Tag Archives: Bill Clinton

national news, political news

HRC is going to run for president

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Anyone who thought that Hillary Rodham Clinton was going to decide against running for president next year — and I believed that was a possibility — well, you’d better put those notions into the trash bin.

It looks as though Clinton is in. Email controversy and all. Criticism from the right and from the far left, too.

She’s in.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillary-clinton-atlantic-city-speech-116236.html?hp=c2_3

Clinton gave what everyone in the know says is the last speech she’ll give for money. She spoke to the American Camp Association and collected her usual handsome speaking fee.

After that, it’s done. No more money for speaking. We’re going to hear from the former secretary of state about why she wants to run for president and why she’s the best candidate out there.

Honestly, her political stamina is utterly amazing.

She has been battered almost beyond recognition from the day her husband, Bill, took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1993. It never let up during President Clinton’s two terms. He got impeached but was acquitted of “high crimes and misdemeanors” by the Senate. When the president left office in January 2001, Hillary took office as a senator from New York, serving with the very people who sought to get her husband kicked out of office; I “predicted” back then she wouldn’t do it … silly me.

Her 2008 presidential campaign was another exercise in political battering. The man who defeated her then named her secretary of state — and she’s been dogged even more by harsh criticism.

Now she’s going for the Big One.

An announcement is expected soon, perhaps within the next month.

This ride will be a rough one.

national news, political news

In a word, the Hillary email story is about 'trust'

You can sum up the difficulty that is building around Hillary Rodham Clinton’s probable presidential campaign in a single five-letter word: trust.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/hillary-clinton-press-conference-115989.html?hp=b3_r1#.VQaz71J0yt8

Can she be trusted to tell us the truth all the time?

The Politico story attached here talks about the history she and her husband, the former 42nd president, Bill Clinton, had in using the English language to wiggle their way out of difficulty.

President Clinton sought to tell Americans that he “did not have sexual relations” with the young White House intern. It turned out that likely did have what almost anyone describe as a sexual relationship with her — but not in the way he defined it.

Does anyone recall how the president defined the word “is”?

Hillary Clinton’s email mess, on its face, likely isn’t a huge story. It’s becoming one, though, because of her own seemingly slippery use of language to define what she did and when she did it.

The Politico essay refers to her talking about “not saving” email communications. What happened to the word “delete”? Did she delete the messages, send them to the trash bin on purpose?

It’s that kind of imprecise language that seems to be getting the former secretary of state/U.S. senator/first lady into a bit of a jam as she ramps up her 2016 presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton once seemed like the inevitable 45th president of the United States. She remains the prohibitive favorite to become the Democrats’ next nominee for the office.

That aura of White House inevitability, however, suddenly is needs some major repair.

Straight talk would help build some much-needed trust.

 

International news, national news, political news

Foes 'all too willing to test us'

Here’s a tiny part of what former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said before a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“Here’s the simple truth of our foreign policy: Our allies doubt us and our adversaries are all too willing to test us. No one should be surprised, no one should be surprised that dictators like Assad would cross the president’s red line because he knows the president will not even defend the line that separates our nation from Mexico.” 

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/perry-compares-middle-east-troubles-texas-border

Did you get what he’s inferring here? Perry is possibly going to run for the Republican nomination for president of the United States — again — in 2016. To make the case to GOP voters, he must lambaste the president from the other party.

I understand how it works. Democrats do the same thing to Republican presidents as well, as U.S. Sen. Barack Obama demonstrated when he won the presidency in 2008.

But is this “testing” of U.S. power and prestige limited to just this president?

Let’s see: President Richard Nixon was tested when Arab nations executed an oil embargo in 1973, causing near-panic at gasoline service stations throughout this country. President Ronald Reagan was tested in 1983 when terrorists blew up the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 of our young Marines. President George H.W. Bush was tested in Panama when the dictator Manuel Noriega kept looking the other way while drugs were pouring into this country from Panama. President George W. Bush certainly was tested when terrorists flew those hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.

