Tag Archives: Bill Clinton

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Bill Clinton helps more than Michelle Obama? Umm, yes

The headline over Dallas Morning News blogger Rodger Jones’s post asks: Does Bill Clinton help Van de Putte more than Michelle Obama helps Wendy Davis?

Well, duh? Do ya think?

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/10/does-bill-clinton-helps-van-de-putte-more-than-michelle-obama-helps-wendy-davis.html/

The 42nd president has endorsed Democratic lieutenant nominee Leticia Van de Putte. Meanwhile, first lady Michelle Obama has recorded a radio ad for another Democrat, the nominee for governor, Wendy Davis.

With all due respect to the first lady, who I consider to be profoundly successful in her role, she ain’t no Bill Clinton.

President Clinton is a genuine political rock star. He’s the 800-pound gorilla in any political setting imaginable. He can walk into deeply red Republican regions — as he did in 2008 when he campaigned in Amarillo for his wife’s bid to become president — and pack ’em in.

Jones refers to Clinton as “Bubba,” and his endorsement amounts to a “seal of approval.”

Van de Putte will need all the help she can get in her uphill fight against Republican nominee — and fellow state senator — Dan Patrick. Clinton’s standing as the leading Democrat in the nation — yes, even more than the man who now occupies his old office in the White House — gives any candidate who receives his blessing maximum oomph.

It’s an astonishing comeback for the second president ever to be impeached. The Senate acquitted him of those politically motivated charges relating to his misbehavior in the White House. It didn’t take long at all for the president to regain his standing among many Americans.

And in the 13 years since his leaving office, that standing has grown almost beyond all recognition.

Will his endorsement put Van de Putte over the top? I doubt it. Still, she isn’t going to erase this “seal of approval.”

International news, national news, political news

Politics is the roughest of them all

Yes sir. Politics and to an extent public service can be the roughest of the rough jobs on Earth.

You bring someone on board to carry out your policies, they do your bidding and then they return to private life, write a book and then blast those policies to smithereens.

Leon Panetta is the latest former public official to turn on the man who hired him. His criticism of President Obama is drawing praise from Republicans (no surprise, there) and condemnation from Democrats (again, no surprise).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-leon-panetta-and-other-obama-subordinates-stunning-disloyalty/2014/10/06/c4ae4448-4d95-11e4-babe-e91da079cb8a_story.html

It’s the norm, I suppose.

Panetta, whose dossier is sparkling — former leading member of Congress from California, former White House chief of staff during the Clinton administration, former CIA director, former defense secretary — now says Obama disregarded his advice about leaving a “residual force” of personnel in Iraq. He also says the president misunderstood the threat posed by the Islamic State. He says the president is reluctant to engage his critics.

Yes, he’s written a book.

Is he the first former presidential insider to trash his boss? Hardly. Hillary Clinton has done so. Ditto for Robert Gates. They both are former Obama hands who’ve said unkind thing about him.

George W. Bush got the treatment from former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill; Bill Clinton got ripped by one-time political aide George Stephanopoulos.

Frankly, none of this serves any president well.

Still, there’s something quite unsettling about the latest trashing of Obama by his former defense chiefs and his one-time secretary of state. They come at a time of intense international crisis.

Panetta’s critique is particularly unnerving as the president looks for answers to dealing with ISIL, fighting a deadly disease in West Africa, trying to find peace between Israel and the Palestinians, seeking a solution to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine … and God knows what else is going on around the world.

Why not make these people pledge — in writing — to keep their thoughts to themselves until after the president leaves office? Is that too much to ask?

national news, political news

Former candidate might hold Senate key

If the Democrats hold the U.S. Senate — and that remains a huge if — they likely may owe their rescue to a Democrat who wasn’t even on the ballot.

No, I’m not talking about President Barack Obama.

The rescuer might be a fellow named Chad Taylor, a former Democratic candidate for the Senate from, of all places, Kansas.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/nbc-poll-senate-democrats-2014-elections-111611.html?hp=r4

Yes, that Kansas, one of the most deeply red states — behind Texas and Utah, perhaps — in the country.

Taylor dropped out of the Senate race against incumbent GOP Sen. Pat Roberts. He left the campaign to a third candidate named Greg Orman, who’s running as an independent but who appears ready to caucus with Senate Democrats if he’s elected.

