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Open Letter to Bill Clinton
You are facing one of the leadership challenges of your life. You need to decide whether to put the interests of the United States and the world ahead of your personal interests. Doing so means setting aside getting your wife elected and maintaining control over the Democratic Party.
Only you -- not former President Jimmy Carter, not Al Gore, not any other Democrat -- can convince your wife that the country's best interests dictate that she should abandon her failed attempt to become the country's first female president. It is far more important that both of you dedicate the next five months to uniting your supporters behind the election of Senator Barack Obama as the next president of the United States.
That's what leadership is all about.
No one can doubt that you have been a great leader for the U.S. and the world during the past sixteen years. The contrast of your presidency with that of President George W. Bush is so painful that it doesn't merit recounting here. Yet through all of President Bush's failed attempts to repudiate your accomplishments as president, you have stayed above the fray and dedicated yourself to make the world a better place, using your personal foundation as a vehicle. In so doing, you have gained the admiration of leaders throughout the world, including many of your former detractors.
One of your greatest qualities as president was facing reality: in 1994 you recognized that you had to abandon your wife's flawed health care plan in order to save your presidency. On welfare you faced the reality that the welfare plans of the Democrats' New Deal weren't working and joined with Republicans to implement the welfare-to-work plan. On trade you faced the realities of globalization and supported free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT, even while sacrificing the political support of the labor unions. On immigration you faced the reality that expanding visas for legal immigrants was critical for innovation, especially in the high tech industry. Your brilliant economic policies ignited to the greatest period of growth and innovation since the post-war period and even created a surplus for the federal budget, a dramatic contrast with President George W. Bush's mammoth deficit spending.
Now you need to face the reality that your wife has already lost her bid to become the first woman president. The ultimate outcome of the primary campaign has been known since Senator Obama won ten consecutive elections in March.
All too late, Senator Clinton tried to remake her image from a Washington elitist who gained experience as your spouse into Rosie the Riveter, a tough-talking fighter who has endured sniper fire and advocates complex solutions for the working class and the elderly. To derail Obama's campaign, she teamed with John McCain in attempting to pin an elitist label on Obama, who grew up with a single mother on food stamps and gave up the potential for the lucrative career as a Wall Street lawyer to work in the projects in Chicago's South Side.
Hillary played up racial fears about Obama by highlighting his associations with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan and suggested that this devoted Christian was not a Muslim "as far as I know." As she became more desperate, she reopened fears of September 11, threatened to "obliterate Iran," and pandered to the electorate with her summer gas tax holiday that she knew would never come to pass. These actions earned her the support of Rush Limbaugh, whose crossover Republican voters, eager to keep these attacks on Senator Obama going, likely provided the margin of her slim victory in Indiana.
Regrettably, the result of her "scorched earth" campaign to destroy Senator Barack Obama's bid to become the first non-white president has only helped Senator John McCain's election bid and provided him with free video clips for the fall campaign. By pitting whites and Hispanics against blacks, old against young, blue collar against white collar, and women against men, she has employed the politics of "divide and conquer" instead of calling for national unity to restore our country to its former greatness.
If you really want to help our country, you will convince you wife to stop dragging out the inevitable and get behind Obama's campaign to defeat John McCain while there is still time. Both you and your wife have proven themselves to be dedicated campaigners. Now you need to work just as hard to elect Senator Obama.
Although your time to lead the country has past, there is so much you can still do to help the world. But your most important leadership task now to help Barack Obama become your logical successor, because Obama is the only person who can unite the country to face the ever-increasing problems of the economy, racial divides, education, health care, energy and the environment, and poverty, while getting our troops out of Iraq and rebuilding our relationships with the rest of the world.
Bill George is the author of best-selling books True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership and Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value, has been named one of "Top 25 Business Leaders of the Past 25 Years" by PBS, and was CEO and Chairman of Medtronic from 1991 until 2001.
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It saddens me to see how the Democratic Party and media have turned on the Clintons. Every "supposed" racial statement they make is taken out of context and twisted. When he spoke of a"Fairy Tale" it was describing Obama's voting record as a US Senator regarding the War appropriations,but the media and others framed it as racist. Why? When he said Jesse Jackson won SC it was in response to a question about Obama being black and winning the black vote.The media once again framed and twisted the innocent statement of fact as racist. Why?
The Republicans and the media humiliated him and shut down this Country for almost 2 yrs over an affair. He was accused of being obsessed with getting Bin Laden by Republicans,yet blamed for not catching him. .
