Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

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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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Big Dog defends his wife

Karl Rove, you have messed with the wrong politician.

Remember when Bill Clinton told us in 1992 that if Americans elected him we’d get “two for the price of one,” meaning that we’d get his wife as part of the package?

Americans did elect the Arkansas governor and his wife has emerged as a political force of nature in her own right. Thus, it became quite problematic for Rove to suggest that Hillary Rodham Clinton — the wife of the former president — had suffered a potentially seriously brain injury when she took a spill in 2012.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/bill-clinton-dumbfounded-hillary-brain-damage-talk-n105361

Enter the ex-president, who has come roaring out in defense of his wife. When you are critical of one Clinton, Mr. Rove, you’d better be ready to take on the other one.

“First they said she faked her concussion and now they say she is auditioning for her part on ‘The Walking Dead,’” Clinton said Wednesday in remarks to Gwen Ifill of PBS.

Ah, yes. The “faked” injury. You’ll remember that one, too. She took the spill and Republicans said the then-secretary of state staged some kind of bogus accident to divert attention from the Benghazi attack.

Rove now has denied saying what he said. He denied saying Hillary Clinton had suffered “brain damage.” No, but he did wonder why Mrs. Clinton reappeared after the fall wearing eyeglasses, which he said suggested she had suffered a “brain injury.” Brain “damage” or “injury,” to my mind the terms mean essentially the same thing.

President Clinton has put it all in perspective. “You can’t get too upset about it, it’s just the beginning,” he said. Hmmm. Is that a harbinger of an announcement from his wife that everyone expects … that she’s going to run for president in 2016?

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'Dr.' Rove issues HRC diagnosis

When did Karl Rove get his medical degree?

Oh, he didn’t? He sure could have fooled me, given that the man aka “Bush’s Brain” has speculated aloud that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has suffered a serious brain injury.

Rove made that speculation a few days ago when he wondered why Clinton — a possible, if not probable candidate for president in 2016 — was wearing eyeglasses after taking a fall in 2012.

He said something about Clinton spending a month in the hospital and then reappearing with the specs, which he said suggests she suffered a brain injury when she took the spill.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-analysis-karl-rove-hillary-clinton-whisper-campaign-internet-20140513-story.html

Rove is engaging in a cheap and ghastly form of smear.

Clinton didn’t spend a month in the hospital; she spent four days. She wore the glasses to correct a bout of double vision she was having as a result of the fall she took.

Rove knows Clinton is considering a run for president. He also knows that she’s cleaning the clocks of any possible Republican contender, according to recent reputable polling data. Rove also understands the value of plant negative thoughts in the minds of voters who might be undecided about who to support for president two years from now.

He’s found a tantalizing opportunity in raising these questions, which seem to be specious at best and malicious at worst.

I’ll stick with White House press secretary Jay Carney’s response to “Dr.” Rove’s diagnosis. Carney said when asked about Rove’s assessment that Rove was the “last person in the country” to accept that President Obama had been re-elected in 2012. You’ll recall his outburst when his Fox News Channel colleagues called Ohio as going for the president when only a few votes had been posted. Why, he just couldn’t believe it. So, the Fox news anchors went to the network’s computer gurus’ headquarters off camera to confirm that they had called it correctly.

Rove is a talented Republican political strategist who helped elect and re-elect George W. Bush president of the United States. He’s also a fierce partisan who is letting his GOP loyalty get in the way of whatever common sense he’s got left.

Everyone gets that presidential candidates are fair game. We need to know if they’re physically able to do the world’s most difficult job. Speculating, though, on matters about which Karl Rove knows nothing is simply shameful.

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Monica's back; now, just go away

She’s back.

Monica Lewinsky is now 40 and she’s written a book. She has returned to the public eye apparently to sell a few copies of her book, to make some money and to set the record straight on what happened between her and the 42nd president of the United States.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/the-return-of-monica-lewinsky-106507.html?hp=r16#.U22Y5FJOWt8

Count me as one American who doesn’t care what she has to say.

Lewinsky’s role in the impeachment of President Clinton has been covered, dissected, micro-examined and analyzed to the hilt. It’s all been revealed.

She now wants to “move on,” and wants to “burn the beret and bury the blue dress.” You remember the blue dress, right? The one with the president’s, um, DNA that proved he did something naughty with the then 20-something White House intern.

He had denied doing it in testimony before a federal grand jury. Yes, he told a lie under oath and that became — officially — the reason the House of Representatives impeached him. The Senate put the president on trial, but he was acquitted.

The question perhaps always will remain, in my mind at least: How did a special prosecutor’s investigation into a real estate deal — which we called “Whitewater” — then involve what the president was doing after hours with a young woman?

I smelled a witch hunt at the time and I believe the prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, was motivated to find something, anything, to pin to the president. He found it when he discovered Monica Lewinsky.

She’s back, telling her side of the story. She believes she was scapegoated by the president and first lady — and their allies. Fine. She’s entitled to say it.

