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| Though I have hardly been an Eliot Spitzer fan, I feel the need to compliment him on doing the right thing is this recent firestorm. He could have taken the position of putting his "political life" and its ambitions above his familiy's best interests. In addition, by not resigning he could have kept the debate about whether he should step down and the comparisons of media treatment of him vs. Larry Craig on the front pages for weeks. He did the honorable thing in a dishonorable situation. If only more politicians had their priorities straight and ambitions in perspective. | | |
| From Drudgereport By GERRI PEEV HILLARY Clinton has been branded a "monster" by one of Barack Obama's top advisers, as the gloves come off in the race to win the Democrat nomination.
In an unguarded moment during an interview with The Scotsman, Samantha Power, his key foreign policy aide, let slip the camp's true feelings about the former First Lady.
Her comments came as Mr Obama, whose defeats in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday were largely put down to a series of negative attacks on him, vowed to turn up the heat on Mrs Clinton over her claims to be the more experienced candidate. The fragile truce was blown apart as the pressure for the nomination intensified, with Mrs Clinton winning in Texas and Ohio.
Ms Power told The Scotsman Mrs Clinton was stopping at nothing to try to seize the lead from Mr Obama.
"We f***** up in Ohio," she admitted. "In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.
"She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything," Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.
"Interestingly, the people in her innermost circle seem to not mind her; I think they really love her."
But she added: "There is this middle circle – they are really on the warpath. But the truth is she has proved herself really willing to stoop."
In recent TV appearances Mrs Clinton had looked desperate and on the back foot.
Ms Power agreed, and said: "Here, it looks like desperation. I hope it looks like desperation there too.
"You just look at her and think: ergh. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."
Ms Power's comments reveal how the inexperienced Obama campaign is coming under increasing pressure from a battle-hardened Clinton camp that saw Ohio as its last chance to save its candidate.
Earlier in the week, the press and the Clinton camp seized on remarks by Austan Goolsbee, Ms Power's colleague, on the North America Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). His comments are widely believed to have cost the Mr Obama the Ohio Democratic presidential primary.
Mr Goolsbee, Mr Obama's top economic policy adviser, had told Canadian officials that a public pledge to force a renegotiation of Nafta with tougher labour and environmental rules was "more about political positioning".
But the Clinton camp said Mr Obama could tell the public one thing and then tell a foreign government something else behind closed doors.
Ms Power knew the consequences of the gaffe made by her friend. She said: "Now Hillary is using it to say that Obama's not serious about Nafta. Oh God, it's so sad."
Mr Obama yesterday blamed fierce attacks by Mrs Clinton for his defeats in this week's big primaries, and quickly made good on a promise to sharpen his criticism of her in what promises to become an all-out brawl in the race for the White House.
The Illinois senator took the offensive against Mrs Clinton, targeting her claims that she is more experienced in handling foreign policy. "Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no," he said. "She made a series of arguments on why she should be a superior candidate. I think it's important to examine that argument."
In recent days, the former First Lady has argued Mr Obama was getting a free ride with the media, questioned his sincerity in opposing Nafta and darkly hinted he was not ready to be commander in chief in a crisis.
Mrs Clinton, asked about her national security qualifications, ticked off a series of events in which she had played a role, including peace talks in Northern Ireland, the Kosovo refugee crisis and standing up for women's rights in China. She also cited her work on the Senate armed services committee.
Obama aides took the offensive yesterday, holding a conference call to ask why Clinton had not released her tax returns. Her campaign responded with a statement e-mailed to reporters while they were on the Obama call that said the Clintons' returns since they left the White House would be made public around 15 April.
"There's no doubt that Senator Clinton went very negative over the last week," Mr Obama said. He said the Clinton campaign's multiple attacks "had some impact" on the election results, "particularly in the context where many of you in the press corps had been persuaded that you had been too hard on her and too soft on me".
Ms Power insisted Mr Obama was well equipped to deal with foreign policy. She said his perceived willingness to befriend dictators and rogue leaders was him simply trying a different approach, as the current foreign policy has not worked.
She said: "Hillary Clinton always portrays his position on meeting with dictators as naive. She is almost implying what he is saying is he wants to meet with dictators without preparations. It is not like he would sit down with Ahmadinejad and say, 'Hey Ahmadinejad, I have been meaning to talk to you. How 'bout those New York Giants?'
"If we have had the same policy for decades and it is not working, why are we sticking to the same policy?
"Can we at least try to re-jig the equation here? Principles should not be checked at the door when one is meeting with dictators. But seeking to at least have dialogue would give the United States more kudos in the non-western world, allowing others to see that perhaps it was not all America's fault.
"There is something tougher about being in the room with Ahmadinejad and making your position known rather than lobbing your verbal grenades from 5,000 miles away, which is what the Bush administration has done."
She added: "It is important that negotiations don't become an end in itself. It is the Chamberlain problem."
Ms Power was in the UK to promote her book on Sergio Vieira de Mello, the extraordinary UN representative who was blown up in Baghdad.
PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED
WHEN is off the record actually off the record? When the rules are established in advance.
Journalists are always looking for knowledge and want the information they receive to be available for publication.
But occasionally an interviewer will accept an exchange is "off the record" and that the conversation is not attributable. Remarks can be used as background to inform a journalist's article.
If a conversation is to be off the record, that agreement is usually thrashed out before the interview begins. Sometimes, public figures say something and then attempt to retract it by insisting it was "off the record" after the event.
But by then it is too late, particularly if it is in the public interest that the story be published.
In this instance, Samantha Power was promoting her book and it was established in advance that the interview was on the record.
