During the early days of the 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, I was quietly rooting for Barack Obama. I then knew little about the freshman Senator from Illinois, but had been impressed with his presence and his gift with (scripted) words. Only as we started learning about his background did I start to reconsider my opinion of the candidate.
Not jut that, I had at that point, attributed Mrs. Clinton’s success to her choice in husband and always thought she got a free pass from the media. While I had initially seen her as a hyper-partisan Democrat, I did acknowledge she had impressed many of her Republican colleagues in the Senate by her ability to reach across party lines. But, at the outset of the 2008 campaign, I wondered if she had anything besides ambition, to borrow an expression from Shakespeare, to prick the sides of her intent.
That said, during the course of the 2008 campaign when the media turned on her and she kept fighting, I became impressed with her tenacity. I had never previously thought that the expression “strong woman” could apply to the then-New York Senator. Yet, when I watched her pressing in, even as the media wrote her off, I could not help but admire her determination and fortitude.
Now, to be sure, I don’t always agree with the Secretary of State, but when I see her name in a headline, I no longer assume I’ll be disagreeing with her. So today, when I read about her press conference with the new British Foreign Minister, I was not surprised to find myself on the same page as she on Iran:
Iran will continue to defy demands to prove its nuclear program is peaceful unless it is hit with a new round of U.N. sanctions, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday.
Speaking at a news conference with new British Foreign Secretary William Hague, Clinton said negotiators from Germany and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council were making progress every day on a draft sanctions resolution.
She said Iran’s intransigence on the nuclear issue is the strongest argument for a fourth round of sanctions. “We believe that the case is being made perhaps most effectively by the Iranians themselves,” she said.
Mrs. Clinton sounds as hawkish as she often did while serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Now, I do hope the sanctions she and her British counterpart are discussing have teeth. But, at least someone in this Administration, rhetorically at least, understands that the problem with Iran is that nation’s belligerence and not our attitude toward it.
I voted for Clinton in the primary. I voted for McCain in the general election. I thought Obama was very in experienced to become POTUS. And I was correct.
Ditto to above.
I still hope she runs in 2012.
I am so sorry that she isn’t our President now
How low has our bar fallen that support for UN sanctions is classified as “hawkish”? Pity that, really.
(And no, I’m not advocating military action or some such thing as that.)
I supported Clinton during the primaries because I thought Obama wouldn’t cut it as POTUS (since proven right). I was a proud member of PUMA.
I really wish she had stayed in the Senate. She would do more for herself politically if she had been the moderate voice to stand up and have the balls to oppose some of Obama/Pelosi/Reid’s far left schemes, and been more popular in the process.
I suppose she decided she had no real future to try and wait another 4/8 years and run again, but I think in her current role where Obama has multiple times superceded her and made her seem irrelevent, she is wasting the political clout she had acquired as a moderate in the Senate.
I wish her the best, she is still a highly accomplished woman in her own right.
I was cheering her on during the primary even though I am a Republican. She has what it takes to be POTUS.
And that’s the thing–there are people who “have what it takes” to be President and people who don’t. Obama doesn’t. Hillary does. So does Sarah Palin, IMHO. It’s not an intellectual quality. It’s a sort of “don’t mess with me” charisma.
LOL. Funny how a couple of years ago the right wing bloggers were demonizing her and the GOP was using Hillary to scare donors into giving more money (I saw the letters myself as I was the one who opened such mail for my then boss). I guess maybe this is how a lot of Democrats (like me) though from 2001-2008 that we’d have been better off with McCain than we had been under Bush.
#6: “I really wish she had stayed in the Senate. She would do more for herself politically if she had been the moderate voice to stand up and have the balls to oppose some of Obama/Pelosi/Reid’s far left schemes, and been more popular in the process.”
