I watched Sarah Palin, McCain's choice for VP, live on CNN Wednesday night, as she addressed delegates at the RNC in St. Paul, Minnesota; I was determined to. I must say it was quite a performance. She exceeded all my expectations in terms of presence and delivery -- and even the "theatre" (as when she handed the baby over to her husband in order to continue waving to the audience after her speech).
To my mind, she was, in form and content, even more impressive than Hillary Clinton, who has herself won the support of all those 18 million. She is telegenic, has a good turn of phrase, looks very much the Governor that she is, and is so fresh on the scene that, between now and November, she will not cease to make positive waves for her party. That is, if embarassing dirt does not keep percolating to the political surface. She may even be a force in future elections, when America finally settles down to electing a woman for President. So, watch out Hillary -- competition's here.
I am saying all this because, until I had a good chance to size her up last night, I'd had the impression that McCain had been nothing but impulsive, and even desperate, in choosing her -- and, consequently, that he was in for great disappointment. He still might have been driven by little more than that -- impulsiveness and desperation -- as there is evidence to suggest that he did not have her vetted adequately, or, if he did, did not heed the vetters' counsel or take into full consideration the evidence presented by them.
There is a "formal procedure of good judgment" -- a method of scouring the evidence and a rule for making decisions which demands respect for the verdict(s) the evidence points to and which circumscribes choices -- which leaders are expected to adopt, explicitly or implicitly, if their leadership and judgement are to be deemed dependable and even sound. McCain does not seem to have followed any such procedure, hence the claim in some quarters that he simply "rolled the dice". Thus, he gambled but, it seems, hit the jackpot.
Still, Palin's good performance does highlight the power, much-overlooked, of speech in human affairs. She manifested that power Wednesdey. I dare say that if she could do it that suspenseful Wednesday night, she will certainly do so many times more in the days ahead -- as Obama does. We will see, Thursday night, what McCain does with his turn and opportunity.
Certainly, Palin was a far better choice that Meg Whitman, formerly of EBay, whose delivery that same night was dull and uninspiring, and who simplistically claimed (perhaps rattled by the millions of eyeballs glued on her face), inter alia, that "...governments don't create wealth, individuals do..." or that "McCain will not redistribute wealth..." [I asked myself, equating wealth broadly with 'assets' or 'capital': What about companies such as EBay, don't they create wealth? What about all the sovereign wealth funds around the world, what about all the "social overhead capital" which governments routinely build and must build (as argued even by conservative economists), and what about state corporations and kindred entities which governments, even in America, own in part or in whole (or which they, and they alone, make sustainable with preferential contracts, grants or legislation?]
Palin had her good share of Obama-bashing, as did ex-Mayor Rudi Giuliani. And she repeated McCain's claim that she is more experienced than Obama . However, I want to ask: if, as McCain claims, she is more experienced than Obama (than Obama and Biden combined -- some Republicans have interjected), is she (isn't she) then more qualified than McCain too, who has no executive experience at all -- and who clearly chose her in order to diminish the broad Obama-Biden appeal? And if she is more qualified and more of a Washington outsider than Obama, on the basis of what criteria should the voters prefer McCain to Obama?
McCain has been a Washington insider for some 30 years, during which he accumulated no executive experience, Obama for only four years or so. Obama is not running for VP, which Palin is. Like McCain, he is running for President. I think there is a confusion of labels or identities here which, because it is deliberate, is purely Machiavellian and, as politics, very typically Third World (or so we always thought!). Of course, at this point in the "red meat" argument, the pro-McCain camp tends to cite his heroism in the Viet Nam war -- and his contribution to the "surge." But being a former prisoner of war is no substitute for executive experience. More importantly, the US did not win the Viet Nam War, North Viet Nam did -- if I remember my history accurately. And Ho Chi Minh did not execute McCain, which says something about the man, he released him (yes, after holding him for over five years)! And so McCain lived to fight another day -- to fight other kinds of battle.
