Not a good performance...
Top Breaking News Headlines - Examiner.comOr maybe too sensitive. Or delicate. Or maybe fragile. Or rigid and unyielding to self-doubt.On today's "The Situation Room," Sen. Hillary Clinton opened up about her widely-discussed performance during last week's MSNBC debate. (You can watch the video here on Breitbart.tv)
"I wasn't at my best the other night," Clinton told CNN's Candy Crowley. "We have had a bunch of debates, and you know, I wouldn't rank that up in my very top list." Following the debate, Clinton's opponents for the 2008 Democratic nomination (as well as Hillary detractors generally) criticized the New York senator for being dishonest and evasive, and for flip-flopping on several issues.
The job of President is an absolute killer. You're basically shoving yourself into a position where you are in the hot seat, 24/7, and must respond appropriately to any crisis which might come up. And respond right the FIRST time - you'll get no 'do overs'. Or bad hair days. Or days where 'you weren't at your best'.
What's the right response to every crisis? You figure it out - I've got enough trouble just figuring out the right response to problems at work. But if you're running for President, the people who you want to elect you should have the idea that you've got a clue about the job, and can actually take a position and stick to it.
But Hillary's pandered so long to so many different groups that it's impossible to figure out just what her core beliefs are in regards to running the country - aside from the core belief that SHE should be running the country.
And I see in her no reason to assume she'd be good at the job. She's autocratic, overbearing, and unfriendly. Her attitude is that she knows better than anyone else what the country needs, and you do not question what she says, what she stands for, or what she believes. She is royalty, and you do not question your betters.
You want to know one of MY core beliefs? That I'd rather see Presidential candidates who passionately believe something - even if I don't agree with them - than a Presidential candidate who won't release records, evades questions, and tries to be everything to everybody, and apparently sees herself as a queen in all but name. You'll have a good idea what the former will do as President, but you'll never have a clue what the latter will do in any given situation.
I will not vote for a Presidential candidate of that type.
Before I voted in 2000 I read what I could find on both major candidates. (Sorry, but I'm not going to do a 'protest' vote for a third party candidate, even if I find one that's palatable. And that hasn't happened yet.) Gore had done pretty much nothing over 8 years as VP, and accomplished precious little before that. No notable failures, no notable successes. He was inoffensive, a non-entity. A blank slate to balance out Clinton's colorful behavior. His convictions, as such, seemed to be that he'd continue the policies of Clinton... maybe. Personally, I felt he'd be a sock puppet for Clinton or Kennedy. If it came down to a choice between Party and Country in his loyalties, I'm sure Country would have been a really close second.
Bush - had failed at business. And succeeded pretty well as the Governor of Texas. He'd made mistakes in his personal life, and admitted to them, and done his best to correct them. He wouldn't be a sparkling President, a party animal like Clinton - but he'd be respectable and competent in the job. He had learned what he didn't know, and was sure of what he did know and who he was. So he's who I voted for and less than a year later I found out where his priorities were. I was glad he was in office.
In 2004, faced with the choice of Kerry or Bush, again I based my vote on what would be best for the country. Kerry was a spectacular zero who seemed to feel he deserved the position. He ducked out of a position of leadership in the Navy to be an anti-war figurehead. Bush had performed ably during a very nasty time - and he still wanted to do the job.
Personally, if I'd been Bush I'd have been more than willing to hand the job to someone else. But if a man learns anything over the years, it should be what he's capable of doing... and what he will give of himself to do the job that he feels needs to be done. A lot of people learn to lie to themselves, to persuade themselves they're much more capable than they really are. I believe a lot of our politicians do that - they KNOW that what they do or want to do is the right thing, and the thought of their own fallibility or possible error doesn't enter into the equation.
I believe that was also a major problem with the old Communist system, by the way - there was an assumption of inevitability and rightness because of their belief, and the assumption of systemic competence was reinforced because of the belief of inevitability and rightness of their cause. The feedback loop generated by such thinking led to disasters like Chernobyl and the Aral Sea, not to mention the Ukrainian famine and other lovely acts. When you can convince yourself you're utterly right, you can do some pretty horrific and stupid things. When you refuse to learn from your mistakes - again, you can do some pretty horrific and stupid things.