Orman is holding a double-digit lead over Roberts at the moment and with less than a month to go before Election Day, it’s beginning to look rather grim for the veteran Republican lawmaker.

The RealClearPolitics.com average of polls shows Republicans with a potential seven-pickup in the Senate; they need six to win control of the place. So, Orman’s possible victory isn’t the only race that could keep the Senate in Democratic hands.

Iowa needs to stay Democratic. North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagen is holding a slim lead over her challenger. And former President Clinton has returned to his home state of Arkansas to campaign on behalf of his pal Mark Pryor, who’s trying to keep the seat in Democratic control.

If it boils down, though, to a single race — the one Kansas — Democrats might have to send former candidate Chad Taylor the biggest bouquet of flowers they can find to say “thanks” for bowing out.

International news, national news, political news

Obama deserves unified nation

The late great Republican Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan had it right.

Partisanship, he said, should “stop at the water’s edge.”

Put another way: When a president takes a nation to war then it becomes imperative for a nation to rally behind the effort.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/obama-un-address-111287.html?hp=l1

President Barack Obama went before the United Nations today to tell the world body that it’s time for the world to step up in the fight against the Islamic State. He didn’t sugar-coat it. He said the fight well could take years. He said ISIL is a tough and resilient foe. He also said that dozens of nations have lined up as part of a growing coalition to fight the terrorists.

But can the commander in chief perform his duty to protect Americans without much of the partisan carping that has plagued him to date? If his Republican foes choose to heed the words of one of their predecessors — the late Sen. Vandenberg — then there might be a unified nation rallying to fight a determined enemy.

Unity, of course, isn’t always the norm.

President Bush was able to rally the nation initially when he took us to war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Much of the support evaporated when he expanded that fight into Iraq in March 2003.

President Clinton had his critics when he started bombing fighters in Bosnia and Kosovo.

President Truman heard the critics when the Korean War dragged on.

And Vietnam? Well, we know what happened there.

Barack Obama received congressional authorization to arm and train Syrian rebels. He’s consulted with political friends and foes in advance of launching the air strikes. Some critics will continue to say the strikes are too little too late.

Let us not undermine this necessary effort to destroy the Islamic State, however, with partisan carping.

national news, political news

Clinton's going to run, period

One of my many pet peeves is when folks try to read the mind of public figures.

Therefore, I am going to get angry at myself for what I’m about to write: I believe Hillary Rodham Clinton has decided to run for president in 2016 and that the only decision left is to decide the best time to announce her intentions.

http://news.msn.com/us/clinton-2016-decision-likely-by-early-next-year

Clinton is in Mexico City, as is Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., another possible candidate for president.

The former U.S. senator/secretary of state/first lady said she’ll decide by early next year whether she’ll seek the Democratic nomination for president.

Sure thing, senator/Mme. Secretary. My trick knee is throbbing a good bit right about now and it’s telling me she’s told her husband, former President Bill Clinton, that she wants to run for the office he once held. She has sworn him to secrecy and if the 42nd president has a brain in his head — and I believe he does — he’ll keep quiet about it.

If I were a bettor, I’d bet all HRC has to decide now is when to announce it. Indeed, you can parse her language just a little bit to conclude that’s the decision left to make. She’s spoken hypothetically about a presidential run; she’s been mildly critical of President Obama’s foreign policy doctrine; she said in Mexico City that her background gives her “unique” qualifications to be president.

I’m still baffled, of course, over why she’d want to run for the White House, given the intensely harsh, personal and in some case unfair criticism she’s received over many years. You can bet the mortgage the critics will be out in force when she makes her intentions known.

Is it blind ambition or a sense of public obligation that drives her? Perhaps it’s both. We’ll be able to make that determination for ourselves in due time.

 

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Is HRC running for president? Ummm, yes

Gosh, I think I’m ready to bet the farm that Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to run for president in 2016.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/hillary-clinton-takes-president-barack-obama-109887.html?hp=t1

The former secretary of state, first lady and U.S. senator is now putting some serious distance between herself and President Barack Obama.

Why? It seems clear she is reading the president’s poll numbers and doesn’t want to be associated any more than need be to his foreign policy doctrine.

