellent challenge to the gas tax holiday. Further, despite much erudite talking about defining windfall profits by economists, the real, practical definition is that any profit someone doesn’t like is a “windfall.” And yes, I have studied the technical definition–I just think it’s garbage.

    In fact, such government redirection of money is more likely to stagnate than to stimulate the process. The simple fact is that painful as they are, the greatest incentive to developing new energy resources is the pain of higher gas costs. A whole range of options immediately comes up, and starts to become economically feasible: More mass transit, alternative sources for oil, clean coal, solar and wind, more efficient vehicles, and the list goes on.

    It’s quite possible that the solution lies outside of the range of ideas at the present, or that there is no single major component, but rather lots of small ones. Whatever it is, you can count on the government to screw it up.

    Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of herself for supporting such a bad idea. Clearly she believes she can increase her lead amongst blue collar voters. I’m thinking they may catch on to what’s happening instead.

  • Hillary Clinton Should not be Blamed for This

    All my readers know by now that I prefer Barack Obama out of the available options. Now we receive the exciting news that Bill Clinton disagrees with her on free trade with Colombia. Huge surprise there, considering he pushed NAFTA through, though it’s mildly surprising that he isn’t trying to cover it all up.

    Personally I’m with Bill Clinton on this one. I favor even the slow progress of free trade, and I am unhappy with both Democratic candidates for their stand on this one. But such is life. There is no candidate I can endorse without a footnote.

    But I think it is terribly unfair if people criticize Hillary Clinton for her husband’s position on this issue. My wife and I can argue a great deal on politics, and I think we’re both better for it. Before each election we sit down together with a sample ballot and debate our intended votes. Occasionally one of us changes the other’s mind. Mostly we clarify. Sometimes we go back and do more research. But I think both our votes are more intelligent because of the process.

    Two people don’t have to agree on everything just because they are married. There may be some basis to question Hillary Clinton’s firmness on free trade, but this isn’t one of them.

  • Judas Richardson?

    James Carville thinks Bill Richardson is like Judas.

    He could be right, provided that you accept the notion that Hillary Clinton is entitled to the presidency, and that anyone who served with her or her husband has a duty to support her. I suspect instead that Carville isn’t too well acquainted with the story of Judas and just wants a word that is maximally pejorative.

    Oh, and the Obama aid who compared Bill Clinton to Joe McCarthy was over the top as well, but he didn’t use a Biblical name, so I’m less interested. My hopes were and are (though diminishing) that the Obama camp will try a different brand of politics. Problem is, the old version still works.

    We voters need to get that through our heads. Negative campaigns work because voters respond to the negative ads, even when they don’t remember the exact accusations. As long as voters respond, politicians will act!

  • Enabling Media Bias

    Walter Shorenstein is decrying media bias in favor of Barack Obama. The only surprising thing here, in my view, is that someone felt they needed to write a memo–and I favor Obama myself. The question is just how media bias works, and what the bias is.

    First, while I think there is a natural tendency to bias a story in favor of one’s own political views, and journalists tend to be more liberal than the overall population (I believe), I think the strongest bias in the media is towards the unusual and the exciting. What do the most people want to watch and hear about. For example, I suspect that many people who may well not vote for Barack Obama have been more interested in how he will perform. Here’s where Hillary Clinton’s experience and time in the public view works against her. We know more about her than about Obama. If she wins, though it’s historic, it’s what was expected originally. Obama, on the other hand, is unexpected.

    But second, I think there is a simple fact about media coverage that enables media bias. There are very few actual facts reported in the media. What actually happens is that we get claims, followed by hour after hour of analysis by different experts. Sometimes the position of these “experts” is entirely predictable; they are the spin doctors for the campaigns or parties. At other times they are more unpredictable, because they are from political science professors or unaligned political consultants.

    There is time to actually examine and analyze facts, but that time is instead taken up by getting more and more opinions. Why is this? Well, this comes down to my big objection to what I would call “practical postmodernism.” This is the view that all ideas are more or less equal, they are just part of someone’s story, and the way to be properly unbiased is to make sure that every opinion gets expressed.

    This results in a rudderless program, free of actual analysis, while filled with reams of apparent analysis. Now there are many things I can say about this, but my key point today is that this approach to journalism allows media bias to occur and to be concealed under the veneer of the balanced approach. Consider the headlines about various polls, for example. Is 46-44 a slight lead for candidate A, or is it a statistical tie. If the next day it’s 45-45 is candidate B moving up on candidate A, or is it statistically insignificant. (Statistically both are within the margin of error and one would best regard them both as a tie. There isn’t necessarily any trend here.) But what viewers want, and the media wants to supply is news, and that means they have to spin it in the direction of change.

    I would prefer more reporting of facts, and there are plenty of those missing. I’ve been researching health care plans, for example, and while there is a great deal to read, very little of it is in the mainstream media. Media outlets could do the voters a great favor by researching the numbers in those health care plans and seeing whether there’s any likelihood that the projected savings can occur and asking what will happen to things like experimental treatments, for example. I admit that in my part-time look at this I’ve failed to make heads or tails of it all. I just continue to have this feeling that the claimed savings are, to put it mildly, optimistic.