Yes, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were tested too. Carter faced the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979-80  and Clinton had to deal with those warlords in Somalia.

Testing of U.S. presidents has been the norm perhaps since the end of World War II, when this nation emerged from that global conflagration as the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power.

It goes with the territory. It’s part of the president’s job description.

 

national news, political news, religious news

'No religious test' ends this discussion

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

— Article VI, Paragraph 3, U.S. Constitution

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has had a tough time of it in recent days.

He sat in the room when former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani questioned whether President Obama loved America. Walker didn’t refute the ex-mayor’s nonsense.

Then came a question about whether President Obama is a Christian — as if that even is relevant to any discussion about anyone on Earth, let alone the president of the United States. Walker said he didn’t know, offering some lame notion that he’s never discussed Obama’s faith with him.

I hereby refer to the U.S. Constitution’s Article VI. See the above text.

Right there is all the evidence I need that this discussion has no place in today’s political discourse.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/21/scott-walker-s-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-answer.html?via=mobile&source=twitter

But yet it keeps coming back, particularly as we reference the current president. Why is that?

Has anyone ever wondered aloud whether any of the men who preceded Obama were Christian? Why didn’t Walker swat that idiotic question aside by saying something like:

“That question is irrelevant. You’ve never asked such a thing of George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy … none of them. Barack Obama’s faith is his personal business and the fact that he’s had to speak about it all — and he’s declared his belief in Jesus Christ as his Savior — is because the media and the president’s foes keep bringing it up.

“Next question.”

A president’s faith — or the faith of anyone seeking public office — according to the nation’s founders, is of zero consequence. Does that mean a candidate should necessarily hide his faith from public view? Of course not. Candidates are free to proclaim whatever they wish to proclaim and if their religious faith informs how they set public policy, that should be a factor that voters should consider.

However, the Constitution expressly declares that there should be “no religious test” that candidates for public office must pass.

Let’s focus fully instead on policies that affect people’s lives.

local news, national news, political news

Obama goes 'Red' to tell his story

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Hand it to President Obama. He delivered a State of the Union speech to a Congress now in full control of the opposing party and then he heads right into the center of the Red State base of the Republican Party.

He took his sales campaign today to Idaho. He is heading to Kansas on Thursday.

Idaho gave 64 percent of its vote in 2012 to GOP nominee Mitt Romney, while Kansas was casting nearly 60 percent of its vote for Mitt.

That doesn’t deter a lame-duck president who isn’t likely to call himself such as he pitches his middle-class tax cut to residents in states where he’s held in relatively low esteem.

“I still believe what I said back then,” Mr. Obama told a crowd at Boise State University. “I still believe that as Americans we have more in common than not.”

He’s surely entitled to believe that. Some of us out here in the Heartland aren’t so sure about the commonality. Still, I give the president props for taking the campaign into the heart of the loyal opposition’s territory.

Here’s a thought. How about coming here, Mr. President?

Texas isn’t friendly to you, either. But you did do nominally better in the Lone Star State than you did in Kansas, winning 42 percent of the 2012 vote against Mitt.

I even can make a pitch for Barack Obama to come to the Panhandle, where the 26 counties of this region only gave him 20 percent of the vote in 2012. But hey, he says we’re “not a Blue America or a Red America. We’re the United States of America.” He repeated that mantra Tuesday night at his State of the Union speech, recalling how he introduced it to the nation during his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Look at it this way: If Bill Clinton can come here in 2008 and campaign on behalf of his wife, Hillary, and pack the Civic Center Grand Plaza Ballroom to overflowing, surely the Leader of the Free World can command a big audience to sell his vision for the country.

I know more than a few Republicans who’d attend.

 

political news

Now it's Sen. Graham thinking about '16 bid

Oh boy, I can hardly contain my enthusiasm for the upcoming presidential campaign.

The potential Republican field just got another name to ponder: Lindsey Graham, the senior U.S. senator from South Carolina.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/lindsey-graham-2016-elections-south-carolina-114362.html

Why is this such an interesting development?

