Do you remember when we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein wouldn’t turn over his weapons of mass destruction and we looked around and slowly realized that he hadn’t possessed any weapons of mass destruction to turn over?
Those were good times. Fun times. The best of times, really, if you think back on it.
It was before the Great Recession, before we realized just how badly our invasion had upset the balance of powers in the Middle East and fucked up the world.
It was during those innocent days that President George W. Bush attended the sixtieth annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association black-tie dinner and joked about not being able to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The best part of the president’s stand-up routine was how well it was received by the guests.
The Washington Post seemed to find this something of a howl. Jennifer Frey’s report, carried on the front page of the Style section—under the headline, "George Bush, Entertainer in Chief"—led with Donald Trump’s appearance, and mentioned without comment Bush’s "recurring joke" of searching for the WMD.
The Associated Press review was equally jovial: "President Bush poked fun at his staff, his Democratic challenger and himself Wednesday night at a black-tie dinner where he hobnobbed with the news media." In fact, it is hard to find any immediate account of the affair that raised questions about the president’s slide show. Many noted that the WMD jokes were met with general and loud laughter.
The reporters covering the gala were apparently as swept away with laughter as the guests. One of the few attendees to criticize the president’s gag, David Corn, then of The Nation, told me he heard not a single complaint from his colleagues at the after-party. Corn wondered if they would have laughed if President Reagan, following the truck bombing of our Marines barracks in Beirut, which killed 241, had said at a similar dinner: "Guess we forgot to put in a stop light."
The strange thing is that all these years later a lot of these same reporters are much, much less amused and unforgiving about Hillary Clinton’s alleged inability to find her “message.”
I advise Hillary to attempt a reprise. The next time she does a press conference, she should start looking under her papers, the podium, inside the microphone, all the while mumbling, “Nope…no message her. Not here. Or here…”
Let’s see how amused Chuck Todd is by that act.
Fortunately for Hillary, presidential elections aren’t won on foreign policy issues. HC has no achievements there as senator voting FOR the Iraq War and as SOS presiding over the Arab uprising, the decider to overthrow Gaddafi and Assad. HC was a major backer of the Muslim Brotherhood through Turkey, Qatar (Al Jazeera TV) and president Morsi of Egypt. We better not mention her views on Israel and the Palestinian right for an independent state. Clinton PAC funding is tied up with New York and Florida for the major haul.
My gut feeling tells me HC will perform as John McCain and Mitt Romney did in 2012, defeated by young people who want change in Washington DC. USAsians love European royalty, but a political dynasty in Washington DC is a mountain too difficult to climb.
HC will get the women vote, but dependent on the Republican candidate, the Latino vote may decise who the next president will be. The religious affiliation of the Latino voters is close to the conservative policies of the Republicans. A Republican candidate may come from Texas or Florida.
○ Hillary Clinton may get the black vote, but black people’s enthusiasm is not guaranteed
○ What Hillary Clinton Needs To Tell the Jews | The Forward |
Opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one. You’ve got an opinion. What’s it worth? Probably as much as what comes out of your “opinion”.
Have several quibbles. There are instances when foreign policy is defining in a general election. Sometimes in favor of the incumbent or his designated successor (1944, 1964, 1972, 2004) and sometimes not (1952, 1968, 1992).
On FP, Hillary’s track record is either in line with or somewhat less militaristic than whoever the GOP nominee will be. Those that want more war and/or more MIC spending would never vote for a Democrat — so, she loses nothing on that side of the equation. Those that want less war and less MIC spending will have no option to vote for less.
Jeb! does inoculate Hillary from many claims that would matter to enough voters if her opponent weren’t also a wealthy, connected, legacy candidate. Both also have the Iraq war baggage. Thus, it wouldn’t be an issue that either could use to his/her advantage. What issues would that leave? Religion, taxes, immigration, abortion/birth control, climate change.
It’s difficult for me to imagine that the GOP could possibly get more than the 62% of the white male that Romney got. OTOH entirely plausible that she could do worse among minority male voters. That won’t matter if she gets a larger share of the white women’s vote and at a minimum, no worse among minority women. While there is a persistent gender gap between white men and women voters, the trend lines generally move in the same direction. When more white men vote for the Republican nominee, more white women also vote for the Republican. The once exception was 1996 when the lines diverged — more white men voting GOP and fewer white women voting GOP. What caused the trend lines to diverge in that year and no other? I don’t know and doubt anyone else does either. Would it be replicated with a white female Democratic nominee?
So, what happens if the GOP nominee is JEB? You cannot get much more dynastic than that.
○ Clinton weighs loyalty to Obama with distinctions on Israel issues | Jewish Ledger |
○ Hillary Clinton’s Visit to Egypt, Highest Ranking U.S. Official to Meet Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi (2013)
○ Samantha Power Won’t Promise To Back Israel at United Nations | The Forward |
Well, there are only about a million people dead because of the WMD lie, so it is really pretty funny.
Hilarious, really.
The joke is on the dead…
GWB isn’t running for election. Therefore, he’s irrelevant. While the track records for prior accuracy in reporting by journalists/pundits is interesting, it is no more than a side note to their current reporting on the current and potential candidates.
Anything and everything about the 2016 candidates is fair game. The candidates may prefer that nothing that can or could be seen or construed as a negative or inconsistency about their records before 2015 or about their current campaign is off-limits, but that’s not how the process works.
Leftie pundits and bloggers comment day in and day out about old and new negatives, etc. wrt GOP candidates (including personal financial information that doesn’t on its face “compute”), their campaigns, who is funding them, who supports them, who they affiliate with, etc. All fair game.
Yet, a position seems to have taken hold among Democratic bloggers that for the MSM journalists/pundits or any blogger to put Hillary under a microscope is unfair or unseemly. As if they shout it all down now, it won’t surfaced a year from now and figure into the general election should she be the nominee. How freaking naive.