Ruminations of an Expatriate

I’m sorry for the iconoflatulence, but the revelations the last few days of the depravedness of Hillary Clinton and her campaign allies are just too much.

First there is Clinton’s naked pandering in calling for suspension of the federal gas tax through the summer, a proposal that would save the average consumer about $30. if the suspension actually cased gas prices to decrease, which, according to economists, almost unanimously, it would not, but would further enrich refiners.

Then there was the revelation yesterday, by Peter Dreier at the Huffington Post, “former journalist Sidney Blumenthal [who] has been widely credited with coining the term ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ used by Hillary Clinton in 1998″ and “a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton”, Sydney Blumenthal, has “almost every day over the past six months” sent out email messagges to media folks “that attack[s] Obama’s character, political views, electability, and real or manufactured associations. The original source of many of these hit pieces are virulent and sometimes extreme right-wing websites, bloggers, and publications.”

Yesterday, after super delegate Joe Andrew, whom Bill Clinton hand picked to lead the DNC, endorsed Obama, Howard Wolfson, a top staffer of the Clinton campaign, whose candidate drug her carpetbag to NY to run for the Senate, opined “Well, I’m not sure by the way that he’s [Andrew] actually from Indiana. I know he’s originally from Indiana, but –Senator Clinton has repeatedly demonstrated she is completely amoral. A stake must be driven through the heart of her campaign. Perhaps when Indianans learn of this video such will be done.

You probably have heard that shortly after the Clinton 3 A.M. phone call ad, using stock footage of a young girl sleeping, appeared the young girl who appeared in the ad announced that she is an Obama supporter who actually acted as an Obama caucus organizer in Washington State.  My thought at the time was “geez, Clinton can’t catch a break”.

The girl, now almost 18, has produced a very clever video denouncing the politics of fear and the Clinton ad.   You may find it here at TPM Media.  Talk about not being able to catch a break.

With this, and the incredibly stupid things that the porcine, sneering Mark Penn seems to say each time he opens his mouth, I’m beginning to feel a bit sorry for Clinton.

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.

Read this Nation report and you’ll understand why Sen. Clinton will likely be our next president, and why she shouldn’t be.

It turns out that many of the same interests which supported GDub are supporting Clinton, and the names of a number of those supporters have previously surfaced related to the spooked up Bank of Credit and Commerce International and Harken Energy.