Will Palin put McCain over the top in the present political battle with one Obama? Will she be the force that ensures that the next US President will be John McCain? I seriously doubt it, for here is where you have to bring in the role of political parties and movements in choosing leaders in different kinds of democracies -- and, in particular, in countries such as USA and (for somewhat different reasons) India, Great Britain and Germany. Ruling parties do have runs at the top, after which a hidden logic of succession -- which has no specific time-frames, but which is driven by a collective memory of wrongs (or wrong turns) and missed opportunities -- kicks in to hand over the reins of power and government to those previously in opposition. All that we have heard and read and seen prior to this convention season suggests that the Republicans, maverick or not, will have a difficult task endeavouring to succeed themselves at the White House. The eight-year record of the Bush (Republican) administration wears heavy on their necks. This will become more and more evident as the Palin euphoria wears out, and as Fall advances toward Winter.
P.S.
1. For the text of Palin's speech, click to the following link: http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=1&subcatid=2&threadid=1313384
2. For videos of Palin's speech, click here for Part 1 >> Video; here for Part 2 >> Part 2 of Video; here for Part 3 >> Part 3 of Video; here for Part 4 >> Part 4 of Video; and here for the final part, Part 5 >> Part 5 of Video.
Showing posts with label Vice President. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vice President. Show all posts
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Barack Obama: Presumptive Presidential Nominee of the Democratic Party
Yesterday, 3rd June 2008, was a truly historic day on many accounts in the United States -- and in Kenya. Dare I add Africa and the world at large? Circumspection, alone, holds me back -- but not my [My! My! My!] exclamation! Since we are hours ahead of America here in Kenya, that moment of glory, when Obama reached and then passed the pivotal total of 2118 pledged delegates and superdelegates, a moment which will be etched indelibly (dare I say for eons?) in the annals of at least two great countries, actually occurred very early this morning -- June 4th. A son of Kenya (for that he is) -- alright, a son of America and Kenya both -- had won a presidential marathon in that same America in which Kenyan runners are so used to winning marathons; and in which Americans are so used to seeing, and cheering, them! Cheers, America! And cheers Jatelo!
While in neighbouring Tanzania on that momentous night, Jesse Jackson aptly noted on CNN (I believe I heard him correctly) that Obama's veins flow with the blood of two continents! And I think he thinks -- as Obama and millions of Democrats and Independents and even some Republicans think -- that the time has, this time, come; come for the dream deferred to be at last lived.
Here in Kenya, where the average political leader is a crook of one kind or another (and/or ring-fenced by crooks with a till to loot), where party primaries (if they are held at all)are typically "won" by those who pay the largest monetary tribute to the leader (under the guise of the party), and where local and national elections are habitually rigged(stress habit), with impunity, in favour of those who have thus won the party leader's favour, is it any wonder that millions of us have been so enthralled by, so suspensefully glued to, Obama's indomitable quest -- first as an underdog and then as the much-maligned front-runner -- and are now so thrilled by his present victory, and the victory which (we see) is to come?
To Kenyans, the most important lesson of Obama's primary victory is this: you can be a successful politician without being a crook. Conversely, crookedness is not at all "genetically" (inescapably) programmed into political forms of life. Nor is mean-spiritedness. And self-centeredness, which invariably breeds self-aggrandizement, should not be a feature, let alone the defining feature, of political ambitions or public life generally.
Crookedness may be the way things are, concretely, here and now in Kenya (and elsewhere); but it is not the way things must be. Nor the only way these things can be. It is not that politicians cannot help themselves, but must lie, cheat and steal. All too often, what is read -- indeed, misread -- as typical is only that which we have refused or failed to check, and have instead irrationally accepted as rational; that is, rationalized. Impunity thrives on such rationalization, even as it sucks out all the creative energies in our field of play.
If Obama should win in November, I think certain politicians, with an attitude and bad habits, here in Kenya (and let me say elsewhere in Africa) will begin to notice that the unrequited public attention and adulation which they have for long enjoyed will begin rapidly to wane. You see, there will be another (more electrifying) standard and standard-bearer to be measured against. There will be another Jatelo whose wholesomeness of character will put a glaring spotlight on the blemishes in these other characters. May he win, then, in November! And may he never deviate from the promise that he has become; the promise that his electorate, and we here, have come to see in him!
