Rudolph Giuliani's ritualistic incantations of 9/11 have become a national joke. In truth, his inspirational presence was overshadowed by his failure to prepare the city for a terrorist attack.
Also he failed to upgrade the infamous faulty radios used by first responders, many of whom he infuriated by calling off the search for bodies at Ground Zero just when the volunteers felt they were on the brink of finding more.
Hillary's got her own equivalent of Giuliani's 9/11: her "experience." It's gospel to much of the public but some in the media aren't buying it.
Like Timothy Noah at Slate: "Oh, please."
And Ari Emanuel on Huffington Post: "Give me a break,"
What's the problem? For starters, the amount of experience she claims. "Thirty-five years takes you back to 1973," Noah writes, "half of which Hillary spent in law school, for crying out loud."
Emanuel asks, "And what about [Obama's] time at Harvard Law (where he was the first black president in the history of the Harvard Law Review)? Doesn't count? But your time at Yale Law does?"
Second, how much of that time was spent in government? Hillary's electability derives in large part from what she calls her "firsthand knowledge of what goes on inside a White House."
But, Noah writes, her "chief role [was] that of kibitzer." She "did not hold a security clearance, did not attend meetings of the National Security Council, and was not given a copy of the president's daily intelligence briefing."
Emanuel makes the case that, with Biden, Dodd, and Richardson out of the race, and Kucinich, who practically teethed on politics, marginalized, neither of the leading Democratic candidates has significant government experience.
"Going by years spent as an elective official," he writes, "Obama's 11 years exceeds Clinton's seven." But "even when you factor in Clinton's previous experience in the company of power," it comes out the same.
When Emanuel asks, "Where the hell does she come off claiming superior experience?" he shines a spotlight on the problem with the word. Experience, it seems, has two meanings, one nested inside the other.
First, experience refers to the quantity of your various experiences. Second, however presumptive, is the presumption that they lead to wisdom.
Which is why Obama's people oppose Hillary's vaunted experience with the concept of judgment. In other words, does the sum of Hillary's experiences pave the way for their metamorphosis into experience infused by knowledge?
According to Susan Rice at Huffington Post, Hillary has "fought to ensure our troops have the body armor they need while in combat, and she has passed laws so that returning soldiers are treated with dignity when they return home. She has placed education at the center of U.S. international assistance. She has been a leader in combating nuclear proliferation and the threat of nuclear terrorism."
On the other hand, we have her vote for the Iraq War Resolution. It not only helped condemn the Iraqi people to hell on earth, but became an open wound in her campaign. Thanks to judgment that can only be called short-sighted at best, there's no way her vote can be added to the tote board of her experience.
The same with the martial strains of her foreign policy in general. You probably remember when, speaking as the self-anointed voice of experience, Hillary told Obama that a president shouldn't make "blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons."
Other questionable decisions that she made slipped beneath the radar. Unfortunately for her, they couldn't fit beneath the gateway of judgment. Like the examples above, they were thus barred from the realm of genuine experience.
For instance, during the Senate debate over the Iraq resolution, Hillary was the only Democrat (bear in mind that includes Lieberman) to sign off on all of Bush & Co.'s claims about Iraq.
Back in 2002, she voted in favor of an amendment prohibiting the United States from cooperating with the International Criminal Court. You know -- that body of justice that comes in handy for prosecuting little things like genocide in Darfur.
Also, she defended Israel's right to occupy Palestinian territory, not to mention its erection of The Wall. Then she disrespected another international body of law -- the International Court of Justice -- which she denounced for calling on Israel to abide by international humanitarian law.
Finally, she refused to support the international treaty to ban land mines. Then she voted down a Democratic-sponsored resolution restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries using them against civilian-populated areas.
Picture her sending those last two down the pipeline to the land of experience. Judgment's gatekeeper must have laughed in her face.
Bottom line, imagine if Clinton wins the nomination and, as Noah writes, "a certain white-haired senator now serving his 25th year in Congress (four in the House and 21 in the Senate) wins the nomination" for the Republicans. "McCain could easily make Hillary look like an absolute fraud."
It's starting to look like playing the experience card can win Hillary the nomination but lose her the election. As Noah sums up, "If Clinton doesn't find a new theme soon, she won't just be cutting Obama's throat. She'll also be cutting her own."
Any reflective American can't help but wonder at politicians like Giuliani, during 9/11, and Clinton, with her front-row seat in the White House, enduring what for us would no doubt constitute transformational experiences.
But all that's affirmed to them is their preconceptions. What's more empty than a life filled with experiences that don't add up to experience?
All that the years of White House experience these individuals accumulated demonstrates is that they developed a complete contempt for the rule of law and the US Constitution in the process.