We have had a President for the last 7.5 yrs that has lied about War,stripped the Constitution(called it a GD piece of paper) Ignored warnings of being attacked and ignored Clinton's plan and Richard Clarke about the danger of Bin Laden. Outed a CIA agent,wiretapped without warrants,fired AG's for Political reasons,ignored Katrina etc etc and yet the media has NEVER done what they did to President Clinton.
Until we stop the Corporate owned media from framing every debate and controlling what is important and what should be ignored (Pentagon propaganda program using military analysts to justify the War) the best Presidents will be attacked mercilessly and the worst will get a free pass.
The Clintons don't exhibit leadership.
It's all about "Me-dership", for them.
The Clinton family has probably collectively gone over the cliff's edge months ago. I would not expect them to behave rationally until all of this is over and they had time to go through a couple of hundred hours of therapy.
There is an article in the Washington Times /Nation/Politics about "papers being lost" pertaining to Whitewater. They have been found and given to the Clinton Library. Quite interesting.
Um, it's about winning with the Clintons. MSNBC has run a biography of Hillary Clinton over the months. All the negative campaigning has come straight from her playbook. He simply cosigns on it and lets it rip. This is how they've worked since he's been in public office, which has been more than half his life.
While the open letter was a nice idea, the only way to get to the Clintons is to speak their language: beat them at their own game. Obama has done this. The rest is history.
This post is full of laudable insights and suggestions...
But forget about Clinton ever reading it because he's too busy. He hasn't slept more than 2 hours a night for the past 6 months, and now he's stuck in some weaselly little town in West Virginia or Kentucky somewhere that he doesn't even know the name of, and doesn't care to know. He's got a sweaty old microphone from some local high school in his hand, his bloodshot eyes are glazed over, and he's dreaming of eating some McDonald's French fries as he once again does his standard stump speech on autopilot for the eleven thousandth time. Poor bastard!
Thank you Mr. George for this very well written post. As an Obama supporter, I understand the frustrations of many Clinton supporters. She is a fine candidate and her and her husband have made great contrbutions to this country. We all owe them a debt of gratitude.
However, Most rational Clintonites would concede she did not run the best campaign. She was plagued by in-fighting among surrogates and staff; her fund-raising was not up to the challenge; she ignored the caucus states; and she ran on experience in a "change" year.
Elections are never about who's the most qualified (Exhibit #1: GW Bush). Otherwise we would be taking about Joe Biden or Bill Richardson right now. Elections are about who connects with the voters. On every count, Barack has done a better job connecting. Sorry that is just the way it is.
Dear Mr. Clinton,
We know you cheated on your wife. It's public record now. To call it merely a personal matter would be ignoring the effect that affair had on Mr. Gore's campaign. and the moral high ground it allowed the GOP to take hold of in the 2000 election.
You and Chelsea can claim it's none of our business, but why then is it not the utmost hypocrisy for your wife to claim if she had Reverend Wright as a pastor she would've left his church if he'd said the things he did. Why shouldn't, if character assassination is on the table, Barack Obama propose the same conjecture with regard to your marriage. Spiritual faith and marrital fidelity are not that far apart on the ethic spectrum.
If I found out someone was cheating on me I'd throw them to the curb.
But instead, I believe you made a bargain Mr. Clinton. To one day help your wife realize her dream, and get you off the hook for Monica Lewinsky. But it's not exactly something you can promise someone is it?
It's over. Her run has run its course.
The racist baiting, the character attacks, why couldn't she have just kept her desire in check, not thrown the chessboard up in the air, letting the pieces fly everywhere. Iowa pissed her off. Her sense of betrayal was palpable, but then again no one ever promised her a rose garden.
Except for maybe you.
grendl
I applaud the Clintons for working through a very difficult time in their marriage and coming out on the other end with their marriage, their friendship, and their family intact. Bless them. God has forgiven Bill. HIllary has forgiven Bill. It is nobody else's place to judge. The Clinton's have given hope to so many couples in this country who are facing similar circumstances who have come to realize that their is hope in such a situation if the parties involved chooses to stay and work it out.
Wrong.
When a president, my president's personal pecadillos, and indiscretions leads to a swing in the political pendulum of this country, it is my business.
And when his wife makes a rival candidates religious affiliation her business, then everything is open season.
God has forgiven Bill?
Damn, I've got to get on that distribution list for those status updates from On High.
Sorry, I can’t let this slide. Bill Clinton was indeed a better President than W. But the things you cite as his accomplishments were in fact failures.