Last night Hillary refused to concede, but that's OK. She will, still. What would be obscene, and utterly unacceptable, would be to trade (or to seek to trade) her concession for the Vice Presidency. I have remarked upon her unsuitability in another blog. What transpired last night only reinforces that view.
I know, though, that a trade of that kind(widely hailed as the only escape from civil war) occurred right here in Kenya just a few months ago, following a disputed presidential election which degenerated into widespread inter-ethnic violence. Many observers believe that the violence was in part instigated or encouraged by political leaders, too used to double-speak for our own good, who doubled up as underground warlords. In the latest issue of The East African, a weekly newspaper, there is, instructively, a chilling account of serious arms-smuggling, as late as last March (which was after the February signing of the peace accord between PNU and ODM) from Somalia into Kenya (and into the hands of an unnamed militia group here). AU (Ugandan) peace-keeping forces in Somalia are, disappointingly, implicated in this smuggling. The point here is that this is the very antithesis of Obama's brand of politics, to which the world is now going to have to pay attention. But does Hillary want to emulate Kenyan politicians, having recently made reference to Mugabe's bad ways?
While in neighbouring Tanzania on that momentous night, Jesse Jackson aptly noted on CNN (I believe I heard him correctly) that Obama's veins flow with the blood of two continents! And I think he thinks -- as Obama and millions of Democrats and Independents and even some Republicans think -- that the time has, this time, come; come for the dream deferred to be at last lived.
Here in Kenya, where the average political leader is a crook of one kind or another (and/or ring-fenced by crooks with a till to loot), where party primaries (if they are held at all)are typically "won" by those who pay the largest monetary tribute to the leader (under the guise of the party), and where local and national elections are habitually rigged(stress habit), with impunity, in favour of those who have thus won the party leader's favour, is it any wonder that millions of us have been so enthralled by, so suspensefully glued to, Obama's indomitable quest -- first as an underdog and then as the much-maligned front-runner -- and are now so thrilled by his present victory, and the victory which (we see) is to come?
To Kenyans, the most important lesson of Obama's primary victory is this: you can be a successful politician without being a crook. Conversely, crookedness is not at all "genetically" (inescapably) programmed into political forms of life. Nor is mean-spiritedness. And self-centeredness, which invariably breeds self-aggrandizement, should not be a feature, let alone the defining feature, of political ambitions or public life generally.
Crookedness may be the way things are, concretely, here and now in Kenya (and elsewhere); but it is not the way things must be. Nor the only way these things can be. It is not that politicians cannot help themselves, but must lie, cheat and steal. All too often, what is read -- indeed, misread -- as typical is only that which we have refused or failed to check, and have instead irrationally accepted as rational; that is, rationalized. Impunity thrives on such rationalization, even as it sucks out all the creative energies in our field of play.
If Obama should win in November, I think certain politicians, with an attitude and bad habits, here in Kenya (and let me say elsewhere in Africa) will begin to notice that the unrequited public attention and adulation which they have for long enjoyed will begin rapidly to wane. You see, there will be another (more electrifying) standard and standard-bearer to be measured against. There will be another Jatelo whose wholesomeness of character will put a glaring spotlight on the blemishes in these other characters. May he win, then, in November! And may he never deviate from the promise that he has become; the promise that his electorate, and we here, have come to see in him!
Last night Hillary refused to concede, but that's OK. She will, still. What would be obscene, and utterly unacceptable, would be to trade (or to seek to trade) her concession for the Vice Presidency. I have remarked upon her unsuitability in another blog. What transpired last night only reinforces that view.