That’s enough — all by itself — to persuade me she’s in, or that she’ll declare her candidacy in due course.

I realize this isn’t a huge flash. Just about every political pundit this side of Arkansas has been predicting she would run. I always had this reservation about it, which stems from the harsh treatment she’s gotten from her foes and the hideous treatment she and her husband, the 42nd president, received when Bill Clinton was serving in the White House.

The sweeping interview attached to this blog post, however, sends an entirely different message.

She wants the big prize and is piecing together the building blocks of a doctrine on which she’ll run.

I will have to dismiss one notion contained in the Politico story, which is that Hillary Clinton “doesn’t have a polling operation.”

Uhhh, yes she does.

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Impeachment talk is driving me insane

For the ever-loving life of me I cannot fathom how on God’s Earth Republicans around the country think Congress should impeach the president of the United States.

A new poll from CNN-ORC says two-thirds of Americans oppose the notion of impeaching President Obama. Yet the nutcases on the far right keep fueling this idiocy by suggesting the president has committed some specified impeachable offense.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/213323-majority-opposes-impeachment-calls-and-lawsuit-poll-finds

House Speaker John Boehner says impeachment is a non-starter. Other key Republicans say they oppose it, too. One of them, most interestingly, is former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who got himself entangled in an earlier impeachment effort against President Clinton. It didn’t work out too well for Gingrich and his House GOP brethren. The House impeached the president, but the Senate acquitted him on all the charges. Gingrich, meanwhile, resigned hi speakership and then left the House because of his own shabby personal behavior and because he lost the confidence of his House colleagues.

The pro-impeachment cabal has even less on Obama than the goons on the right had on Clinton. With Clinton, at least they could say the president lied under oath to a federal grand jury about his fling with that young woman who worked in the White House. Perjury is a felony.

President Obama’s alleged misdeed? He’s using the power granted him by the Constitution to invoke executive authority? What else is there?

Republicans are playing with some serious fire if they keep up this nonsense.

Can’t we get back to the business of governing, for crying out loud?

The mid-term elections might give Republicans control of the Senate — but it’s not nearly a sure thing. They’ll likely retain control of the House. If Capitol Hill goes fully Republican, then the GOP will have to settle into the role of co-equal partners in the process of running the richest, most powerful country on Earth.

Impeachment rhetoric from the GOP peanut gallery is an utterly ridiculous exercise.

It is irresponsible and reprehensible in the extreme.

***

Gosh, I now am asking my own congressman, Republican Mac Thornberry: What say you, Mac, about this idea of impeaching the president? Please tell me you haven’t swilled the GOP goofball Kool-Aid.

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Why Warren … and not Clinton?

Conservatives seem to have hitched themselves to a possible candidacy by a leading U.S. Senate liberal.

Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has been wowing crowds at political events lately. She’s been firing up the political base of her Democratic Party. Warren also has gotten the attention of conservative commentators and pundits, such as Byron York, who contends that Warren offers a plan while Hillary Rodham Clinton is running essentially on her resume.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/will-elizabeth-warrens-fight-for-causes-put-hillary-clinton-in-the-shade/article/2551098

I’ll hereby offer my own explanation of why York, a columnist for the Washington Examiner and a Fox News Channel contributor, is so taken by Warren: He wants the Democratic Party to marginalize itself the way Republicans might be willing to do when they nominate their candidate for the 2016 presidential campaign.

You see, Hillary Clinton is a centrist Democrat in the mold of her husband, the 42nd president of the United States. Bill Clinton was the master of “triangulation,” and he parlayed his skill at working the extremes against each other so well that he won two smashing election victories in 1992 and 1996.

Republicans don’t want any more of that.

So some of them have glommed onto Warren’s candidacy, talking her up.

Don’t get me wrong. Elizabeth Warren is a powerhouse. She’s smart and courageous. She’s taking on big-money interests and is talking a darn good populist message about income equality, marriage equality, and financial and tax reform.

York and other conservatives likely don’t give a damn about the content of Warren’s message. They’re just thrilled to have someone out there willing to possibly challenge Hillary Clinton’s perceived inevitability as the Democratic presidential nominee in two years.

