Ruminations of an Expatriate

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Saturday, February 2nd, 2008...1:04 pm

Presidential Campaign Iconoflatulence

Those of you who have followed the democratic nomination campaign may remember Obama, when asked in one of the debates to identify a shortcoming, remarking that he must rely on his staff to keep track of his paperwork, as he loses it. Clinton responded repeatedly over the next few days that the president must be a good manager. Likewise many pundits cite Clinton’s greater experience; and, thus, greater ability to manage the federal government.

So what kind of manager is Clinton?

Brad DeLong, a Berkley economics professor who worked in the Clinton administration and whose informative blog I follow and opinion I value, remarked in 2003:

My two cents’ worth–and I think it is the two cents’ worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994–is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn’t smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.

So when senior members of the economic team said that key senators like Daniel Patrick Moynihan would have this-and-that objection, she told them they were disloyal. When junior members of the economic team told her that the Congressional Budget Office would say such-and-such, she told them (wrongly) that her conversations with CBO head Robert Reischauer had already fixed that. When long-time senior hill staffers told her that she was making a dreadful mistake by fighting with rather than reaching out to John Breaux and Jim Cooper, she told them that they did not understand the wave of popular political support the bill would generate. And when substantive objections were raised to the plan by analysts calculating the moral hazard and adverse selection pressures it would put on the nation’s health-care system…

Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch–the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.

Additionally, I think it fair to look at her management of her campaign to assess how effective a manager of the federal government she may be, and it doesn’t seem to have been well managed.

Remember Shaheen’s Obama as cocaine user remarks in N. H., for which he was then thrown off the bus? Remember Bob Kerrey’s repeated emphasis of Obama’s middle name, for which he later apologized in a letter glowing praising Obama’s qualifications to be president? Remember Clinton’s porcine “strategist”, Mark Penn, repeatedly raising Obama’s admitted youthful cocaine use in a CNN interview, for which is was subsequently muzzled? Remember Bil Clinton’s racially tinged campaigning in S.C. and his Jesse Jackson remark after his wife’s huge loss, for which he was also subsequently muzzled?

Then there is this in the last couple of days from Clinton health care adviser, Len Nichols, complaining about a picture contained in an accurate Obama campaign mailer, remarks for which he later apologized.

“I am personally outraged at the picture used in this mailing,” Nichols, a supporter of the so-called universal mandate said. “It is as outrageous as having Nazis march through Skokie, Illinois.”

DeLong’s remarks are damning enough for me, though I am admittedly not a Clinton fan; but her apparent inability to keep the hounds of her campaign from committing repeated, and egregious, gaffes, from which they later backpedal, certainly has sealed the deal for me.

The Obama campaign, on the other hand, has avoided such gaffes and its officials have been very restrained in their responses to the Clinton campaign gaffes.

An effective manager, I know from my days of modest local government management, relies upon her or his staff to manage the paper and to push forth the the mission. A manager must hire competent folks, ensure that the mission is entirely clear to all, and to ensure that all are pushing in the same direction in pursuance of that mission.

The Clinton campaigners have quite clearly frequently not been pushing in the same direction.

I will be casting my vote for Obama in the “Democrats Abroad” election on February 5.

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