I know, though, that a trade of that kind(widely hailed as the only escape from civil war) occurred right here in Kenya just a few months ago, following a disputed presidential election which degenerated into widespread inter-ethnic violence. Many observers believe that the violence was in part instigated or encouraged by political leaders, too used to double-speak for our own good, who doubled up as underground warlords. In the latest issue of The East African, a weekly newspaper, there is, instructively, a chilling account of serious arms-smuggling, as late as last March (which was after the February signing of the peace accord between PNU and ODM) from Somalia into Kenya (and into the hands of an unnamed militia group here). AU (Ugandan) peace-keeping forces in Somalia are, disappointingly, implicated in this smuggling. The point here is that this is the very antithesis of Obama's brand of politics, to which the world is now going to have to pay attention. But does Hillary want to emulate Kenyan politicians, having recently made reference to Mugabe's bad ways?
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Hillary Clinton for VP?
With the campaign season winding down for this year's nomination of the Democratic Party's flag-bearer, media attention has increasingly turned to the question of who is to be the Presidential nominee's running-mate. That nominee is most certainly now going to be Barack Obama, but is Hillary Clinton a suitable nominee for Vice President?
Many arguments have been put forth in the print and electronic media (including the blogosphere) in support of her nomination as the party's candidate for VP. Let us recall a few. Some argue, even insist, that this is the only way that her millions of ardent supporters -- women, working-class whites and older (baby-boomer) voters -- will vote for the Democratic ticket. Related to that, others point out that if she is not part of the ticket, then she (or the Clinton family as a whole)will not campaign with any enthusiasm for their party's nominee. As an aside, it is pointed out that Al Gore lost to Bush II in 2000 at least in part because he did not make full use of the magic of Brand Clinton.
Moreover, since she has proven to be "more electable" than Obama, she cannot simply be ignored. Indeed, Obama's impending victory at the party's convention in August will be a hollow one, it is argued, because he has failed to win the swing (or red) states which a Democrat must win in the general elections this November to enter the White House. These states include West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio -- not to mention the other must-win states such as California and New York, both of which Hillary also won. And if Florida and Michigan votes were to be discounted, and their delegates not fully seated or not seated at all at the Democratic convention, then the party would essentially be giving the nod to an impostor whom the voters will duly reject in November. So the argument goes, notwithstanding the fact that Obama has so far actually won more states, more pledged delegates and more popular votes, and is leading in the superdelegate-count. In fact, his lead is mathematically insurmountable for Hillary.
Hillary insists that she is not a quitter, and that she will fight until the party officially has a nominee, before which the matter of Florida and Michigan must be resolved. Even before it is, however, she is already claiming to have the majority of the popular votes cast -- that is, when you include, yes, Florida and Michigan. Despite party rules and tradition which give the nod based on delegates, not popular votes, she would like to rewrite the rules and the tradidion, presumably just for this campaign season, to have as the criterion for nomination the majority of popular votes cast. Conveniently ignored, for the moment is that though Gore led Bush by some 500,000 popular votes in 2002, Bush became president because the law gives the nod to the candidate who has the majority of votes in the electoral college, adding up to some 270 votes -- not the popular votes.
Lately, however, Hillary has begun publicly to acknowledge that the odds of her winning the nomination are slim, but she fights on. However, some in her campaign team have begun pushing for her nomination for VP. Even her husband, Bill Clinton, has begun quietly to spearhead the campaign for the number two slot for her. He is doing so while insisting that she is the one the party should nominate for President if it is to have any reasonable hope of returning to the White House after the November election.
Many in Obama's camp, and many non-partisan commentators, have a different view. They believe that Hillary's negative poll-rating (lately in the upper 60s), partly related to her campaign style, her years as a Washington insider and her husband's record in the White House, would be a real drag on Obama's campaign and Presidence -- predicated as it is on change ("Change You Can Believe In"). It would represent, so the argument goes, a return of sorts of the Clintons (and related scandals)to the White House. Obama would not be his own man -- the Clintons would constantly try to upstage him, and Bill would continue to speak, in calculated but always deniable ways, out of turn. In effect, he would be an elephant who would soon run out of China -- and run Obama out of the China Shop (the White House); but none too soon for Hillary to launch her campaign for 2012.