She reminds me vaguely of the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who in 1968 took on President Lyndon Johnson when it was perceived widely that LBJ would run for re-election. McCarthy stunned the president by nearly beating him in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. On March 31, 1968, LBJ declared he wouldn’t seek “another term as your president.”

The news thrilled Republicans in ’68. I suspect similar news from Hillary Clinton this time around would have the same effect on the GOP if Warren jumps in and then mounts a serious challenge to Clinton’s perceived invincibility.

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Tax cut … with no spending offsets?

I’ll have to admit that I’m a little slow on the uptake at times.

Folks have to explain some things to me on occasion to help me make sense of trends and decisions.

This decision by the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives falls into that head-scratching category.

http://www.kxly.com/news/politics/house-republicans-vote-for-business-tax-cut/26906060

The House has approved a $287 billion business tax cut. It hasn’t included any spending offsets to pay for it. Speaker John Boehner boasts that the House is working to create jobs. Maybe it will. Then again, maybe those businesses benefiting from the tax cuts will take that money straight to the bottom line. That’s been happening quite a bit lately, you know?

What’s got me puzzled is why the House GOP keeps insisting on spending offsets whenever the Obama administration proposes job creation ideas. Infrastructure spending? Can’t afford it unless we cut spending in other places.

Another thing needs noting. The deficit is coming down in rather dramatic fashion. A tax cut of the size just approved by the House is going to blow up the deficit yet again.

My memory isn’t perfect, but I do remember a time when Republicans belonged to the party of “fiscal responsibility.” They loathed deficits, while Democrats blew them off. Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 partly because President Carter and Congress ran deficits of a whopping $40 billion annually; there was some other stuff also that contributed to Carter’s defeat.

Memory also reminds me of how quick congressional Republicans were to share in the credit for the balanced budget and the surpluses run up during the final years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. They made sure we all knew that their spending restraints were more responsible for the surplus than the modest tax increases proposed by the president — and, oh yes, approved by Congress.

The new age of Republicanism, though, sees the party in control of one half of one branch of government talking out of both sides of its mouth.

Spending offsets only count when the other guys want to do something. Tax cuts for business? Who cares?

In the meantime, President Obama is asking for $3.7 billion in emergency spending to help deal with that crisis along our southern border. The GOP response? It costs too much money.

Go figure.

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Impeachment talk makes me crazy

All this impeachment poppycock is making me nuts.

Some goofball right-wing members of Congress — not to mention a few bystanders perched in the political peanut gallery — are saying the House of Representatives needs to impeach President Barack Obama.

For what, you say? I don’t know exactly. For issuing executive orders in keeping with his constitutional authority? For the flood of illegal immigrants who are coming into the country, as if the president himself could order it stopped? For tweaking the Affordable Care Act after it became law?

The right-wing loons contend he’s broken laws. They haven’t cited specific laws — because he hasn’t broken any law.

Many of us have lived through two impeachable events involving presidents.

* The first one occurred in the early 1970s. President Nixon’s re-election campaign hired a team of goons to break into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex. When word got out that they were captured, Nixon then ordered the FBI to block the investigation. Then that became known and all hell broke loose.

The House Judiciary Committee and a select committee of senators conducted hearings. The Judiciary Committee then approved articles of impeachment. Nixon resigned in August 1974 rather than face certain impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate.

* Then came the episode involving President Clinton. A special prosecutor was hired by Congress to examine the Whitewater real estate dealings allegedly involving President and Mrs. Clinton. The prosecutor then began snooping around allegations that Clinton fooled around with a young White House intern. A federal grand jury asked Clinton about it. He lied when he denied any involvement with the woman. Oops. You can’t perjure yourself. The House impeached him on those grounds, but the Senate acquitted him.

Two specific incidents resulted in a near impeachment and the real thing.

The stuff involving President Obama? It’s all political hucksterism, meant to inflame the Republican base, get ’em riled up.

Sure, the president has made mistakes. Has any president skated through office without blundering here and there? Of course not.

Do these blunders require an impeachment? No.

To his credit, House Speaker John Boehner says he disagrees with the impeachment yammering.

Good. Now he needs to take the tea party yahoos within his caucus who keep fomenting this nonsense to the woodshed.