I’m already hoping she’ll now move back to private life and doing whatever she’s been doing since her moment of notoriety flamed out.

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Benghazi is back

Benghazi is the story with no end.

It’s back in the news, thanks to some emails uncovered by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group. The emails purport to buttress the idea that the Obama administration lied about what happened at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.

They contend the administration engaged in a willful cover-up of the “truth,” whatever it is, about the violence that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/04/benghazi_white_house_emails_did_the_obama_administration_engage_in_a_cover.html

I’ve never believed in a cover-up. I do believe the administration made some big mistakes in trying to report what happened in that chaotic fire fight. They trotted out the U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, to say things about which she wasn’t briefed sufficiently. Rice had a set of talking points that turned out to be incomplete and wrong.

That constitutes a cover-up? Is it a deliberate deception?

No. It was a bungling attempt to get ahead of a still-developing story.

Still, the right-wing mainstream media has sought to keep this story alive and kicking — particularly if the then-secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, decides to run for president in 2016. It’s looking as though she’s going to run and that, all by itself, is reason enough — in the eyes of her critics — to keep hammering away at Benghazi.

Never mind that independent analyses have concluded there was no deliberate lying; they conclude that the U.S. embassy security network failed, but only because officials misjudged the intensity of the fight that was ensuing at the consulate; Clinton herself has taken responsibility for the failure to protect our personnel, but that’s not good enough to satisfy her critics on the far right.

The story will continue to boil and bubble. Were it not for Hillary Clinton’s still-budding presidential candidacy, it would have faded away long ago.

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Hillary not 'formidable'?

George Will said over the weekend that Hillary Rodham Clinton could be a damaged presidential candidate if she runs in 2016.

He said she is “not formidable.”

Interesting, don’t you think?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/04/27/george_will_hillary_clinton_not_a_formidable_candidate.html

Will took note of what he said was the “last time” a major party had a coronation for its presidential nominee. He mentioned Adlai Stevenson’s nomination in 1956. The Democrat then went on to suffer his second consecutive landslide loss to Republican Dwight Eisenhower, who himself was “crowned” by his own party in 1952.

My own memory provides another example of a political coronation. In 1964, the country was reeling from the death of President Kennedy. The man who succeeded him, Lyndon Johnson, began pushing through much of JFK’s unfinished legislative agenda, including the Civil Rights Act.

Democrats were in no mood to fight over that nomination, so they crowned LBJ as their nominee and he then went on to trample GOP nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater in a historic landslide.

It is highly unlikely that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency in two years in such a fashion. It will be competitive, hard-fought and — I hope — edifying for voters.

However, to say the former first lady, senator and secretary of state is “not formidable” is to suggest George Will has been listening too intently to Republican hacks who keep looking for scandals where none exists.

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Now it might be Clinton vs. Bush 2.0

Get ready for another Clinton-Bush slugfest for the White House.

Or … maybe not.

Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and brother and son of two former presidents, has emerged as the Republican candidate of the moment. The Clinton in this matchup is Hillary Rodham Clinton, the wife of the former president sandwiched between the Bushes as well as a former U.S. senator and secretary of state.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/03/jeb_bush_2016_presidential_run_why_it_would_be_hard_on_the_gop.html

Ask yourself: Is the nation really up for a presidential campaign featuring these two political heirs?

I’m not yet convinced.

Clinton likely is going to run for the presidency. The smart money says she’s a sure-fire lock for the Democratic nomination, Vice President Joe Biden’s interest notwithstanding.

As for Bush, well, the GOP’s establishment candidate du jour once was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — before he got caught up in that bridge lane-closing matter. The lane-closing calamity well might blow over eventually. Christie’s brand as a hands-on, no-nonsense administrator may be damaged beyond repair — and that’s if he escapes the hounds looking for some culpability in the lane-closure or in its aftermath. If he’s dirty, he’s toast.

The GOP has a number of tea party types jockeying for our attention: Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Bobby Jindal all are among the tea party favorites being bandied about.

Jeb’s mother, the always-candid Barbara, once said she hoped her son wouldn’t run. The country is “tired” of the Bush name in politics, Mama Bush said famously.

And as John Dickerson notes in the link attached to this blog, the Bush brand itself might be poison to many elements within the Republican Party. Do you ever hear any of the supposedly potential candidates for 2016 sing George W.’s praises, calling for a return to the good old days of warfare and cataclysmic recession? What’s more, the right wing never will forgive George H.W.’s decision to renege on his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge that in reality was the smart thing to do.

As for Clinton, she brings her own baggage. After all, she is married to the second president ever impeached and as irrelevant as that sordid saga is to her own public service record, the Republicans are sure to remind us that electing Hillary means Bill returns to the White House, where he did those naughty things with that young intern.

Just think: The next presidential election is still more than two years out. We’ve got plenty of time to get sick of it all.

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Sen. Paul does the seemingly impossible

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul has made two fascinating public appearances of late.