Graham is a noted conservative from a deeply conservative state. He and fellow Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona take turns bashing the dickens out of President Obama, particularly on foreign policy — which is understandable, given that the domestic economy is starting to rock along. Heck, sometimes Graham and McCain are singing together.

However, Graham has had this annoying tendency — if you’re a Republican — to say nice things about some of the appointees the president puts forward to fill key administration posts. While many other GOP senators were slamming Loretta Lynch as the next attorney general, Graham said she’s a solid pick, highly qualified and he indicated his intentions to vote to confirm her when the time comes.

This is the kind of thing that’s going to make him a target among other GOP White House contenders when they line up to debate — if Graham decides to run, of course.

He’s a sharp lawyer. Remember when, as a member of the House, he managed the Republicans’ successful effort at impeaching President Clinton? Well, the Senate decided correctly to acquit the president of those “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

So, as he told “Meet the Press” today, he’s thinking seriously about a presidential bid. He told NBC’s Chuck Todd that he has “set up a testing-the-waters committee under the IRS code that will allow me to look beyond South Carolina as to whether or not a guy like Lindsey Graham has a viable path.”

Just one request, Sen. Graham, if you take the plunge: Stop referring to yourself in the third person.

national news, political news

Oh, for that 'new car smell'

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Sometimes a simple throwaway line has this way of sticking to the wall.

President Obama just might have uttered it recently in an interview. He said the next president may need to bring a “new car smell” to American voters.

Former Clinton pollster: Hillary lacks ‘new car smell’

And that brings up the question: Does Hillary Rodham Clinton — the presumptive frontrunner for the Democratic Party nomination in 2016 — have that “new car smell”?

A former Clinton pollster, Doug Schoen, doesn’t think so.

According to The Hill: “‘The president said [last week] that the next president needs … a new car smell, and it’s pretty hard for me to say … that she [Hillary] has a new car smell,’ Schoen told radio host John Catsimatidis in an interview to air Sunday on New York’s 970 AM.”

Yes, she’s been in the public eye for a long time, dating back to 1992 when Bill Clinton told Americans if you elect him as president, “you get two.” She became a highly visible first lady, then became an equally high-visible senator from New York and then became an even more highly visible secretary of state in the Obama administration.

New car smell?

Hardly.

For that matter, Mitt Romney seems a bit musty himself if you consider that he’s run twice for president, been a high-profile governor in Massachusetts and also helped rescue the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.

A Quinnipiac Poll shows Romney leading Clinton narrowly in a head-to-head matchup. But, hey, the election is two years off.

I’d bet real money that “new car smell” just might become something of a jingle once the next campaign gets going.

 

national news, political news

Impeachment for show only?

A thought occurs to me now that impeachment of the president has returned to the arena.

Just suppose the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is actually is so blindly stupid that it actually impeaches President Obama for exercising his constitutional right of executive authority and tinkers with immigration reform.

Now, let us now suppose that the Republican-run U.S. Senate gets articles of impeachment and puts the president on bleeping trial for it.

The next Senate is going to have a maximum of 54 GOP members, depending on the outcome of the runoff race in Louisiana set for December. It takes 67 votes to convict a president of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and remove him from office.

Does anyone in their right mind think Republicans are going to persuade 13 Democratic senators to engage in this ridiculous charade?

The thought then boils down to this: The impeachment talk, should it ever come to pass, is meant to put an asterisk next to Barack Obama’s name. The members of Congress who detest him and the policies that got him elected twice to the presidency simply want the word “impeached” next to his name. They want his obituary, when it is finally written, to contain the “I-word.” They want his presidency scarred for life with the notion that the House of Representatives trumped up a phony “crime” upon which to impeach the 44th president of the United States.

Well, the last time the GOP tried that — in 1998 against Bill Clinton — it fell flat on its face. President Clinton walked out of the White House in January 2001 with his standing intact and he has emerged as arguably the nation’s premier political leader.

