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| Home Front: Politix |
| Rummy outflanks Hillary |
| 2006-08-13 |
| "My goodness." Hillary Rodham Clinton has a problem. It is a four-letter word called Iraq. And she is doing her best to exorcise it from her political resume. But her 12-minute political rant against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld won't cleanse her palate. Nor did it help her cause that Rumsfeld skewered her rant with the simple "My goodness." If the New York senator is to be the Democrat presidential nominee, she will have to ultimately say that her vote for the war was wrong -- or she loses the nomination. She is trying to do everything that she can do -- sans that admission. But without her confessing that "I was wrong and I am sorry," it won't work. Not when John Kerry and John Edwards are saying they voted for the war, they were wrong and they regret it. Nor when Al Gore and Sen. Russ Feingold rise to the top of the heap as the 2008 anti-war presidential candidates. They have no votes for the war, so the war can't come back to haunt them. MoveOn.org has moved in and only a come-to-the-left moment will win the hearts and souls of the Democratic Party's re-born McGovern wing. Without an admission from Clinton that she was wrong, the door opens for the likes of Gore to claim the nomination from her and be the big winner after Joe Lieberman's fall. In the eyes of many Democrats, Gore no longer is a sore loser, but a principled leader. Our country is politically restless. Change is on everybody's mind. The war in Iraq has become the symbol of that change. But using something as serious as the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with Rumsfeld as her presidential steppingstone went too far. The questions that preceded hers touched on serious, substantive concerns: readiness, Lebanon and the prospect of a civil war in Iraq. The only line that even came close to being political was hers. Part of the problem with this war is that the best public relations effort has been spun not by our own administration but by rogue political groups such as al-Qaida. And Rumsfeld realizes that communication is not always his strongest suit. During a Tribune-Review editorial board last week at the Pentagon, he was open about his failure to communicate at times the challenge and complexities of this war. That failure has contributed to the country's restlessness. "Even to this day I do not spend as much time thinking about how to communicate as I do doing the things I have to do here. I mean, we just evacuated 15,000 people out of Lebanon -- moved a major city. ... We've got so many things going on in this department," he said. "And I wasn't recruited and asked to take this job because I'd spent my life in communications," said Rumsfeld. "I just haven't." Rumsfeld does not suffer fools lightly. Clinton may have thought her wrecking-ball questions would be devastatingly effective. They weren't. "Wars are terrible things," Rumsfeld told me. "(But) we have to live in this world. ... We can't stick our heads in the sand and pretend it's not there." "The American people need to appreciate the danger. ... People first of all have to understand that ... put a value unit, a weight, to it." Clinton attacked Rumsfeld to bolster her anti-war credentials. Yet Rummy's "My goodness" may still be ringing in her ears. |
| Posted by:Slenter Hupavins5895 |
| #2 "If the New York senator is to be the Democrat presidential nominee, she will have to ultimately say that her vote for the war was wrong -- or she loses the nomination." Yep. It's sure starting to look that way. Face it, Hillary: the inmates have taken over that lunatic asylum you call the Democratic Party. Not only that, but most former Staff have stripped off their whites and joined the droolers, head-bangers, screamers and Catheter Chronics in throwing furniture out the Day Room windows, smearing feces on the walls of the Warden's Office, and urinating triumphantly on the astonished crowds below. Not too many of you left, Hillary-- poor Joe Lieberman is holed up in the Men's Room, cowering against an onslaught of gibbering Kossacks, while you sit huddled in what's left of the Nurse's Station, besieged by drooling mucoids. Poor Nurse Ratched. Life's a bitch. And if you get elected President, it only gets worse. Much, MUCH worse... |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2006-08-13 11:40 |
| #1 Thats funny... I understand every word he says. I wish I could communicate half as well as him. There are known knowns... |
| Posted by: Capsu 78 2006-08-13 11:13 |