Hillary: "Ready to Lie From Day 1" About Venezuela

Mark Penn might try out this new sound bite for Hillary Clinton: "Ready to lie from Day 1."

Exhibit A, as noted in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal: this week she claimed that Venezuela is a dictatorship.

The Journal reports:

In a major speech yesterday at George Washington University, Sen. Clinton drove the wedge [with Sen. Obama] deeper: "If I am entrusted with the presidency, America will have the courage, once again, to meet with our adversaries. But I will not be penciling in the leaders of Iran or North Korea or Venezuela or Cuba on the presidential calendar without preconditions; until we have assessed, through lower-level diplomacy, the motivations and intentions of these dictators."

So, according to Senator Hillary Clinton, the leader of Venezuela is a dictator.

It's hard to imagine that Hillary is so uninformed -- and has such incompetent foreign policy advisers -- that she doesn't know that President Hugo Chávez and his government have won multiple elections that were characterized as free and fair by international observers. But if she knows this, then she is lying.

For example, this is what the Carter Center delegation said about the 2004 presidential recall referendum:

"On Aug. 15, 2004, Venezuelans came out in record numbers to participate in the first popularly mandated presidential recall referendum ever to be held. In doing so, the Venezuelan people voted not to recall President Chávez from office, with 59 percent of the population voting for Chávez and 41 percent voting against him. It is the opinion of The Carter Center that the Aug. 15 vote clearly expressed the will of the Venezuelan electorate."

Indeed, here's what the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs wrote last October about the elections in 1998 and 1999 - this is on the State Department's web page:

"In December 1998, Hugo Chávez Frias won the presidency on a campaign for broad reform, constitutional change, and a crackdown on corruption...Chávez's argument that the existing political system had become isolated from the people won broad acceptance, particularly among Venezuela's poorest classes, who had seen a significant decline in their living standards over the previous decade and a half. The National Constituent Assembly (ANC), consisting of 131 elected individuals, convened in August 1999 to begin rewriting the Constitution. In free elections, voters gave all but six seats to persons associated with the Chávez movement. Venezuelans approved the ANC's draft in a national referendum on December 15, 1999."

On January 31 of this year, the Miami Heraldreported,

"Human Rights Watch on Thursday said Venezuela does not belong to a group of nations like Pakistan and Russia that use the veneer of democracy to mask autocratic rule...'We did not include Venezuela in the list of closed countries because it is not,' Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said, unveiling the organization's 2008 World Report, which highlighted leaders who claim to be democratic but take autocratic measures...'There are serious problems in Venezuela, but we shouldn't pretend that Venezuela is a closed society,' he said. 'There still is significant political competition, and indeed the best evidence of that was the fact that Chávez just lost his referendum.' "

You're entitled to your own opinion, Senator Clinton, but you're not entitled to your own facts.

Comments

[FearlessFreep]

No doubt Chavez will first assess HRC's motivations and intentions as well.

Isn't it normal for leaders to assess each other before meeting anyway?

[AndrewInToronto]

I could not agree more. In fact I was just writing a letter to this effect to someone else literally moments ago.

It is not just President Chavez who won the election of 1998 and then was re-elected in 2000 and 2006 (56.2%, 60% and 62.9%, respectively). In 1999 a referendum was held which proposed constitional reforms including the democratic process of recall of elected officials including the president, which passed with 72%. In 2004 this was put to the test in a presidential recall for which he won 59%.

There are also other electoral processes including the 2005 election to the National Assembly to which the MVA (a pro-Chavez party) won 68% of the seats.

As you mentioned there have been international observers which have verified at different times the results, including the OAS and the Carter Center.

Given the issues with arose with the optical systems in use during the last presidential election in 2004 in the United States (for Florida and Ohio in particular), there is a certain irony to say the least on the issue of accountability and transparency -- not to mention my clear memory that President Bush was calling for candidate Kerry to call it quits even before all the ballots had been counted. Can anyone remember her comments on these events?

That which irks me the most about Senator Clinton is her constant references to reclaiming the moral authority in the world, yet statements such as the ones noted here on Venezuela are clearly either ill-informed or intentionally misleading. A world-view rooted in national chauvenism, mired in misinformation and outright ignorance, is not a good basis for moral authority.

But then another memory comes to mind from last night's debate. "Dmitri Medvedeva....whatever" What can one say? The spirit of President Bush lives on, perhaps.

[AndrewInToronto]

Sorry everybody for this post -- typos and all. I accidentally clicked "post" rather than "preview" and could not edit it thereafter. The finished version appears above.

[Nonamnesiac]

Hillary's comments about democratically elected Chavez -- and about Putin -- demonstrate her lack of judgment to be President of the United States. She just insists on personally attacking both. As both are important to the future of the U.S. and both have been at least arguably put into office through democratic processes, it makes no sense to personally attack them. What good will that do if she did become President and had to meet with either (or both) over matters critcal to US interests?

But the despicable media doesn't even raise questions about her glaring lack of judgment in the debates or anywhere else, instead pandering to what they hope to be a reactionary, know-nothing impulse of the US electorate regarding Putin and Chavez -- an impulse flamed by that media.

The media has simply crowned Hillary as the "experienced" and "competent" one and refuses to publish the overwhelming facts that her "experience" and "competence" have been proven insufficient for her to be President, given the choices she has made and continues to make.

[DemandTruth]

Mark Penn might try out this new soundbite for Hillary Clinton: "Ready to lie from Day 1."

Well, I'm going to take a page out of Obama's play book and, as he did in the last Great Debate over the words "denounce" vs. "reject" concede this point! Hillary Clinton IS presidential. She has so far exhibited the traits of EVERY president that has ruled since I was born. (I was born on the day Nixon resigned, so I have to start there). Nixon, (I can't say for sure about Carter - I had colic and wasn't paying attention) Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Bush.

All presidents.

All LIARS. L.I.A.R.S!

Yup. She's pure presidential material. How's about we take a chance on something NEW for a change, huh?