That won’t matter to the current crop of congressional “leaders” who are insisting that Barack Obama keep his mitts off any executive orders regarding immigration.

House Speaker John Boehner declared not long ago that impeachment won’t happen while he’s the Man of the House. Yet his GOP caucus has been strengthened and made even more strident in the wake of the 2014 mid-term election.

We’ll get to see how much clout he can wield if the nimrod wing of his party starts getting a bit too feisty.

 

 

national news, political news

'W' stays on the post-presidency high road

It well might have just tortured Fox News blowhard Sean Hannity to hear his talk-show guest refuse to criticize President Obama.

Then again, perhaps Hannity knew the response he would get from former President George W. Bush.

Whatever the case, President Bush has chosen to remain on the high road nearly six years after leaving the White House.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/george-w-bush-why-refuse-135613369.html

Bush said he doesn’t “think it’s good for the country to have a former president undermine a current president; I think it’s bad for the presidency for that matter.”

Then he added: “Secondly, I really have had all the fame I want. I really don’t long for publicity. And the truth the matter is in order for me to generate publicity … I’d have to either attack the Republican Party, which I don’t want to do, or attack the president, which I don’t want to do. And so I’m perfectly content to be out of the limelight.”

What a concept. A former president following the lead set by his father, another former leader of the Free World, in refusing to mix it up with those who come along after them.

Take heed, former Vice President Cheney. He’s been popping off repeatedly ever since he moved out of the VP’s mansion.

Indeed, this unofficial vow of silence that former presidents take has more or less been followed since the founding of the Republic. I say “more or less,” because President Bush’s immediate predecessor, President Clinton, has been pretty vocal in criticizing Republican critics of Barack Obama, although I cannot recall Clinton torpedoing George W. Bush’s foreign-policy decisions during W’s presidency.

Let’s not ignore President Carter, who on occasion has shot darts at all the men who assumed office after he left the White House in 1981. He does pick his shots, though.

But in my memory of former presidents, which dates back to Dwight Eisenhower, it’s been the custom for former presidents — and vice presidents, for that matter — to stay quiet and let their successors suffer the barbs that others toss at them.

It’s an appropriate thing for these former leaders to do. They belong to an exclusive club. Only they know all the ins and outs of the world’s toughest job.

As we all understand, we can have only one president at a time. For a former president to take a seat in the peanut gallery and “undermine a current president” is very bad form, indeed.

Well said, President Bush.

 

national news, political news

Jeb's running? So says 'P,' the son

That settles it.

Jeb Bush is “more than likely” going to run for president of the United States in 2016.

That’s according to George P. Bush, the son of the former Florida governor.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/10/george-p-bush-more-than-likely-jeb-will-run-197647.html?hp=r3

I’m not yet sure about that, although I likely shouldn’t challenge what “P” knows about his dad’s intentions.

Perhaps I should presume that Jeb told “P” it’s OK to say he’s “more than likely” to run if the question came up — as it did — on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday news talk show.

“P” himself is a candidate for Texas land commissioner and figures to win the race in 10 days. After all, he’s a Republican and in Texas these days that’s all the credential he needs to win public office. Put an “R” next to your name and you’re in.

I’m still kinda/sorta pulling for Mitt Romney to make one more run for the White House. He’s made two stabs at it already, winning the Republican nomination in 2012 only to lose by 5 million popular votes to the president of the United States.

Jeb Bush, though, also intrigues me, given that I’m quite certain Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to seek the Democratic nomination. Imagine yet another Clinton-Bush campaign for the White House. Would Jeb seek to atone for his dad’s dismal campaign against Bill Clinton back in 1992?

More than that, though, is the idea that Jeb could run as a moderate Republican, which is where I believe the family pedigree guides him — despite brother George W’s rightward shift when he was elected president in 2000.

The final say on whether Jeb runs, of course, will come from Mom. That would be Barbara, who’s already suggested the nation is tired of the Bush name in national politics.

A “more than likely” candidacy doesn’t make it a certainty.