The notion that Obama needs Hillary for victory in November must be interrogated in context. Yes, JFK chose LBJ as his running-mate in 1960, despite the viciousness of that nomination season. The duo did win, but to say that they were not real buddies is to understate it. Kennedy was assassinated in Texas (only incidentally Johnsons' home-state)in 1963, and Johnson became President. He was sworn into office while airborne -- somewhere between Dallas and Washington, D.C. -- on the same Air Force One that was returning the slain President's body back to Washington, D.C.
Johnson and RFK did not see eye-to-eye -- at all, it seems -- and there are many who would argue that the blame for this must be apportioned equally. Johnson won the 1964 Presidential election with a landslide, with Hubert Humphrey (not RFK) as his running-mate, for his own full term. He was entitled to stand again in 1968, but chose not to after (after, as many observers might insist) RFK declared his own candidacy. And then, of course, RFK was assassinated, in California. Johnson did not change his mind about standing -- probably weighed down by the Viet Nam war.
Hillary has lately used RFK's assassination as one reason for her continued campaign for the Democratic nomination. This has sparked off a firestorm. But she pleads innocence, arguing that she harbours no macabre wishes. This, her campaign insists, is not one of the big thunderbolts from the blue sky -- bigger than Obama's comments about "bitter" (and presumably mostly white) rural folk who cling to religion, guns and even bigotry; and bigger than Rev. Wright's rantings -- she had on her mind which might strike Obama and force him out of the race. She needed to be there, as an active candidate, when that hopefully happened -- lest some other (less worthy? less entitled?)candidate jump into the fray. It was, rather, merely a factual but probably ill-considered reference to how long earlier contests (including her own husband's in 1992)have lasted. Ill-considered in May even, as it turns out, after she had made the same reference last March!
I think Hillary and Bill are too selfishly calculating for her to be Obama's running-mate. It seems that they would accept the VP slot only because it would further their interest; and that interest does not necessarily include Obama's victory in November 2008, or possible re-election in 2012. In fact, his victory would be her final loss -- and Bill's. So who says that as nominee for Vice President she would campaign energetically for the ticket's victory this November. And even if they were to win in November, what assurance is there that there would be no persistent attempts to handicap Obama in order to ensure her own ascendancy in 2012? I think that this kind of thinking must have informed LBJ's choice of a running-mate for the 1964 elections.
There are pundits who point out that the Clintons did not fully involve themselves in Al Gore's presidential bid in 2000 -- though, in their view, it was Gore who chose to keep Bill on the sidelines. Probably there is some truth in that -- the same truth which explains why McCain is not too keen to have Bush II publicly involved in his campaign. Other pundits claim that the Clintons were not really enthusiastic about Kerry's bid in 2004, either. In both campaigns, it is pointed out, Hillary's own presidential ambitions could only be furthered by Gore's and then Kerry's failures.
Now, available evidence amply shows that these ambitions of Hillary's were alive and kicking even while the Clintons were still in the White House. I may add that they probably give the definitive reason why she did not leave Bill (and the White House) after the Lewinski scandal. To do so would have been to abandon her own self-constructed future, a future which Obama out of nowhere now stands in the way of -- insolently, disrespectful of proper pecking order.
Let me illustrate my own unease with Hillary being Number Two with the contents of an excerpt from Sally Bedell Smith's book For Love of Politics which appeared in the Vanity Fair edition of November 2007 [the book itself was scheduled for publication in February, 2008]. I have read the excerpt,not yet the book. What does Smith say? Despite some kind of written "pre-nuptial" between Bill the President and Gore the Vice President, Hillary invariably stood in the way; "She was the absolutely necessary person he had to have to bounce things up against, and he was that for her." So the constitutional two-some of President and Vice President became a three-some, with Hillary's inclusion in the making of all major decisions. No wonder she claims to have the experience which Obama does not have -- and which David Gergen, a Presidential advisor, considered then a "rolling disaster".
