Recently in Hillary Clinton Category

Courtesy of AP and Wonkette:

Caption: Hillary Clinton had sex with the Burger King once, and this is their baby who robs banks for a living. [AP Photo]

When Barbara Bush did it, however, she was sledding at Camp David.  Hillary Clinton's downhill adventure is a metaphorical one, but may take longer to get over than a broken leg.

From The New York Times

By FRANK RICH

Published: February 24, 2008

WHEN people one day look back at the remarkable implosion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, they may notice that it both began and ended in the long dark shadow of Iraq.

It's not just that her candidacy's central premise -- the priceless value of "experience" -- was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination -- "It will be me," Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November -- she was routed by an insurgency.

Let's take a break right there.  Both Clinton and Obama have sponsored local initiatives in Arkansas and illinois, respectively.  Something to take note of is that although H.R.C. took office in the U.S. Senate in 2001 while Barack Obama didn't make it to the U.S. senate until 2005 he was a member of the Illinois State Senate since 1997.  So if we do the math, Barack has 11 years of experience as an elected official compared to Mrs. Clinton's 7.  I also think that it's worth remembering that Hillary thinks that being First Lady for 8 years counts as experience. 

Hillary's supporters (according to Frank Rich's article) would have us believe that their candidate's assumed position as Democratic Nominee for President was usurped by a slick hustler riding a wave of undeserved popularity.  If you want to talk about "undeserved" why not mention that her position that led to all this great executive experience was only granted to her by virtue of the fact that she was married to the President.  She wasn't elected or even appointed to the position based on merit or competence.  She just happened to be married to the  latest  person elected to the office of President.

Moving on to the humor of  the situation is that PR powerhouse Mark Penn doesn't, apparently, take H.R.C.'s bid for the Democratic nomination seriously enough to take time off from his day job, where his biggest client is Microsoft.  He's even recycling strategy.  Just like it was assumed that Window's Vista would be welcomed with open arms because it has the Misrosoft name it looks like he was counting on Hillary's last name (well, the latter half of it) to carry her into office.

PR woes aside just remember that if you really want to place as much importance on experience as Hillary that Barack has 50% more of it than she does as an elected official.

My mother hates Hillary Clinton. I mean, she really hates Hillary Clinton. I was always puzzled by this. They are both lawyers who entered the profession when there were few women in it. They both were "Goldwater Girls" in the 1968 election (I have my mother's original Barry Goldwater poster hanging in my office). They're the same age. For a few years, they even shared a hairdresser. I'm not kidding. I never understood why she hated her so much, until now. Leave it to Andrew Sullivan to express what my mother, a pioneer in her own right, who was one of at most five women in her law school class has been saying for years:

What marks a true feminist is a woman who gains democratic office through strictly meritocratic means. Think of Margaret Thatcher: a woman who came from lowly beginnings to master a chemistry degree and a legal career in the 1940s and 1950s, who won a seat in parliament single-handedly and eventually became a three-term prime minister for the Conservative party. Yes: the Conservative party. You think she didn't have to deal with prejudice and chauvinism? More than Hillary Clinton will ever know. But she never engaged for a second in the gender politics and nepotistic shenanigans that Clinton has. Thatcher had a rich husband but he was not a stepping stone to politics. She had two children, but never used them for public attention or photo-ops. She did it all - indisputably - on her own merits.  

 

Hillary Clinton could have done the same. She is an extremely intelligent woman, with a strong work ethic, an attention to detail, a passion for helping children, and a fascination with politics. She remains one of the leading lights in her generation. If she'd wanted to, she could have forged a political career on her own, and done splendidly. She chose not to.  

 

I should have been listening to my mother. Please vote tomorrow. 

Ok, so the big news yesterday (bigger than Bush's last SOTU?) was that Ted "Mayor Quimby" Kennedy would endorse Barack Obama in this year's Democratic primary. Coming on the heels of his neice, Caroline, writing a glowing op-ed in the NYT comparing Senator Obama to her late father (President John F. Kennedy, for those of you who are complete non-DC-insiders), this was no surprise. What surpised, annoyed, and kind of frightened me, though, was the reaction from the head of New York's NOW (National Organization for Women) chapter. In an interview with the Huffington Post, NY-NOW head Marcia Pappas

said that Kennedy's decision to back Sen. Barack Obama reflected a long-standing tradition of the "old guard" turning its back on gender equality. "What goes on has been going on from the beginning of time," said Pappas. "Woman have been very supportive of male politicians who have not been so easy to convince of woman's rights. You sometime have to twist their arm to go along on something. We think that Ted Kennedy, who claims to be a supporter of women's rights, who now has come out and joined the [Obama] bandwagon, is basically saying that a qualified woman, Hillary Clinton, is not qualified enough for him."

Now, I'm pretty nonchalant on the stance of Women's rights. That is to say, I don't care what's between your legs, unless of course I'm trying to sleep with you (no surprises, please). I believe that women are equally qualified as men to hold offices and perform most any job. I'm a lukewarm supporter of some women's professional sports because I believe that someday the level of play will be equal and the best women will be able to play professionally with the men (yes, John McEnroe, you heard me). For instance, in my favorite obscure sport, rowing, Ekaterina Karsten, who has won many, many Olympic and World Championship medals in the Women's single scull, would have placed 6th among men's scullers last year. Personally, I would like to see the women and men's singles mixed together and medals awarded based on overall finish, but I'm probably insane. I have voted for both women (Barbara Mikulski, Connie Morella, Tammy Baldwin) and men (Russ Feingold, Herb Kohl, Ben Cardin, Paul Sarbanes, Chris Van Hollen, Al Gore, John Kerry, etc). I really don't care what you are, I care about who you are and what you believe. Maybe it would be good for Ms. Pappas to actually read what Senator Kennedy said yesterday, about getting past the "old guard" style politics of personal destruction and moving beyond racial and gender identity politics to elect leaders who can represent everyone. Barack Obama is the son of a Kenyan farmer and a white woman from Kansas who was raised in Indonesia and attended school in Hawaii. He is Ivy League educated, and spent years as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago. He is a post-racial, post-gender political figure that has managed to get Americans of all colors, genders, and faiths excited about politics for the first time in a long time. To say that Senator Kennedy's endorsement is

just another example of "good old boys," who have "decided that they will support anybody but a woman... He knows in his heart that Clinton is the best person for the job, and for whatever reasons he seems he's not willing to support her."

is to defy logic and plain english. To quote President Bill Clinton, how dare you? How dare you encourage us to step back into the idea that supporting a man means not supporting women? How dare you cast aspersions on the pro-choice leanings of a man who has long defied the Catholic faith with which his family has been identified and cast vote after vote in the Senate to support the Right to Choose? How dare you call an Irish Catholic machine politician endorsing a biracial candidate who has united so many diverse groups of Americans an example of the "good old boy network?" When Senator Clinton was heckled with a stupid, childish taunt before the New Hampshire primary, I had to shake off a wave of disgust for the idiots who thought it would be funny to say stupid, misogynistic things to the first serious Female candidate for a major party nomination. Now, I can't help but feel like you, Ms. Pappas need to be put in your place. Not in your place as a woman, but in your place in history, as a relic of an era of politics that my generation is trying to put behind us. We are sick of refighting our parents' social battles of the 60's and 70's. The Vietnam protests and the sit-ins and the riots and Stop ERA are over. For the most part, the good guys won. It's time to build on those victories by erasing the lines of race, gender, and faith that the "old guard" used to divide us, and you, Ms. Pappas, are simply trying to recast a mold that has long been broken. Please, please, please. Go away. Iron. My. Shirt.