Tag Archives: Walter Mondale

national news, political news

Beware of big money, former Sen. Hart warns

Former Vice President Walter Mondale once asked famously of then-Sen. Gary Hart: Where’s the beef?

He sought to smoke out Hart’s position on the issues that were driving the 1984 Democratic Party primary presidential campaign.

These days, though, the former senator is giving us plenty to chew on as he warns of the influence of big money — as in really big money — on the upcoming 2016 campaign for president.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/gary-hart-hillary-clinton-2016-billion-dollar-campaign-116673.html?hp=l2_3

Hart’s target? Former Sen. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who figures to raise as much as a billion bucks to run for president. Hart doesn’t like that kind of influence. While he expresses admiration and respect for Clinton, he sounds like he’s leaning toward a possible alternative candidate for president — say, Elizabeth Warren or Martin O’Malley.

As Politico reported: “The post-Citizens United campaign finance environment has sullied the presidential process, he said, benefiting establishment politicians who cater to financial backers. He pointed to his own experience, noting that he and his wife mortgaged their home for between $50,000 and $75,000 — an amount that made a significant difference in his first campaign in 1984.”

Ah, yes, Citizens United.

That was the infamous Supreme Court decision that ruled in 2010 that campaign contributors cannot be limited in the amount of money they give. Why, it’s a free speech issue, the court ruled. President Obama then stood in the lectern at a State of the Union speech and scolded the justices as they sat right in front of him for their decision. Although the setting was inappropriate for such a tongue-lashing, the guts of what the president said hold up today: It is that money wields too much influence in the modern political process.

Those who suggest that enabling corporations to give mountains of money to candidates is simply allowing “free speech” do not seem to grasp that some speech is heard more clearly than others. Politicians are going to listen to those who can give huge sums of money more than they’ll listen to you and me.

Is their voice more important than ours?

That’s the kind of influence Sen. Hart is warning us about.

Gary Hart has found the beef.

 

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Health always an issue for national candidates

Rich Lowry is a smart young man.

His essay, published on Politico.com, states clearly an obvious truth about the upcoming presidential campaign. It is that Hillary Clinton’s health will be an issue.

I get that. Indeed, Americans always should have assurances that the commander in chief will be in tip-top shape when he or she takes the reins of government.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/rove-is-right-106694.html?hp=l3#.U3QprFJOWt8

Lowry, smart conservative that he is, defends fellow Republican Karl Rove’s assertion that Clinton might have serious “brain injury” stemming from a fall she suffered in 2012. That’s where I part company with Lowry.

To his fundamental point about the health of candidates, let’s flash back a few election cycles.

Wasn’t Ronald Reagan’s health an issue when he ran for election the first time in 1980? He was nearly 70. When he ran for re-election in 1984, he stumbled badly in his first debate with Democratic nominee Walter Mondale, fueling open discussion that he had “lost it.” President Reagan quelled that talk immediately at the next debate when he said he “would not make my opponent’s age an issue by exploiting his youth and inexperience.”

Sen. John McCain faced similar questions about his health when he ran against Sen. Barack Obama in 2008. Let’s remember that there was some ghastly whispering going on about whether he suffered too much emotional trauma as a Vietnam War prisoner for more than five years. Plus, he had been treated for cancer. His health became an issue.

Hillary Clinton will be roughly the same age as Reagan and McCain when they ran for president. Let’s keep these health issues in their proper perspective. Igniting mean-spirited gossip about potential “brain injury” isn’t the way to examine an important issue.

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What is to know about Japan?

Caroline Kennedy’s appointment as the next U.S. ambassador to Japan has raised some interesting – but altogether pointless – questions about her qualifications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/world/asia/caroline-kennedy-picked-to-be-ambassador-to-japan.html?_r=1&

Some observers are wondering aloud about just what the late President Kennedy’s daughter knows about Japan. Still others have responded rhetorically by wondering what most ambassadors know about these plum assignments when they come from the president. What did former Vice President and U.S. Sen. Walter Mondale know about Japan when he became ambassador? How about former Sen. Howard Baker, or former Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield? Was the former U.S. House Speaker Tom Foley a Japan expert when he took the job? Hardly.

These prime ambassadorial appointments are political in nature. They generally go to big fundraisers, political heavy hitters – such as Mondale, Foley Baker or Mansfield – or individuals who’ve worked hard to elect the president.

If we’re going to ask about Caroline Kennedy’s knowledge of the intricacies of Japanese culture, we could ask the same thing about the late Teel Bivins, the Amarillo state senator who served for a time as U.S. ambassador to Sweden. What did the Republican senator know about that country when he took the post offered by President George W. Bush? My guess is “not much.” But Bivins was a smart man, well-educated and could bone up quickly on almost any challenge presented to him.

We can’t ask him now, given that Bivins is no longer with us. But he got that appointment because he raised a lot of money for Bush and worked hard in contested states to get him elected in 2000.

Ambassadors – particularly those who are posted in important countries – are meant to be the face and voice of the U.S. government. The embassies where they work are staffed by many career foreign service officers who’ve made it their mission to learn about the countries where they serve. These foreign service officers, if they’re faithful to the ambassador and to our government, will make the ambassador look good.

Caroline Kennedy is a fine choice to be our next ambassador to Japan. She is just as qualified as any of the individuals who’ve taken that post.