    I’d prefer to see media representatives admit their bias and report what they believe to be true. Then it’s out on the table, and I have a better basis for analyzing their statements. I’d prefer more experts producing information and analysis, and less expressing generalized opinions. In other words, I think we’d be better off with journalists researching what they believe to be facts, reporting those facts, and get our balance either by reading or watching other journalists, or by analyzing those facts for ourselves.

    The implied standard of media fairness seems to be whether each candidate or “side” gets a similar amount of time and attention. I think that if a candidate commits a whopper, that candidate ought to get disproportionately negative coverage, and vice-versa. I think most of us are aware that the idea of an unbiased media is an illusion. It’s an impossible dream. Let the fact wars begin instead.

    I can’t end a post like this without reference to two sites that are perhaps the strongest contrary evidence, Politifact.com and Factcheck.org, who seem to be managing to be the most unbiased folks I’ve encountered, and are doing fact checks. I do think that we need something like what they do, only that goes a little deeper, but they are providing a valuable service to the public, and I present them as evidence that maybe I’m wrong, and maybe it can be done. Note, however, that in doing their job, they definitely run contrary to the “all ideas are equal” camp.

  • Emotions and Candidates

    I think there’s something wrong with us when one candidate’s show of emotion can get this much press time. I’m hoping that the public are much less excited about this than the press, but political commentators seem to be trying to make it a pivotal point in her campaign, part of that every shifting momentum that they loudly proclaim has changed with every new piece of un-news.

    Hillary Clinton is not my favorite candidate for president, but she is not a bad candidate, and how much emotion she shows would likely not be a major issue if she were not a woman. I find this frenzy about a few moments of emotion, one way or another disgusting. I think it’s a major display of sexism, all the more dangerous because nobody wants to acknowledge it.

    Let’s do a little bit more analysis of her policies, comparing programs, experience, and vision. The media needs to spend more time on substantive issues. They need to spend less time talking about themselves. So much of the coverage has to do with “what I (the journalist) did when I was with candidate x.” Little information is passed on.

    Agree or disagree with Hillary Clinton, she has given us enough specifics in her record and in campaign position papers to occupy a good deal of discussion time. She may not be your favorite candidate or mine, but she deserves to be judged on that record, not on whether she displays precisely the right amount of emotion. I’ve found that one cannot display the right amount of emotion for everyone. I suspect that will be the case here. (My wife comments on this in her book on grief. People will actually criticize others for how they express grief at the loss of a loved one or in some other hardship situation. That is such arrogance!)

    I’m going to contribute to this by writing blog posts on candidate’s positions, starting with health care proposals. I’m working on the research for that now.

  • Why People Hate Hillary

    During the 1992 presidential campaign that gave us Bill Clinton, I remarked to a friend that if they would just swap out the candidates for their wives, they would have my vote. In particular I thought Hillary Clinton was substantially smarter than her husband.

    Since then I have lived in the south and watched eight years of pretty raw hatred of Bill Clinton, but ever greater hatred of Hillary. Now it happens I’m not a Hillary supporter, though I will almost certainly vote Democrat in this election regardless of their nominee. Yet Barack Obama attracts me a good deal more. At the same time, I would only suffer a minor moment of annoyance should the tide turn yet again and Hillary Clinton became the nominee. (One key issue on which I prefer Obama is simply that he voted against the war in Iraq from the start. He neither claims deception (Clinton), nor a change of mind (Edwards), though Edwards is to be congratulated for the almost unheard of step of announcing he was wrong.)

    When I listen to liberals (other liberals?) rage on about Bush in many of the same terms, I just tell myself that this is what people are like. Of course it’s also quite possible that other people have higher expectations of politicians than I do. I never vote for someone I like completely. I always feel that I’m choosing the lesser of two evils. Thus I’m also less disappointed when the person who is actually elected fails to live up to the campaign rhetoric.

    But I have never figured out just what makes people hate Hillary Clinton so much. She isn’t the most liberal Democrat, for example. If she were, that would explain many of my conservative friends who despise her. I had come to the tentative conclusion that the combination of opposition to her policies and various levels of dislike of a strong woman in leadership have led to this intense hatred. Of course for some people it’s more obvious!

    I followed this link from a trackback to another post to find this feminist blog which actually looks at some data. There has been a tendency to think that women are voting more for Clinton than men, in other words, women are voting their gender. We hear less about men voting their gender. (I wonder why.) But according to the blog post, it seems quite possible that men are voting their gender more than women. I don’t know as this is terribly profound, but it’s worth thinking about.

    Making issues like this conscious and explicit rather than subconscious is an excellent way to make our thinking more rational and reality based. Maybe a few folks ought to check their views against Hillary’s and see whether she’s not closer than you think.

    Having done that, I must say that one issue–the war–will leave me closer to Obama. Oh well! It was an interesting exercise!

