Since it seems the Theme of the Day is “Political Has-Beens”, let’s take that one step further. The Daily Mail didn’t need to hack anybody’s cell phone to report this story: Monica Lewinsky is living the life of a recluse in Southern California. Her efforts to start some sort of career have gone nowhere, and she isn’t terribly welcome even in her own social circles. The thing that grabbed me, though, is that somehow 17 years have gone by since that scandal. SEVENTEEN. Jeebus.
So here’s my take on this whole “Hillary For Secretary Of State” thing: it’s a ploy.
Obama took a lot of flak for not making Hillary his running mate. The campaign made a very cursory effort at making it look like they were at least putting her on the short list, but nobody except the Hillary-Hating Republican crowd thought it was anything except the illusion it turned out to be.
They are doing the very same thing now, but doing a slightly better job of making it look realistic. The stories right after the election about John Kerry wanting the job were more of a traditional “trial balloon”, and they got shot down pretty fast by a very unhappy party. Hillary Clinton seems to be getting far more serious consideration as an actual possibility, but over the last 48 hours there have been all these stories about how Bill Clinton’s assorted post-presidential activities might create conflicts of interests and how he hasn’t been all that cooperative about turning over his lists of donors and contributors. And it’s my belief that the Obama people completely and utterly anticipated that and are ready to use it as a way to shuffle her out the door without looking like the bad guys.
I also believe that Hillary’s people knew all of this, too, and needed to play along for the sake of rehabilitating her public image after the “sore loser” end-game of her primary campaign. She sucked it up and played nice in the fall campaign, but did not get as much credit for it as she probably deserved. So this gives her a more favorable opportunity AND lets Bill look like the bad guy all over again. Moreover, I think HRC herself is 100% aware that her destiny is now in the United States Senate as the likeliest successor to Ted Kennedy as the ideological leadership of the Senate Democrats, and recognizes that there is absolutely no upside for her in actually becoming Secretary of State.
And for Bill, he takes the short-term hit on his reputation in the U.S., which isn’t all that great to begin with, but he doesn’t have to curtail his present-day activities for Hillary’s behalf. WIN-WIN-WIN.
Personally, I think Obama’s stealth candidate for State is Chuck Hagel — openly critical of Bush and the GOP, but with enough cred to fit the “bipartisan” approach Obama seems to be taking, has sufficient foreign policy experience, AND because State doesn’t have any domestic policy role to speak of, it helps to neutralize the elements of Hagel that are more objectionable to us pinko commie liberal bastards, namely his conservative and religious positions on domestic issues.
This op-ed piece from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer echoes a thought that has crossed my mind about the presidential election, particularly after Obama’s “victory lap” tour last week: it’s beginning to resemble the 1996 election, where Bill Clinton established his lead over Bob Dole early on and didn’t need to do much more than show up. From a distance, it’s easy to see McCain assuming the role of Bob Dole, the cranky and sometimes bitter old white man who’s best qualification seems to be that he was badly injured in a war that was fought forty years ago. I think Dole was a better legislator than McCain is, and a good deal less “ethically challenged” to boot, but both men represent a political landscape that is long gone. Bob Dole would have been the last hurrah of the old guard of the GOP, McCain would be nothing but a caretaker while the party licks its wounds and retrenches.
Obama does bear some comparison to Bill Clinton in his willingness to do anything to make himself look good at anybody’s expense. Clinton did a much better job of not letting his big ego show. Any way you care to slice it, Obama’s world tour showed an astonishing amount of arrogance and hubris. Clinton was generally satisfied to take what he got in terms of public approval, but Obama seems to NEED to be Jesus Christ Superstar, and I think that’s going to bite him in the ass when the inevitable day comes that his public approval plummets. He might not be as hated as Bush, but even the best-loved presidents have found themselves on the wrong side of the X-axis at some point. Clinton triangulated to maximum effect and even survived the humiliation of the impeachment as a result. That’s the real reason he could glide through the 1996 re-election. Obama is sailing solely on the breeze of the public’s present level of infatuation. That may work to get him elected in 2008, but he won’t have such smooth sailing in 2012 if the public’s disenchantment sets in.
That’s why this election also reminds me of 1976, maybe even more than it does 1996. Jimmy Carter won a popularity contest running on his big smile and pleasant demeanor against yet another old man Republican, Gerry Ford (who, not coincidentally, had Dole as his running mate). Until George W. Bush came along and redefined the term once and for all, Carter wound up as the very symbol of “presidential failure” and attained nearly as low an approval rating as Richard Nixon. He very nearly lost the nomination of his own party four years later and handily lost to the man who transformed the Republican Party into the beast it is today, Ronald Reagan. Carter has managed to rehabilitate his personal public image since then, but not the overall assessment of his presidency. I have no doubt that Barack Obama would similarly manage to improve his personal standing down the road, but we all might pay the price in the meanwhile.