Smith notes, however, that Hillary's political life reached a milestone on November 6, 1998 -- the day Senator Moynihan declared that he would not seek a fifth term in November 2000 as a Senator from New York. Since the Clintons had already been eying that seat for months, it took her only a few days after the announcement to decide that she would run for that seat. Smith adds that as a sitting President, Bill was in a unique position to boost his vice-president's candidacy, "But in 1999 those resources were diverted from Gore to Hillary 'in a big way'" -- and, Governor Mario Cuomo had noted then, the "implications for Gore [were] very serious."
"Not only was Hillary unavailable as a campaigner" for Gore, Smith says, "she was poaching top Democratic fund-raisers and donors who would normally concentrate on the vice president" -- who had announced his own run for President in June 1999 (while the Clinton family was away in Europe). And even before Hillary's senate campaign officially kicked off, she had on one occasion insisted on being invited to a Gore fund-raiser organized by Gore's wife Tipper and her friends in Los Angeles. She was, only to ask for donations for herself from the same audience -- in front of Tipper! That was not to be the end of her, and Bill's, mean-spiritedness.
Smith observes that Bill's behaviour throughout 2000, the last year of his own presidency, "betrayed ambivalence about a Gore victory, at least one earned on the vice president's own terms." This behaviour manifested itself in "making passive-aggressive remarks, belittling Gore in private, grabbing the spotlight with his own star turns, and continuing to argue his innocence in various scandals."
And Hillary's own Senate campaign interests increasingly collided with Gore's presidential ambitions, as was dramatized in September 2000 in a tussle over who should publicize the Federal Trade Commission's report on violence in the media -- the First Lady running for Senate, or the Vice President running for President. To beat her to a limelight which she insisted on sharing -- if necessary, a negotiated sharing -- Gore and Lieberman (his running mate) secretly arranged a New York Times newsbreak, which appeared in the morning of the same September 11 when the FTC report was scheduled for release.
On election night in November 2000, Hillary won her Senate fight, while Gore embarked on a month-long "political purgatory" on account of the Florida recount, which eventually gave Busth the presidency. But, "Almost immediately [after Hillary's victory, and presumably before the Florida recount was completed] the rumors started about a Hillary presidential candidacy in 2004 or 2008," Smith points out.
As I have followed the contest during this primary season on TV and the Internet, and in the print media, I have come to the conclusion that, like many others, that Obama must look for another running-mate. If Hillary wants to be president, it shouldn\t be on Obama's stabbed back. She can leave him alone to fail on his own this November. Then she will be free try her luck again in 2012. I have seen a list of 5 or so perfectly capable running-mates for Obama.
Many arguments have been put forth in the print and electronic media (including the blogosphere) in support of her nomination as the party's candidate for VP. Let us recall a few. Some argue, even insist, that this is the only way that her millions of ardent supporters -- women, working-class whites and older (baby-boomer) voters -- will vote for the Democratic ticket. Related to that, others point out that if she is not part of the ticket, then she (or the Clinton family as a whole)will not campaign with any enthusiasm for their party's nominee. As an aside, it is pointed out that Al Gore lost to Bush II in 2000 at least in part because he did not make full use of the magic of Brand Clinton.
Moreover, since she has proven to be "more electable" than Obama, she cannot simply be ignored. Indeed, Obama's impending victory at the party's convention in August will be a hollow one, it is argued, because he has failed to win the swing (or red) states which a Democrat must win in the general elections this November to enter the White House. These states include West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio -- not to mention the other must-win states such as California and New York, both of which Hillary also won. And if Florida and Michigan votes were to be discounted, and their delegates not fully seated or not seated at all at the Democratic convention, then the party would essentially be giving the nod to an impostor whom the voters will duly reject in November. So the argument goes, notwithstanding the fact that Obama has so far actually won more states, more pledged delegates and more popular votes, and is leading in the superdelegate-count. In fact, his lead is mathematically insurmountable for Hillary.