The Kentucky Republican — and tea party favorite — spoke to thundering applause at the Conservative Political Action Conference gathering. CPAC is where conservatives go for anointment by the Republican Party’s most faithful, the true believers, the hardest of the hard core right wing.

Then, just this week, the senator showed on the other coast, the Left Coast, and addressed a crowd of University of California-Berkeley students. Now this is where the lefties hang out to get their blessing from the progressive/liberal/lefty crowd. It’s also a place that usually doesn’t welcome those from the other side. But there was Sen. Paul, giving the Berkeley faithful a snootful of libertarian dogma.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2014/0322/Rand-Paul-most-intriguing-man-in-the-GOP.-Really-video

What gives here?

Is he actually the most “intriguing man in the GOP,” as Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus has posited? He might be.

The CPAC meeting was a no-brainer for Paul, who’s considered to be a virtual shoo-in as a candidate for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. He won the CPAC straw poll, beating the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

The Berkeley event, though, raised my eyebrows. Too many colleges and universities — those bastions of progressive thought and supposed tolerance for all points of view — have rolled out the unwelcome mat to conservatives. Rand Paul appears to be the exception, though, given his libertarian views on things such as drug decriminalization and his pacifist view of war.

He’s a conservative, though. Frankly, I was glad to see him speak at Berkeley if only to know that at least one progressive institution in this particular instance was being true to the credo of openness and tolerance of differing points of view.

Now, let’s see if Hillary Clinton shows up at a right-wing-leaning school such as, say, Liberty University.

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HRC sick of the media? Duh!

Sometime around late 1999, I offered a prediction.

Hillary Rodham Clinton would not run for the U.S. Senate in New York, I said then. Why? Well, my notion was that she had grown weary of the constant battering she and her husband, President Bill Clinton, had taken from the right-wing media, not to mention the members of the Senate who voted to convict her husband of “high crimes and misdemeanors” relating to the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

She ran anyway — and won handily — in 2000.

The columnist Roger Simon, one of D.C.’s smarter political analysts, writes that Clinton is sick of the media.

Will that prevent her from running for president of the United States in 2016? Part of me says “yes,” but I now know better than to suggest that HRC doesn’t have the stomach for another campaign.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/hillary-clinton-media-simon-says-104497.html?hp=l18

I cannot quite figure Clinton out. Her husband cheated on her with a White House intern less than half his age. She forgave him — apparently. The House of Representatives impeached the president for lying to a federal grand jury about the affair. The Senate then put the president on trial, but acquitted him on all three counts relating to obstruction of justice and abuse of presidential power.

The then-first lady decided she wanted to serve with those individuals in the Senate after she and her husband vacated the White House. By all accounts, she became a stellar senator from New York and earned the respect of her colleagues. Interestingly, one of her best friends in the Senate happens to be John McCain, R-Ariz., who was among those senators who voted to convict the president. Go figure.

The media beat her up as she ran for president in 2008. Her campaign ended just before the convention that year and then — wouldn’t you know it? — she ended up serving as secretary of state in the Obama administration.

The media kept dogging her. She had at least one major misfire, her handling of the Benghazi consulate tragedy. Again, the media poured it on.

Now, at least one leading Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — a possible presidential candidate himself in ’16 — is dredging up the Lewinsky matter as a way to besmirch Hillary’s reputation. Give me a break.

Still, the media keep digging into all this stuff.

Why should Hillary Clinton want any part of this?

Beats me. I remain baffled that she ran for the Senate in the first place.

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Reliving old scandal scars a familiar victim

Now that Rand Paul has dug up an old political scandal in an effort to score points in a possible pending new political campaign, it’s good to recall one of the principals in that long-ago event.

Monica Lewinsky was “that woman” with whom President Clinton said he “did not have sexual relations.”

She was a 20-something White House intern to whom the married president became attracted in the late 1990s. He fooled around with her. A special prosecutor who had been assigned to cover another story — the Whitewater real estate investment matter — stumbled upon reports of indiscretion. The president was forced to testify before a federal grand jury and then he lied under oath about what he did with the young woman.

The House of Representatives impeached him for it. The Senate tried him, but he was acquitted.

Sen. Paul may seek the Republican presidential nomination in two years and now he is suggesting that possible Democratic nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton — the wife of the former president — isn’t trustworthy because she’s married to a “sexual predator.”

But what about Lewinsky?

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/monica-lewinsky-reconsidered-103513.html?hp=t1#.Uv4Hc1KYat8

She’s been leading a fairly private life since those bad ol’ days. Few of us out here have heard or seen a thing about her. I don’t even know how she’s making a living these days.

Frankly, I had hoped never to see her face again. It looks as though those hopes have been dashed now that Rand Paul has dredged that sordid story from the trash heap.

What’s more, I feel a kind of sympathy for her now that she’s about to be dragged through the media arena once again. Maybe she just wants to be left alone. Perhaps she has turned the page on that hideous chapter in her life and her infamous activities that led to the second presidential impeachment in U.S. history.

Surely she cannot welcome this kind of attention yet again. Can she?