  • Predicting Hillary Derangement Syndrome

    Jeremy Pierce is predicting that if [tag]Hillary Clinton[/tag] wins the presidency, some folks, particularly evangelical Christians, will be subject to Hillary Derangement Syndrome (HT: evangelical outpost).

    His note reminded me of a political science professor from whom I took a few classes. He would regularly tell us that if we felt that our lives would be irreparably damaged should the other party win the next election, we were too invested in politics.

    I think he is almost completely right. The part I wonder about in his post is this:

    I don’t think we’ve ever seen a phenomenon quite like this until the current president. A lot of people who didn’t like Bill Clinton said lots of nasty things about him, especially evangelical Christians who should have obeyed the Bible a little more carefully with regard to respecting those in governmental leadership under God. But I don’t think it was anything like the kind of irrationality I’ve seen over the current president. . . .

    I disagree, at least for this part of the world. I’m in the Florida Panhandle which voted quite overwhelmingly for Bush. I should note also that a significant part of the opposition to Bush seems to have been to the right rather than the left. (I exaggerate, or at least I hope I do.)

    Around these parts The last 15 years have sounded about the same–just exchange people and positions. While [tag]Bill Clinton[/tag] was president he was pretty much the anti-Christ, or at least his precursor. When Bush became president, the shift to the left with much the same rhetoric hardly seemed to make any difference. I don’t think the standard has been set during this presidency. I think it was already set. Many of the same people who hated Bill Clinton that much will be well prepared should Hillary be elected.

    We would perhaps do well to ponder the consequences of this type of attitude if harbored too long. On the other hand, I may just spend my time laughing at folks who get way more worked up than I do. It’s hard to tell.

  • Corrupt Politicians and Shrill Partisans

    OK, I’m shocked and amazed. Well, not so much. This time it’s Democrats, as the FBI arrests officials in New Jersey. This story just reminded me that people who have power will be tempted, and some of them will turn out to be corrupt. The question is what we’ll do about it. In this case, the FBI seems to have answered that one.

    But this reminded me of this post which tells us how awesomely horrible George W. Bush is, followed by comments in which various people repeatedly discuss how truly horrible the current president is.

    It happens I’m not a George W. Bush fan. I think the war in Iraq was a strategic mistake. But get some perspective folks! You can oppose someone without regarding them as corrupt. You can disagree, even on major issues, without assuming they are stupid. People can disagree on intelligence assessments without being congenital liars. Do preconceptions impact intelligence reports? Sure they do. Is that right? No. The appropriate congressional oversight committees should do their jobs when it does. (They probably won’t. They usually have their own agendas!)

    Some very smart people disagree with me on the war in Iraq. How do I know that? Well, first, I don’t make the assumption that disagreeing with me is the equivalent of being stupid. If I assume that, everyone who disagrees is stupid by definition. But supposing that I eliminate that one question from consideration. Is the person smart in other ways? If so, I should consider the possibility that an intelligent person can disagree. I know a fair number of them.

    Is it hard? Sometimes it certainly is. The Iraq war seems wrong to me in so many different ways that I have a hard time understanding how someone can support it. But I’ve had intelligent conversations with people who do.

    It’s interesting watching liberals get all frothy about W, because here in the Florida panhandle it was much like that during the Clinton administration, only it was the conservatives who were over the top. They would have a hard time telling me precisely what was so awful about what Clinton had done compared to Republican administrations. It sounded to me like they just disagreed with him on policy. But to many of them, Bill Clinton was a strong candidate for the antichrist.

    They have similar feelings about Hillary Clinton. There’s a certain “anyone but Clinton” attitude down here in these parts, because while they hated Bill Clinton for reasons passing understanding they reserved greater vitriol for his wife.

    And that’s where I come full circle to corruption. Partisans on both sides want to use the fact that some politicians are corrupt as leverage to get their own party into power. Thus they will try to spin corruption so that it falls largely on one party or the other. To hear the partisans, there’s always an excuse when “their” politician fails, but there’s never any excuse for the other politician. Republicans who were involved in impeaching Bill Clinton certainly don’t think it’s an appropriate remedy in the case of George W. Bush.

    Unfortunately this tactic often works, because people don’t really study candidates and issues in any detail. Whoever can work the media just right to make the other guy look more corrupt without crossing an invisible line and losing support for being nasty and mean will become a winner. That’s what we need to avoid.

    The discovery that a candidate who supports your views otherwise is corrupt should not cause you to vote for an opponent whose views you despise. It should make you look for a different candidate who supports your views. Corrupt people will get into office. Get over it. That’s why we have terms of office and elections. We can throw them all out.

    The partisans who are pushing corruption as an issue that favors one party over the other are doing themselves and the nation a disservice. Unfortunately, the greatest–and final–disservice is done by voters who let themselves be influenced by a general smear without digging out the specifics.

    If the voters were intelligent, 30 and 60 second ads would have no impact on a campaign. People would ignore them as the trash that they are.