Bob Dole v.2 vs. Jimmy Carter v.2 makes me incredibly sad.
Since it’s obviously my day to blow through a pant-load of links, let’s move on to politics, shall we?
1. Other than the spinmeisters and poo-flinging political bloggers, does anyone even remotely care that John McCain may or may not have shtupped a hot blonde lobbyist who bears an uncanny resemblance to his wife? Have we not gotten so accustomed to these stories that they no longer matter? I should think everybody would just be glad that it was a woman, since the “G” in “GOP” seems to stand for “Gay”. To me the only points of interest here are these: that it might have been the Republican Party itself which gave the story to the Times, since the Bush crowd does not like McCain; that the Times has been sitting on this story since December at the request of the McCain people and probably has more dirt that they left out for fear of lawsuits; and that McCain did political favors for a contributor who was represented by said hottie’s lobbying firm. The sex part is the LEAST of the story.
2. This blog post is supposed to be a letter from a Wellesley classmate to Hillary Clinton about why she’s not supporting her fellow alum. It’s more of a litany of the various crimes against humanity that Monsanto is accused of and then a “guilt-by-association” argument because Clinton’s law firm represented Monsanto and Bill Clinton’s administration had a cozy relationship with them. It is a very good explanation of the way corporations influence politics and politicians, but I didn’t see anything in it that was more than what you could smear any elected official in Washington with. Which is really sad, when you think about it, but it doesn’t justify singling her out. By contrast, read this post at Daily Kos written by a woman who decided to take it upon herself to compare the actual records of Clinton and Obama in the Senate and concluded that Obama had done more in terms of introducing good legislation than Clinton. She is quick to admit that for the most part, there’s very little difference between the two and her decision to become an Obama supporter is based on her perception that he did a better job getting his legislative issues through the Congress than she did. That is probably the first realistic assessment of the Clinton-Obama paradox I have read yet.
3. Also WRT HRC, this blogger suggests that maybe the solution is for President Obama to appoint Hillary Clinton to the Supreme Court. Many people have already suggested that Hillary should appoint Bill to the Supreme Court if she’s elected, but I don’t think I’ve seen this suggestion before. If you read the post, the reasoning is actually pretty good — removed from the burden of having to “triangulate” her position as an elected politician, HRC could more boldly embrace a progressive agenda on the court and push back many of the draconian decisions the Roberts Court has been willing to hand over to the Bush Administration. This would leave Bill to continue to pursue his other pet projects and not draw continuous political fire for his “kitchen cabinet” position.
4. You may have read the news last week that long-time Republican congressman Tom Lantos died. Now, legal scholar and privacy advocate Larry Lessig has announced that he is considering running for that seat in November. I hope that this is a sign that real grass-roots progressive politics are beginning to take hold and will pay off by putting some people in Congress who really CAN bring about change. In the same vein, this piece in The Nation is a fine reminder of Dennis Kucinich’s committment to progressive issues and what his real impact has been on this election season in terms of pushing Clinton and Obama on those issues. Now that he’s back running for re-election in his district, he’s facing a serious challenge to retain his seat. I didn’t get around to donating to his presidential campaign, but I will donate to his re-election campaign for sure.
Kosovo declared itself independent from Serbia on Sunday. You’ll remember that President Clinton sent American troops to Kosovo as part of a NATO mission to curb Serbian aggression against the ethnic Albanian population there. At the time, then-candidate George W. Bush criticized Clinton, saying "Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is." Funny how just a few short years later the Republicans would be all about invading other countries without any sort of exit strategy, isn’t it?
Well, anyway, Serbia was sufficiently defanged and declawed through the U.S. bombing campaign and the eventual deposing of Slobodan Milosovic, but the political question of Kosovo’s autonomy was more or less shoved aside by more pressing issues, especially once the Bush Administration started working on their list of places to invade. A United Nations protectorate (UNMIK) has been running the show in Kosovo for the last eight years. Writing at Spiked Online, Philip Cunliffe explains that the declaration does not declare complete independence from the Serbian government in Belgrade, or even from UNMIK. Instead, the Kosovars have declared themselves to have "supervised independence", transferring the control of their country from UNMIK to another protectorate controlled by the EU called EULEX, which gets 16,000 NATO troops to use in maintaining the stability of the area. Mr. Cunliffe concludes:
"The travesty of Kosovo’s declaration of independence is not the act of secession, nor the undermining of international law, but the very idea of supervised independence – a contradiction in terms if ever there was one."
He notes, as well, that the new flag of Kosovo (seen above) bears more than a passing resemblance to the flag of the EU, rather than the traditional flag, which bore the twin-eagle of Albania. It’s kind of unfortunate that the flag also has that big mustard stain right in the middle. The deaign committee must have been having a dinner meeting.
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