Four reasons I could never vote for Hillary

I decided long ago that I could never cast a vote for Hillary Clinton under any circumstance, and every day as I watch her campaign, she reaffirms my decision.

I fancy myself an independent thinker, but I must confess I've voted for the Democratic nominee in every election since I was 18. But I couldn't if Hillary Clinton was the nominee.

Here are four reasons:

1) She has exhibited tremendously bad judgement. Barack Obama likes to cast Sen. Clinton’s vote on the Iraq war as an issue of judgment. He’s right but her bad judgment doesn’t end there. It is merely one of many examples on display.

Let’s start with her campaign. As it turns out, she had no plans or money to carry her beyond Super Tuesday. She was so sure that she would have the nomination wrapped up that she didn’t prepare for an alternative scenario. What breathtakingly bad judgment? Even if she believed with all her heart that she would dispose of Obama early, competent management demands that she prepare a Plan B. That’s almost as bad as George Bush going into war without a contingency in the “unlikely” event the US was not greeted as liberators. There is no excuse for blowing your treasure chest on donut runs in Iowa and forgetting that Louisiana was coming. Bad judgment.

The health care debacle is another spectacular example. She likes to announce that she’s learned from her mistakes on health care, and she has the scars to prove it. Problem is, those scars were avoidable. She learned that it was a bad idea to try to create the plan in secret? She learned that it was a mistake to exclude all of the people from the process who would be most affected by the outcome? Why did she need to learn those simple lessons the hard way? This was Leadership 101. You have to get buy in from your stake holders. The fact that she couldn’t sell a health care bill to a Democratic congress and president (with whom she has the ultimate leverage) is not the industry lobby’s fault, it is her own incompetent sense of judgment.

2) She seems to have a penchant for operating in secrecy. I could easily point to the health care debacle to make that point, but looking at two other glaring examples will suffice: her tax records and the records from her office as first lady. Both she has refused to release for no obvious reason. Failure to release her tax records is problematic because she had to dip into her own purse to lend her campaign $5 million. That’s a lot of cheese, and if it is fueling her campaign, the public ought to know where she got it. But, she has decided not to release it until the general election. Huh? It’s an issue now, but she won’t release it now. Other candidates routinely do, to include Barack Obama. If you have nothing to hide, quit hiding.

Her records as first lady are relevant because she is using that time as her chief argument for her fitness to lead. For the life of me, I don’t understand why Barack Obama isn’t making more hay of this issue. In the eight years that she was first lady, the only thing she led was the health care issue, and we remember how she mangled that. So what else did she actually lead? She won’t say or release records to substantiate. If she claimed to be the architect of the Clinton Welfare to Work plan, we could see if her schedule supported that she was in key meetings on the subject. If she says she wasn’t involved in NAFTA, we could see if she was actually in the room. It’s called accountability and apparently she’s having none of it.

The records are also important because nobody from the Clinton administration is volunteering to corroborate her alibi that she was influential in a helpful way. You’d think if she was so involved in every major decision, the secretary of the treasury would be happy to give us details of how Hillary Clinton helped to muscle through the agenda that led to the budget surplus. How she showed steely resolve on the Kosovo issue. But to my knowledge NOT ONE Clinton cabinet member has stepped forward to volunteer how Hillary Clinton contributed in a positive way to any of the administration’s accomplishments. Not one. You learn just as much from what people don’t say as from what they say.

3) Character. This is really the main reason I couldn’t cast a ballot for the senator. She continues to prove herself to be less than honest and forthright on a host of issues. Take the vote to authorize the war. She wants us to believe that she was authorizing diplomacy. That she had no idea the president intended on waging war. She’s clearly not that naive and neither am I. She voted that way because that reflected the mood of the country, and she didn’t want to be out of step with the herd. When popular sentiment swings the other way, she pivoted with it. If you want to pander, fine. Just be honest about it.

Her willingness to say or do anything to win is showcased in her behavior on the Michigan and Florida primary issue. She set up and agreed to a rule that she would not campaign or accept delegates from those states and then put her name on the ballot. She then tries to make the argument that the votes should be counted. It’s grossly unfair, and she knows it. Just because Howard Dean is too much of a ninny to call her on it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t. One of the first tenets of any honor code is that you keep your word. To blatantly circumvent your own commitments is a reflection of a person’s character.