Hillary insists that she is not a quitter, and that she will fight until the party officially has a nominee, before which the matter of Florida and Michigan must be resolved. Even before it is, however, she is already claiming to have the majority of the popular votes cast -- that is, when you include, yes, Florida and Michigan. Despite party rules and tradition which give the nod based on delegates, not popular votes, she would like to rewrite the rules and the tradidion, presumably just for this campaign season, to have as the criterion for nomination the majority of popular votes cast. Conveniently ignored, for the moment is that though Gore led Bush by some 500,000 popular votes in 2002, Bush became president because the law gives the nod to the candidate who has the majority of votes in the electoral college, adding up to some 270 votes -- not the popular votes.
Lately, however, Hillary has begun publicly to acknowledge that the odds of her winning the nomination are slim, but she fights on. However, some in her campaign team have begun pushing for her nomination for VP. Even her husband, Bill Clinton, has begun quietly to spearhead the campaign for the number two slot for her. He is doing so while insisting that she is the one the party should nominate for President if it is to have any reasonable hope of returning to the White House after the November election.
Many in Obama's camp, and many non-partisan commentators, have a different view. They believe that Hillary's negative poll-rating (lately in the upper 60s), partly related to her campaign style, her years as a Washington insider and her husband's record in the White House, would be a real drag on Obama's campaign and Presidence -- predicated as it is on change ("Change You Can Believe In"). It would represent, so the argument goes, a return of sorts of the Clintons (and related scandals)to the White House. Obama would not be his own man -- the Clintons would constantly try to upstage him, and Bill would continue to speak, in calculated but always deniable ways, out of turn. In effect, he would be an elephant who would soon run out of China -- and run Obama out of the China Shop (the White House); but none too soon for Hillary to launch her campaign for 2012.
The notion that Obama needs Hillary for victory in November must be interrogated in context. Yes, JFK chose LBJ as his running-mate in 1960, despite the viciousness of that nomination season. The duo did win, but to say that they were not real buddies is to understate it. Kennedy was assassinated in Texas (only incidentally Johnsons' home-state)in 1963, and Johnson became President. He was sworn into office while airborne -- somewhere between Dallas and Washington, D.C. -- on the same Air Force One that was returning the slain President's body back to Washington, D.C.
Johnson and RFK did not see eye-to-eye -- at all, it seems -- and there are many who would argue that the blame for this must be apportioned equally. Johnson won the 1964 Presidential election with a landslide, with Hubert Humphrey (not RFK) as his running-mate, for his own full term. He was entitled to stand again in 1968, but chose not to after (after, as many observers might insist) RFK declared his own candidacy. And then, of course, RFK was assassinated, in California. Johnson did not change his mind about standing -- probably weighed down by the Viet Nam war.
Hillary has lately used RFK's assassination as one reason for her continued campaign for the Democratic nomination. This has sparked off a firestorm. But she pleads innocence, arguing that she harbours no macabre wishes. This, her campaign insists, is not one of the big thunderbolts from the blue sky -- bigger than Obama's comments about "bitter" (and presumably mostly white) rural folk who cling to religion, guns and even bigotry; and bigger than Rev. Wright's rantings -- she had on her mind which might strike Obama and force him out of the race. She needed to be there, as an active candidate, when that hopefully happened -- lest some other (less worthy? less entitled?)candidate jump into the fray. It was, rather, merely a factual but probably ill-considered reference to how long earlier contests (including her own husband's in 1992)have lasted. Ill-considered in May even, as it turns out, after she had made the same reference last March!
I think Hillary and Bill are too selfishly calculating for her to be Obama's running-mate. It seems that they would accept the VP slot only because it would further their interest; and that interest does not necessarily include Obama's victory in November 2008, or possible re-election in 2012. In fact, his victory would be her final loss -- and Bill's. So who says that as nominee for Vice President she would campaign energetically for the ticket's victory this November. And even if they were to win in November, what assurance is there that there would be no persistent attempts to handicap Obama in order to ensure her own ascendancy in 2012? I think that this kind of thinking must have informed LBJ's choice of a running-mate for the 1964 elections.