Bush, I felt, had sufficient insight into himself to do the job of President well. Kerry was all bluster, and when he'd had the chance to really lead in a difficult situation, he'd found an excuse to bail. This didn't exactly inspire me with confidence in his leadership abilities.
Why am I rehashing old elections? It's to establish what I feel are the necessary qualifications for the job. It's not something easy to get into, OR get out of.
There is no way to bail from the Presidency, aside from resigning. (Or being impeached - and for all the blather about impeachment by Kucinich, you see other Democrats retreating from his position at warp speed.) If Kerry had gotten the job, I don't believe he would have lasted long in it. And again, considering his record (or lack thereof) he would have been a sock puppet for the DNC or Kennedy. After you FUBAR the country as President - where do you go? What do you do?
No, we dodged a bullet in the 2004 election.
Now we come to the 2008 election. We've got candidates that range from qualified to laughable on both sides. We've got a year to watch the weeding out, the infighting, to listen to the promises and watch the personalities.
The job of President is arguably one of the most stressful on this planet. It's not a position where you can expect plenty of time to learn on the job, with forgiveness of mistakes and plenty of time to get your act together. Lots of people will be looking to see you fail, both outside enemies and internal political opponents. It's a job where you have to be able to step up, be effective, and be flexible.
And that last is where Hillary fails. She's not, in my humble opinion, capable of flexibility at all. But then when you're the Queen, flexibility is for the commoners who must accommodate your desires, right? All we need to do is understand she should be Queen, and arrange the coronation. And for heaven's sake, stop questioning her.
After all, one does not question royalty.
J.
Comments (5)
My biggest problem with Hillary, and Obama, for that matter, is that their public service experience is legislative, not executive (I do not count Hillary's "experience" as First Lady; that was neither executive nor elective). There is a good reason why most Presidents have been former governors; many states, including Texas, have populations and economies that would rank in the top 10% in the world if they were sovereign nations. Hillary and Obama simply do not have enough of the right kind of experience for me to vote for them, regardless of how I feel about them or their politics. The Presidency is NOT an entry-level job.
Posted by John C. | November 7, 2007 7:27 AM
Posted on November 7, 2007 07:27
>>...it's impossible to figure out just what her core beliefs are in regards to running the country>>
I disagree with you here...I believe her core beliefs are aligned with communism/socialism. She knows that won't fly, so she searches for whatever the most people want in order to get into a position of power where she can effect what she _really_ wants, and that which she knows the American people sill reject if given an option. She'll tell you anything you want to hear and then do what she wants. And personally, I suspect she has enough dirt on the critical people to succeed, if put into the right position...
I think she's poison.
Posted by suek | November 7, 2007 11:23 AM
Posted on November 7, 2007 11:23
John C -
I believe you're correct on the experience part - they have little to no experience actually RUNNING anything, where their decisions would be directly responsible for the welfare of the entity they're governing. As it is, their legislative decisions are all part of a 'collective' endeavor, and no blame attaches directly to them if it all goes bad. There's essentially no responsibility attached to their positions.
I just don't believe they're up to the task. I really believe they don't factor the possibility of failure or bad planning into their thoughts for the future.
J.
Posted by JLawson | November 7, 2007 9:26 PM
Posted on November 7, 2007 21:26
Suek -
Yes, she's poison. But some folks have a tendency to ignore warning labels...
J.
Posted by JLawson | November 7, 2007 10:08 PM
Posted on November 7, 2007 22:08
Ah, if only Hillary could aspire to socialism/communism, then one could get some decent context for her. Unfortunately her ties to the Triads of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, ties to the PLA and intelligence services in China, ties to the Red Mafia, and her record show only one thing that HRC is interested in: power for personal use. She and her husband form a pair of individuals that have a certain lightness to them that defies politics, but does not defy description. As interviewers on the *left* have pointed out: they don't know what HRC stands for, *either*.