A WOMAN OF POWER
SAMANTHA Power is the embodiment of the American immigrant dream.
Born in Dublin in 1970, she moved to the United States with her mother aged nine.
After being educated in state schools in Pittsburgh and Georgia, she gained entry to the prestigious Yale University, where she studied history. The self-deprecating Ms Power said this changed her life and opened many doors.
She worked as freelance journalist in Bosnia, after teaching herself the language in Croatia. Her only other journalism experience prior to that was covering the Yale women's volleyball team.
After graduating from Harvard Law School, she became an executive director and founder of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard.
The 37-year-old already has one Pulitzer Prize behind her, for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide and she is in the UK and Ireland to plug her new book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World.
Ms Power was head-hunted by Barack Obama to become his foreign-policy adviser in 2005 and combines this role with her job as a Time magazine columnist and professor of practice of global leadership and public policy at Harvard.
************************************************************************************ Going to be a looooooooooooong spring!! | | |
| How long before the press starts pressing Obama for details on this so called "change" that he and his followers have been talking about? Will they wait until after he has vanquished Hillary Clinton? The press has been treating him with kid gloves to this point. Don't the Clinton's have enough pull in the Beltway press corps to change the tempo of the softballs so far pitched Barack's way? Or is the press going to run a PC fueled hands off approach with Hillary's opponent? When the nominations do come down, will the press be even handed with their criticisms of both Obama and McCain (asked rhetorically, of course). BTW, notice the hypocrisy exhibited by the press and the Democrats with respect to Obama's Congressional experience?? At the time of the 1988 election, vice-president Dan Quayle had served in Congress for 12 years. Much was made about his age and his experience. Where is the same scrutiny for Barack who has served barely 3 years and is running for president?? As yet, there have been no news stories of his accomplishments since in Congress. In fact, will the press make a point of the fact that Clinton & Obama are both junior senators that between them have 9 years of service compared to McCain's 21??? | | |
| Some suggestions for the next Democratic debate moderator: 1. Sen. Clinton, you oppose the Bush tax cuts because they unfairly benefit the rich. Since the top 1 percent of taxpayers -- those making more than $364,000 annually -- pay 39 percent of all federal income taxes, don't all across-the-board tax cuts, by definition, "unfairly" benefit the rich? 2. Sen. Obama, you also oppose Bush tax cuts, and claim that they take money away from the Treasury. But President Kennedy signed across-the-board tax cuts in the 1960s and said, "It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low -- and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now." Was he wrong? 3. Sen. Clinton, you criticize President Bush for inheriting a surplus and turning it into a deficit. The National Taxpayers Union added up your campaign promises, and they came to an increase of over $218 billion per year. What would this do to the deficit? 4. Sen. Obama, if elected, you promised to raise minimum wage every single year. But isn't it true that most economists -- 90 percent, according to one survey -- believe that raising minimum wages increases unemployment and decreases job opportunities for the most unskilled workers? What makes you right, and the majority of economists wrong? 5. Sen. Clinton, you want universal health care coverage for all Americans -- every man, woman and child. When, as First Lady, you tried to do this, 560 economists wrote President Clinton, and said, "Price controls produce shortages, black markets and reduced quality." One economist who helped gather the signatures explained, "Price controls don't control the true costs of goods. People pay in other ways." Are those 560 economists wrong? 6. Sen. Obama, you once said you understand why senators voted for the Iraq war, admitted that you were "not privy to Senate intelligence reports," that it "was a tough question and a tough call" for the senators, and that you "didn't know" how you would have voted had you been in the Senate. And over a year after the war began, you said, "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." How, then, can you say that you consistently opposed the war from the start? 7. Sen. Clinton, you want to begin withdrawing the troops within the first 60 days of your administration, with all the troops out within a year. Former Secretary of State Jim Baker of the Baker-Hamilton report said that such a precipitous withdrawal in Iraq would create a staging ground for al-Qaida, increase the influence of Iran over Iraq, and result in "the biggest civil war you've ever seen." What would you like to say to Secretary Baker? 8. Sen. Obama, the church you attend, according to its Web site, pursues an Afrocentric agenda. Your church rejects, as part of their "Black Value System," "middleclassness" as "classic methodology" of white "captors" to "control subjugated" black "captives." Your pastor, Jeremiah Wright, recently called the Nation of Islam's Minister Louis Farrakhan -- a man many consider anti-Semitic -- a person of "integrity and honesty." What would happen to a Republican candidate who attended a Caucasian-centric church, and who praised David Duke as a man of "integrity and honesty"? 9. Sen. Clinton, you recently criticized NAFTA, the free trade agreement signed into law by President Clinton. The conservative Heritage Foundation says that NAFTA-like free trade benefits the economies of the United States, Canada and Mexico, resulting in increased trade, higher U.S. exports and improved living standards for American workers. Explain how President Clinton and the Heritage Foundation got it wrong then, but that you are right now. 10. Sen. Obama, this question is about global warming, something about which you urge extreme action to fight. You criticize President Bush for going to war in Iraq, even though all 16 intelligence agencies felt with "high confidence" that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of WMDs. Critics of Bush say he "cherry-picked" the intelligence. Hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists consider concerns about global warming overblown. Isn't there far more dissent among credible scientists about global warning than there was among American intelligence analysts about Iraq? If so, as to the studies on global warming, why can't you be accused of cherry-picking? Feel free to use these. No charge. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/LarryElder/2008/02/07/clintonobama_10_questions_in_search_of_a_debate?page=full&comments=true | | |
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