There are pundits who point out that the Clintons did not fully involve themselves in Al Gore's presidential bid in 2000 -- though, in their view, it was Gore who chose to keep Bill on the sidelines. Probably there is some truth in that -- the same truth which explains why McCain is not too keen to have Bush II publicly involved in his campaign. Other pundits claim that the Clintons were not really enthusiastic about Kerry's bid in 2004, either. In both campaigns, it is pointed out, Hillary's own presidential ambitions could only be furthered by Gore's and then Kerry's failures.
Now, available evidence amply shows that these ambitions of Hillary's were alive and kicking even while the Clintons were still in the White House. I may add that they probably give the definitive reason why she did not leave Bill (and the White House) after the Lewinski scandal. To do so would have been to abandon her own self-constructed future, a future which Obama out of nowhere now stands in the way of -- insolently, disrespectful of proper pecking order.
Let me illustrate my own unease with Hillary being Number Two with the contents of an excerpt from Sally Bedell Smith's book For Love of Politics which appeared in the Vanity Fair edition of November 2007 [the book itself was scheduled for publication in February, 2008]. I have read the excerpt,not yet the book. What does Smith say? Despite some kind of written "pre-nuptial" between Bill the President and Gore the Vice President, Hillary invariably stood in the way; "She was the absolutely necessary person he had to have to bounce things up against, and he was that for her." So the constitutional two-some of President and Vice President became a three-some, with Hillary's inclusion in the making of all major decisions. No wonder she claims to have the experience which Obama does not have -- and which David Gergen, a Presidential advisor, considered then a "rolling disaster".
Smith notes, however, that Hillary's political life reached a milestone on November 6, 1998 -- the day Senator Moynihan declared that he would not seek a fifth term in November 2000 as a Senator from New York. Since the Clintons had already been eying that seat for months, it took her only a few days after the announcement to decide that she would run for that seat. Smith adds that as a sitting President, Bill was in a unique position to boost his vice-president's candidacy, "But in 1999 those resources were diverted from Gore to Hillary 'in a big way'" -- and, Governor Mario Cuomo had noted then, the "implications for Gore [were] very serious."
"Not only was Hillary unavailable as a campaigner" for Gore, Smith says, "she was poaching top Democratic fund-raisers and donors who would normally concentrate on the vice president" -- who had announced his own run for President in June 1999 (while the Clinton family was away in Europe). And even before Hillary's senate campaign officially kicked off, she had on one occasion insisted on being invited to a Gore fund-raiser organized by Gore's wife Tipper and her friends in Los Angeles. She was, only to ask for donations for herself from the same audience -- in front of Tipper! That was not to be the end of her, and Bill's, mean-spiritedness.
Smith observes that Bill's behaviour throughout 2000, the last year of his own presidency, "betrayed ambivalence about a Gore victory, at least one earned on the vice president's own terms." This behaviour manifested itself in "making passive-aggressive remarks, belittling Gore in private, grabbing the spotlight with his own star turns, and continuing to argue his innocence in various scandals."
And Hillary's own Senate campaign interests increasingly collided with Gore's presidential ambitions, as was dramatized in September 2000 in a tussle over who should publicize the Federal Trade Commission's report on violence in the media -- the First Lady running for Senate, or the Vice President running for President. To beat her to a limelight which she insisted on sharing -- if necessary, a negotiated sharing -- Gore and Lieberman (his running mate) secretly arranged a New York Times newsbreak, which appeared in the morning of the same September 11 when the FTC report was scheduled for release.
On election night in November 2000, Hillary won her Senate fight, while Gore embarked on a month-long "political purgatory" on account of the Florida recount, which eventually gave Busth the presidency. But, "Almost immediately [after Hillary's victory, and presumably before the Florida recount was completed] the rumors started about a Hillary presidential candidacy in 2004 or 2008," Smith points out.
As I have followed the contest during this primary season on TV and the Internet, and in the print media, I have come to the conclusion that, like many others, that Obama must look for another running-mate. If Hillary wants to be president, it shouldn\t be on Obama's stabbed back. She can leave him alone to fail on his own this November. Then she will be free try her luck again in 2012. I have seen a list of 5 or so perfectly capable running-mates for Obama.
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