That, to me, is chilling in the extreme. Communism/socialism I can understand, having grown up in a milieu of the latter, but HRC? Heaven forbid that she takes a stand on *that*. Her views, at best, put her in the Transnationalist column and seeing herself as above everything and, therefore, best suited to rule.
I did, indeed, not think there to be any reasonable difference in 2000 between Al Gore and George W. Bush and voted that way: I could support neither of them. In 2004 I did, indeed, vote for Bush because the Nation was at war even if the People weren't nor our government.... neither of those last do get that and there are times I do wonder about the President, himself. The power of the Presidency also gains the blinkers of the Presidency: seeing only those things immediately before you as important and losing sight of the long term objectives. President Bush has been ill-suited to the role of defining the conflict we are in - and telling folks to go shopping after 9/11 is something that no previous generation would have countenanced. Some of that is due to the last 30 years of PC-talk and being unwilling to call individuals and groups by their actions and hold them accountable. When you can no longer define a difference between civilized and uncivilized behavior you are exactly where the Roman Empire was before the barbarians came. The word for that is 'decadent'. By expanding government from both sides we have become more decadent and less self-reliant as a culture and a Nation. By not addressing such individuals and groups that seek overthrow of civilization by uncivilized means and attempt to *excuse* such behavior, we become unable to sustain civilization.
I have characterized Afghanistan and Iraq as tactically offensive wars but strategically defensive ones. They have pushed us to the brink where tactical loss is the beginning of the end for civilization of the Westphalian mode and would actually drop us some centuries before *that*.
These are conflicts to remove barbaric actors, hold them accountable and create accountable Nations that will not harbor such things. This is exactly what was done in the 16th-17th century against pirates who acted in similar mode and with similar threats via trade to undermine Nations. These latter day pirates seek world dominion and power, that is their only differentiation between their ocean-going comrades of centuries past and now. Unfortunately for us, the power one individual can wield is beyond anything pirates of that era could do by the shipful. Aum Shinrikyo, from Japan, wielded hundreds of millions of dollars, had chem and bio warfare research, produced automatic weapons and sought to bring end to life on earth just a bit quicker to 'cleanse' the souls. Aum had access to every Western banking organization up to the latter part of the 1990's. A mere handful from al Qaeda could cause nearly $1 Trillion in economic loss to the US in under 2 hours. These actors worked within our lovely system of security and finances with what we thought were good checks on them... save for the billions swindled out of various accounts by the various Mafias, illegal human trafficking on a global scale, and the ability to spin up a few people to do much damage in short periods of time... hmmmm... looks like we forgot a few things along the way.
The next President has the following on the National agenda overseas: Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Georgia, North Korea, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, leaky financial infrastructure, unaccountable arms and munitions shipments on a global basis, illegal aliens by the millions of which some small percent multiplied by that large amount turns into an unknown number of terrorists.... and I hear about 'health care'?
Health care is n-1 on the list n long in my book. The next President is a War President and a Peace *maker* not a Peace *keeper* is needed. That will require us to substantially re-invest in the military so as to replace old equipment finally getting worn out in Iraq and Afghanistan, get in the latest and greatest and, on the long list of things to be addressed, make sure that China can't do a sudden removal of our satellite control systems with their orbital and laser capability. Be hell to pay if most of the world suddenly went deaf and dumb without that.
'Health care'?
I know unserious candidates when *that* is trotted out. Stop subsidizing it! We have bigger fish to fry like the possibility of a city or two going missing from the US. Or a sudden shut-down of global finances, communications and satellite surveillance by China just removing them over a few hours. Those are real, definable threats we now face in the next 12 years and *must* be dealt with to survive. And the candidates?
Hmmmm.... the times are not making the man... best be worried a smidge.
Posted by ajacksonian | November 8, 2007 11:57 AM
Posted on November 8, 2007 11:57