Workfare costs as much or more than the old style Welfare. Clinton didn’t recognize the ‘realities of globalization’ he created them with NAFTA and GATT. Visas for legal immigrants was not only not critical for innovation in the high tech industry, it has all but destroyed the wage scale of American engineers, result, enrollment in technology and engineering in universities is down and the engineering schools are closing due to lack of interest. Far from making us more competitive, it has made us vastly less competitive.
He did raise taxes a bit to help balance the budget and raised the minimum wage. This was offset by continuing the Reagan statistical practice of under reporting inflation. So the good times everyone seems to remember was just the last period in which the nation was still treading water.
Bill’s ego does not need stroking. In case you hadn’t noticed. And propagating the myth of his Presidency, and that of Reagan as well, denies the public access to something they need very badly in order to survive. Truth.
Exactly right.
Beyond NAFTA, which you quite properly call a failure of the Clinton administration, there was also health care insurance reform, a cause that Mrs. Clinton personally set back by at least 15 years. Also, the Democratic Party lost control of Congress on his watch--probably due in part to the loss of labor union support that Mr. George notes.
At least allegedly, his adminstration decided against killing Osama bin Laden, when there was an opportunity, to avoid the appearance of a "Wag the Dog" situation, in light of the Lewinsky scandal. Certainly some important national priorities went unattended as a result of that scandal.
Blame where blame is due.
"One of your greatest qualities as president was facing reality:
(1) in 1994 you recognized that you had to abandon your wife's flawed health care plan in order to save your presidency.
(2) On welfare you faced the reality that the welfare plans of the Democrats' New Deal weren't working and joined with Republicans to implement the welfare-to-work plan.
(3) On trade you faced the realities of globalization and supported free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT, even while sacrificing the political support of the labor unions.
(4) On immigration you faced the reality that expanding visas for legal immigrants was critical for innovation, especially in the high tech industry."
Mr. George, the four examples you provided to demonstrate leadership and courage of Bill Clinton were, even then as today, no more than self-serving surrender to the Republicans in their efforts to gut all the good the Democratic Party had accomplished for the people of this nation since the days of FDR. They were all cowardly acts that betrayed his party for the sake of his own political survival.
I have to agree, their policy of triangulation, kept them in power, but badly hurt the democrats
in congressional races. On another thread, someone was advocating how the democrats
need the support of the Clintons in the upcoming race with McLame. No thank you, let them
go quietly into the night, or drag them off kicking and screaming if you must. Just be quick
about it.
People need to get over it. Clinton lost. Obama won. We need to get over it and go on with the business of unting and getting our country back the way it should be. I am voting democrat no matter who wins the nomination. That is the right thing to do!!
Race card is played by the Obamaites, not by the Clintons. It is a sad statement of the status of this country that when it comes to race, since people don't seem to be able to see straight. I agree that the AAs got a raw deal in the past, but so did the Chinese who came to this country as indentured laborers, who were ostracized the same way as the blacks. Although we were not slaves since we can after the abolition, nevertheless, our ancestors were hardly treated better than slaves. Yet we persevered, we did not play the victim card, we worked hard and many of us succeeded. We did not demand preferential treatment because that would be demeaning to us. We do not play the race card, even when Wen Ho Lee was falsely accused of treason as late as the 1990s.
So Bill George you do not speak for all minorities, specifically the Asians, who essentially have been ignored as a political force. And I do not believe Hillary played the race card.
I thought it was Republicans who prided themselves in accusing their enemies of the EXACT ugly things they're doing themselves. It's a classic ploy! The Clintons are playing the race card, so accuse the black man of being a racist! EXACTLY like the mega-weatlhy Washington elitists Hillary Clinton AND John McCain accusing the black man from a single-parent home of being an elitist. The pot calling the kettle black? How rich! And more importantly, how stupid do you think we are!!! The Clintons played the race card, plain and simple. "Hard-working Americans, white Americans" says it all. Not only are they playing the race card. In the same breath they're playing the fear card, because they want to scare all those "hard-working Americans, white Americans" into believing that the black man can NEVER get elected, so "Vote for me, I'm white!" It's ugly, and trying to defend it is even uglier.
Please cite a specific example of when Obama played the race card? Or anyone in his campaign? If anything, Obama has been trying to stay away from racial politics.
But please, an example would be great.
