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| Home Front: Politix |
| Indecision 2008: Hillary! leads by following |
| 2007-02-06 |
| James Taranto, "Best of the Web," Wall Street Journal Last Monday we faulted Sen. Hillary Clinton for demanding that President Bush "extricate" America from Iraq before he leaves office, and for saying, of the president's view that troops will have to remain there into his successor's (i.e., her) term, "I really resent it." We wrote, "If withdrawing from Iraq is in America's interests, why doesn't Mrs. Clinton--who by the way voted for the war--simply urge President Bush to do so on that ground, or promise to do so herself if elected?" By the end of the week she had done as we suggested--or so the headlines seemed to indicate. "Clinton Promises to End War if Elected" was the title of an Associated Press dispatch Friday afternoon, which reported that Mrs. Clinton told a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, "If we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will." Well, now, that sounds definitive. . . . The most telling line in Mrs. Clinton's speech is that counterfactual conditional: "If I had been president in October of 2002, I would not have started this war." This is quite an astonishing statement, seeing as how in October 2002 Mrs. Clinton voted for the war. And yet when you stop and think about it, the statement is not intuitively false. If you can imagine Mrs. Clinton as president in October 2002, you probably can imagine her not starting the Iraq war. Whether or not you think the war was a good idea, it was indisputably the product of President Bush's leadership. He rallied the country behind it, so that it commanded something like 70% support in opinion polls. Congress's support was similarly strong, with 69% of the House and 77% of the Senate (including not just Mrs. Clinton but also fellow Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, along with John Kerry) voting in favor of the war. Mrs. Clinton now says that if she were president in 2002, she would not have led the country to war. This amounts to an acknowledgment that her vote in favor of the war was not an act of leadership--that she was a follower. Was she following the president? This president? Obviously not. President Bush led the public to support the war, and Sen. Clinton followed the public. Now that public opinion has turned against the president and the war, so has Mrs. Clinton. How does Mrs. Clinton deal with a problem about which public opinion has not yet gelled? On Thursday she spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and blogress Heather Robinson captured this choice quote: I have advocated engagement with our enemies and Israel's enemies because I want to understand better what we can do to defeat those who . . . are aiming their weapons at us. . . . This is a worthy debate. . . . There are many, including our president, who reject any engagement with Iran and Syria. I believe that is a good-faith position to take, but I'm not sure it's the smart strategy that'll take us to the goal we share. Says Robinson: "And what was it she was suggesting, exactly? Well, she never said." So on Iraq, Mrs. Clinton stands resolutely on the side of public opinion, whichever side that may be in any given year. On Iran, about which public opinion is unformed, she is maddeningly noncommittal. This is fine for a senator, who merely casts one vote among 100. But the president--especially in times of international peril--needs to be able to make decisions in the national interest. Sometimes that means shaping public opinion, as President Bush did when he persuaded the public and Congress to support the war in Iraq. Sometimes it means defying public opinion, as Bush has done lately by resisting pressure to flee. Were these decisions bad ones? History will judge, but at the moment most Americans seem to think so. Mrs. Clinton is seeking to become President Bush's successor by countering his dangerous boldness with extreme caution. She is presenting herself as the candidate who won't make bad decisions because she won't make decisions--who won't lead us astray because she will not lead. But an excess of caution is itself a form of recklessness. Someone who won't make decisions won't make good or necessary decisions either. Therein lies the peril of a Hillary Clinton presidency. (Emphasis added.) |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 NEWSJOURNAL + WND, etal blogs/sites are still widely reporting that Osama had indeed purchased "suitcase nukes" andor WMDS from the black market, mainly from the Russian mafias. BY THIS SCOPE, 2008 ELEX > is about whom will control America's POST-AMER HIROSHIMA/NEW 9-11 REACTIONS, i.e. AMER-DOMINATED [SOCIALIST?]OWG; vs ISOLATIONIST ANTI-SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST USA UNDER ANTI-US SOCIALIST OWG. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-02-06 20:02 |