4) Her attempt to marginalize Barack Obama because of his race. The South Carolina stain was the straw that did it for me. We winced when her campaign chair tried to paint Barack Obama as a drug dealer. He left the campaign, although for that she should have been fired. (It’s a distinction that would not have been lost had she done it.) But when Bubba was down south and persisted in using racial codes to dismiss Barack Obama, that really pissed me off. Anyone who grew up in the south knew exactly what Bill Clinton was doing. We’d seen it a million times before. (ask Harold Ford) And through all that time, she expressed not one word of remorse. Instead, she tried to convince us that Bob Johnson wasn’t talking about drugs or Bill Clinton meant nothing about Dr. King. Or we didn’t really understand the Jesse Jackson statement. We understood it all perfectly. It’s the reason Black people went for Obama in droves after that. She did more to shore up Obama’s standing with Black people than he could have probably done on his own. It’s bad enough to play the white card, but to do it while holding out the novelty of your being female, adds a a new layer to your hypocrisy.

There you have it. Bad judgment. Poor character. Secretive nature. Cowardly in the face of injustice. Any one of them by themselves could disqualify her but all four? Never could I pull the lever in her support. Never.

And he wins the name game, too...

Just when you thought she'd lost enough, this just in.

Barack has been crowned name of the year for 2008 from the web site that tracks the popularity of names. Barack means blessing in Arabic and Swahili, but it seems parents who speak English want some of that namely charm.

The name Hillary was ranked 982.

I feel for Hillary Clinton. Pity, that is.

Pity.

That's what I feel for Hillary Clinton now.

Think back just a few months when Hillary Clinton, wearing the sheen of her so-called inevitability, crowed that all the guys were attacking her because she was ahead.

Contrast that with the grasping during the last week. First there is the angry, "shame on you" rant. Then there was the sarcastic mocking of his speaking style. Then to the strident tone. In none did she look presidential. She looked petty, silly, and desperate.

I pity her because in some respects she really didn't have much of a choice. Having exhausted every possible rationale for her presidency and been rejected by voters in 11 straight outings, she has no choice but to villainize her opponent.

Negative politics is not a new thing, and it's not news for someone to use that strategy when they are behind (as Hillary once instructed us), but she's attacking over silly things. Plagiarizing your campaign co-chair? Change you can Xerox? He gives good speeches? He's scared to debate me -- in Wisconsin? Shame on you?! If she has all the so-called experience and judgment, is that the best you can find to use against a supposed neophyte?

Hillary is up against the wall, and everyone knows it. Her husband even announced that if she doesn't win Texas, she can't win the nomination. If she loses Texas, how often will we have to hear that sound byte replayed?

That's a real possibility that Hillary will have to face that outcome and her husband's words because the polls in Texas have tightened to a statistical tie. She's gotta do something. I can understand why she'd be upset, but I don't feel bad for her. Just pity.

Beyond day one

We've all heard Hillary Clinton's oft-repeated mantra: ready to lead on day one. Last night, Barack finally offered a response: right on day one. I'd offer a different one: beyond day one.

The crux of Hillary Clinton's campaign message betrays a reactive leadership style. She reminds us there will be a stack of problems on the desk of the oval office when the new president arrives, and that she is best suited to delve into them. However she offers no higher principles of leadership or governing other than that she's "been there" before.

Leadership is about more then responding to the challenges of the day, it is about creating the world of tomorrow.

Barak Obama's appeal is beyond the desk. The lofty ideal of changing the way we view our government and the world views us. I'd suggest this is the time to look upward, beyond the desk, beyond day one.

Some people see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not?
George Bernard Shaw

The mute Chelsea...

Love this line from Maureen Dowd...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/opinion/23dowd.html?ex=1358830800&en=39ab771d166ef64c&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Bill's transition from elder statesman, leader of his party and bipartisan ambassador to ward heeler and hatchet man has been seamless — and seamy.

After Bill's success trolling the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, Hillary handed off South Carolina and flew to California and other Super Tuesday states. The Big Dog relished playing the candidate again, wearing a Technicolor orange tie and sweeping across the state with the mute Chelsea

That's too funny. I've been wondering why I see Chelsea everywhere and have never heard her voice once.