You couldn’t be more wrong, Tim. If Hillary were still in the Senate, she would have had no choice politically but to go along with every single thing that Congress has done since Obama’s inauguration. As Secretary of State, she has been completely relieved of that daily political pressure to support Obama’s legislative agenda and instead has been pushed into the background where everything she says or does regarding national security literally seems hawkish compared to Obama and his dim-witted AG, Holder. Her role, to her advantage, has been less consequential than Biden’s and she’s perfectly positioned to challenge Obama for the Dem nomination in 2012 in the event that he does not have the party’s full support at that time (and he may not, considering that his actions as President have done everything to ensure that the economy will not improve, unemployment will not decrease, he will have to raise taxes on the middle class by then, and apparently the only thing keeping hundreds or thousands of Americans from being murdered in a terrorist attack is the Administration’s ardent hope that the bomb won’t go off–we’ll see how that plays out).
If Obama’s Presidency continues to be the unmitigated disaster it has been from day one, Hillary is in the perfect position to step up and campaign as the more “conservative” alternative to take the reigns from this pathetic community organizer. Hillary is a patient and vindictive bit*h. She’s still holding out for the possibility that she’ll get the last laugh.
Clinton v. Palin in 2012? It sounds borderline fictional–TWO female candidates battling to be the first female President of the US? It could happen.
I love patient and vindictive bit*hes. Hillary’s got Bette Davis Eyes.
#11: “Hillary’s got Bette Davis Eyes.”
And Joan Crawford’s box office.
I’ll respectfully disagree Sean. Very few would have the balls to stand up to Pelosi, but Hillary has them. Hillary has before been the peacemaker to her moderate colleagues, instead of the blackmailer Pelosi or deal-maker Reid has been. She’s also politically astute enough to know when to toe the party line and when to step out of line and challenge the administration. She did this under Bush and could have continued to do it under Obama.
Hillary’s got Bette Davis eyes, and Freddy Kreuger’s claws… 🙂
#13: “Hillary has before been the peacemaker to her moderate colleagues, instead of the blackmailer Pelosi or deal-maker Reid has been. She’s also politically astute enough to know when to toe the party line and when to step out of line and challenge the administration. She did this under Bush and could have continued to do it under Obama.”
Tim, I’m going to need some examples to support Mrs. Clinton’s purported profile in courage. Her record is that she voted for the War in Iraq along with her left-wing colleagues out of fear of being on the “wrong side of history” (while her nails drew blood from her own palms for having no choice but to support an authorization for war), and when it became politically expedient, she threw her hat in with all of the other “I was for it before I was against it” cowards like Kerry. She opposed the Iraq surge and famously responded to General Petraeus’s 2007 Iraq report to Congress by saying, “I think that the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief.” In March 2007, she voted in favor of a war-spending bill that required President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq by a deadline; it passed almost completely along party lines but was subsequently vetoed by President Bush. She voted against both of Bush’s tax cut packages and against confirming Roberts and Alito.
Hillary NEVER went “rogue” while she was in the Senate and would NOT being doing so now. (Are you actually saying that the same woman who acted as Hillarycare’s spokesmodel in the 90s would have voted against Obamacare? Really?!) She would still be comfortably under Reid and Pelosi’s thumbs if she were in the Senate now. Only her appointment as Secretary of State has allowed her to distance herself from the legislative cluster-fu*k that has been going on in Congress since Obama’s inauguration. And if other elements fall into place within the next two years, she will be able to capitalize on it beautifully by challenging Obama for the nomination. Such a challenge would be pointless if she had spent the last couple of years rubber-stamping Obama’s legislative agenda–she would have no basis to claim that she offers anything different (it would be like Pelosi or Boxer trying to run).
“#11: “Hillary’s got Bette Davis Eyes.”
And Joan Crawford’s box office.”
Is this the gayest political blog EVER?
I also cannot think of what would be going on right now with either John kerry or bill richardson as SOS…omg we would probably all be bending over even further.
You are correct to think that her hands would be tied when it comes to voting along party lines. Her healthcare plan was nothing like pelosi’s.