It isn't "Experience" but the kind of "Experience" ... a doctor has experience, but so does a pimp ... both get their jobs done.
Hillary Clinton's White House experience amounts to being First Lady without a Security Clearance ... as someone recently pointed out, the Pastry Chef spent 8 years in the Clinton White House as well ...
Experience? Hillary? ... Be Serious.
The country is sick to death of their brand of politics. If they think that Obama supporters, the "base," or the independents and Republicans who want a sea-change in the politics of this country will unite and vote for her in the general, they need to listen up. They have so offended many such people that they will NOT unite; they will stay home on election day as long as the Republican nominee is not one of those who are beyond the pale.
All the Clintons need to do to lose the next election for the Democrats is keep on doing what they're doing.
Wow, pro-union Wal-Mart (NOT!), she sure made a difference; in her pocket book that is.
Her experience will get TROUNCED by McCain!
For Obama to beat McCain, he is the breath of fresh air...the non-establishment...with good judgement. His 11 years of elected office a lot more than Edwards and more than Clinton.
Experience? Obama has it:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/07/29/us/politics/20070730_OBAMA_GRAPHIC.html
Experience in politics is meaningless unless the person's policies actually agree with your own.
Saying "Well, I know how things get done!" doesn't mean that you'll get the things done that are important to people like me. Based on her experience, I'm sure she can quickly expand the Free Trade policies of the last 4 administrations, create more violence in the middle-east, and triangulate her ass off so the "middle" in Washington moves even further to the right of where the rest of the country is than it is now.
Personally, I view that kind of experience as a reason not to vote for her.
As for Senator Obama, he speaks well but he is immature in several important ways; he nearly self-destructed with his ill-advised macho posturing/whining/defensiveness/squirminess during Monday's debate.
Senator Edwards remains the one candidate who has the vision, the energy, the reasoned, measured approach and the necessary concern for all Americans; Senators Obama and Clinton are running mainly to resolve ego issues, and they do not really care about the average American.
My hope is that if Edwards can't pull this one out, Obama will quickly learn that his sweet desire to sing kumbaya around the campfire with neocons is stupid because he can't even kumbaya with malingering DLC Dems. If he can't learn that you have to throw some punches once in a while to defend yourself, then he's gonna have to get used to losing.
Two of the most revered Presidents in Ameircan history had very little "experience" and they transformed our democracy: Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy. They and Obama share a gift that experience can never bring: a natural charizma coupled with a command of language that makes people listen, and brings them together to achieve a common goal. An ability to marshall support and create consensus.
I believe that it's possible that Hillary has the "experience" to "do whatever it takes" to win the Democratic nomination, but I don't believe she, or Bill Clinton can rightly claim the judgement to lead our nation into a unified future. And by being supportive of so many ideas that land on the wrong side of peace and economic justice, I'm not sure I can continue to feel connected to a party that would choose her as it's leader.
Obama in '08
Obama holds a similar view and demonstrates knowledge and insight on this issue. Here is a portion of a Jan. 2006 podcast by Obama after his trip to Israel and Palestine:
"As you travel through the West Bank, you get a sense of the differences
between life for Palestinians and Israelis in this region. Palestinians have to
suffer through the checkpoint system, the barriers, the fenced-in wall that
exists just to get to their jobs, often times to travel from north and south
even within the west bank. It's created enormous hardship for them - there is
high unemployment and the economy is not doing as well as it should.
Unfortunately the Palestinians, through Yasser Arafat, suffered from leadership
that seemed to be more interested in the rhetoric of Israel's destruction and
less interested in actually constructively creating a peaceful solution to the
problem and focusing on delivery of services to the Palestinian people. And so I
had a wonderful discussion with Palestinian students as well as discussions with
Palestinian businessmen and Abu Mazen, about the importance of the Palestinian
people focusing on building up infrastructure, building up capacity, building up
an honest, non-corrupt government, consolidating arms that are currently
dispersed among a variety of militias under a single command structure of the
Palestinian authority, and entering into constructive negotiations on a
non-violent basis to arrive at a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
problem."
Hillary Clinton does have experience in several areas where Barack seems naive--particularly in standing up against the right wing smear machine. The Democrats need a nominee who understands what is coming and is prepared to return fire. What the Democrats don't need is someone naive enough to believe we will all unite because of flowery speeches.
Assuming Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, her campaign theme immediately becomes the winning proposition: "Do you dislike me so much, you'll be willing to get four more years of Bush's policies? Or would you prefer to return the peace and prosperity of the 1990's?"
McCain will be shown to be joined to Bush at the hip, all his phony "maverick" nature notwithstanding.