The problem with your plea is that it may rest on the assumption that Hillary is consumed with winning and Bill is reasonable. The reality is that both the Clintons are absorbed in themselves, and this loss shakes the very foundation of their core beliefs - that they are the best suited to lead the country, that the country and the party are nothing without them, and that they must save us from ourselves in making this decision.
I appreciate your efforts, but the chances to convince Bill to aid a candidate that has been widely held as a great orator, the golden boy, and an unmatchable fund raiser faces a lot of obstacles. Mostly, Bill's coveting those titles for himself. Sadly, I think this is going to end very badly for the Clintons, and my hope is that they don't take down the rest of us with them.
What the Superdelegates fail to understand is that MORE THAN HALF of the Democrats in this country voted for Hillary Clinton and even though Barack Obama has denied Florida and Michigan voters their voice, those voters WILL have a voice in the General Election and I do not think it will be good for Barack Obama, the Superdelegates, the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, and the DNC Rules Committee which many think is completely inept if he has stolen the nomination by disenfranchising them.
I am here in California where we are starting a movement to WRITE-IN HILLARY CLINTON on the General Election ballot if her name is not already on it. We are starting new blogs and getting the word out.
Superdelegates who switched allegiances and then made what I believe it be LAME EXCUSES for doing so will NEVER have my support for ANY REASON in the future and I am quite certain that I am not alone in this. There is NO REASON for ANY Superdelegate to do anything until ALL of the voters have had their say.
Hillary Clinton has worked hard for decades and has done so much good for people. She has EARNED the Presidency. She has carried the Democratic base. She has worked long and hard for this country. She has the best ideas for getting the country back on track. And, she can beat McCain in November.
no they didn't otherwise she would be winning
I am sure most Republicans will thank you for enabling McCain to make a run against Obama. As for me, I find myself shaking my head again at the the ability of members of the Democratic party to cut off their nose to spite their face.
Nobody has earned the Presidency until the votes in the GE are counted.
You go girl !
We're going to elect ourselves the first woman president, and we're making d@mn sure it's a woman who plays the game just like a man...
Every Democrat in the race, including Queen Hillary, agreed with the DNC regarding Florida and Michigan. Let's not pretend here! Every Democrat in the race knew the rules, and agreed that Florida and Michigan would not count. Every Democrat including Hillary. Now Hillary wants to re-write the rules, in the dying seconds of the game. How cheap and tawdry can this woman get! But let's get this straight. Hillary knew the rules going into this race. Saying that Obama denied Michigan and Florida their vote is a bold-faced lie. The DNC, with the agreement of every candidate INCLUDING HILLARY, made this decision. Now Hillary is pretending that she doesn't know what people are talking about. She won Michigan and Florida! A lying, cheating elitist, who thinks she's so powerful, and entitled, that she can just change the rules in the home stretch, in order to steal the nomination. How repugnant!
So you go right ahead and spoil your ballot with your pathetic write-in campaign. You and Hillary both bring a whole new ugliness to the term "sore loser".
No one - not the DNC - not anyone - should be able to take a single citizen's vote away, let alone the votes of 2.3 million of our fellow Americans and I think the Democratic Party or which I have been a member my entire adult life is being torn asunder because of it and because of the ineptitude of the Howard Dean, the DNC, and the Rules Committee. Such rules should never have been made. I also think Barack Obama will be getting a "November Surprise" because there are very loyal Hillary Clinton supporters throughout this country and there are those of us who will stand up with other citizens of this country whose voices were denied by Barack Obama who would not approve a re-vote in Florida and Michigan. NO CANDIDATE can claim the nomination when only 48 out of 50 states have been allowed their votes.
Even counting the votes from the uncontested elections Hillary would lose.
Winning with Limbaugh voters is a new definition of "the base".
Thank you.
Hopefully many other commentators and editorialists will follow your lead.
I can understand your plea and I believe it is sincere. Certainly anyone can see that BOTH the Clintons are dragging this thing on in self delusion and inability to recognize they are no longer the prima donnas of the Democratic party--that is a hard pill for Hillary and Bill to swallow, seeing their obvious convictions that they run the party and are the arbiters of everything the party does. They have fallen from grace because of this arrogance and aura of inevitability as king and queen of the party.
I believe , knowing Bill Clinton, that he wanted a third term to get back into the White House and thought he could coatail it through the back door with his wife's nomination. Sorry, but so much has come out now about the Clintons, that is not complementary re Bill's presidency and the roll Hillary played while as first lady. Too much stuff is known about them now and many who once thought they were the saviours of the party, now despise them both. No one here to blame but themselves.
Pity, he?
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