A New Vision: A Tribute to Hillary Rodham Clinton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjWOk_jvlmY&feature=player_embedded
Sarah is also included in this video.
so how many of you laughed at these jackass remarks made during the primaries. I’ll take this woman over any of the republican males at this point as they are all running off scared with their penis’ tucked between their legs. The ONLY republican male to take a stand against this crap was John McCain. Why do you think so many of us voted for him, like him or not (and you guys did give him to us as your choice for potus) he had class which is more than I can say for most.
We rank 84th in the way women are treated in the world, 84th!! But hey “we treat women so much better here” cut me a friggin break.
She had then and has now what it takes to be POTUS. You can dislike her policies that’s fine those are legitimate points to take up in a blog when she is POTUS. But when you all start making it about personalities, well that’s when we stay in the “Culture of Personality” mode. And we can see just how well that’s working out for us.
I want a strong leader, watch the video and tell me how many men would have received this treatment, or any of those comments.
Dan I have already said how I thought you did a really nice job on this post and I’ll say it again. Nice job.
My opinion of Hillary underwent a similar trajectory during 2008. In October of 2008 when an Obama victory seemed inevitable, I found myself thinking many times how much I wished Hillary were the Democrat nominee.
With Hillary we would have gotten much of the same left-wing agenda Obama has peddled, but I believe she would have triangulated more and delivered it more gradually and in a manner that was much less divisive. Furthermore, as noted here, I believe her foreign policy would have been much more pragmatic and much less ideological (i.e., no reactionary leftist hatred of Israel or shunning of Britain and other European allies).
#17: “With Hillary we would have gotten much of the same left-wing agenda Obama has peddled, but I believe she would have triangulated more and delivered it more gradually and in a manner that was much less divisive. Furthermore, as noted here, I believe her foreign policy would have been much more pragmatic and much less ideological (i.e., no reactionary leftist hatred of Israel or shunning of Britain and other European allies).”
I have to agree, Kurt. At heart, she’s a left-wing feminist to the core, but she’s also an old broad that I think only has the ego to want to be the first female President for the status it would convey to her historically versus Obama’s (and her husband’s weakness)–the constant, immediate, blazing glow of love and adoration from the people. I think that is one of the things that drive Obama (and drove her husband) to deliver on a domestic agenda.
If I were to give her the benefit of every doubt, I could see her being politically savvy enough to recognize that the best opportunity she would have had as President would have been to distinguish herself not by “transforming America” domestically, but by focusing on foreign policy. I think it’s true that she would have been less ideological (i.e. not singing an EO closing Gitmo within a year for absolutely no legitimate security reason at all) and more pragmatic (i.e. authentically MORE concerned with protecting Americans than with avoiding offending Muslims). The Right could have had reasons to praise her for handling national security better than her husband ever did, and the Left would have credited her for simply not being a “cowboy” like Bush. Virtually everything she could have done as “a foreign policy President” could have easily been hailed as “pragmatic” compared to Bush and positively “hawkish” compared to the white-flag brigade currently being led by Obama, Holder, and Napolitano.
It’s funny how quickly things can change–I can’t believe that in 2010 I’m actually considering a Hillary Presidency and not getting the chills. She would have been a far more acceptable chief executive for this nation than the worthless clown kicking his feet up in the Oval Office right now. How scary is that?
I’ve flip-flopped regarding Hilary, for years. I am impressed by many things she has said, but then, I can’t help thinking that she’s a leftist, as is Obama, but in slightly different package. She wants socialized health care. She believes “it takes a village to raise a child”. She plays identity politics as good as any liberal. In other words, as much as I’d like to, I simply cannot trust her. I don’t think she’d damage the country the way Obama has, but I also think she would do nothing to fix the economy.
I’m not a fan of Hillary Clinton or her policies. That said, the world would be a better place right now if she were president instead of Barry. I’ve never been able to fathom the personal, indulgent pleasure many of my fellow Rightsters took in seeing her lose the nomination to Obama.