Gov. Sarah Palin Meets Kissinger and Heads of State in the City

Gov. Palin met with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. (Photo: Stan Honda/ AFP-Getty Images, via NY Times)

It doesn’t seem that long ago since anti-war candidate Barack Obama, shamed by the Republicans into traveling to Iraq for the first time, bolstered his negligible foreign policy credentials by a trip abroad last summer. Obama’s handlers, gifted in the art of stagecraft, pulled out all the stops in the Middle East and Europe and have since resorted to such props as a fake presidential seal and Greek pillars to give their man a touch of gravitas.

This week it’s Sarah Palin’s turn to get acquainted with foreign leaders during a visit to New York that has included an extended meeting with Henry Kissinger.

The Boston Globe’s Farah Stockman writes in Political Intel:

“NEW YORK -- Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin threw herself into a crash course in diplomacy at the United Nations today, beginning her first of two days of meetings with foreign leaders.

“The meetings with Palin, who had never met a foreign head of state before and who traveled outside of North America for the first time last year, were designed to bolster her foreign policy credentials and introduce her to close US allies with whom she would work if she became vice president.

“But the carefully orchestrated visits also highlighted the degree to which John McCain's presidential campaign will go to shield the first-term Alaska governor from the press. Until CNN threatened to withdraw its pool camera crew, Palin's aides initially banned reporters, who are traditionally allowed to briefly view private diplomatic meetings that are being photographed, and are sometimes allowed to ask a question.

‘“Palin -- who was escorted by Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, and Steve Biegun, a former National Security Council member -- met with Afghan president Hamid Karzai today for about a half hour. He said later at the Asia Society, ‘I found her quite a capable woman. She asked the right questions on Afghanistan. She was concerned and she said how can she help, so I'm very pleased with that meeting.’

Read more.

Video: Another Heartwarming Tribute to Hillary Clinton from Geeklove

Go here to watch another heartwarming video tribute to Hillary Clinton by Geeklove.

Washington Post Calls Foul on Obama

After mentioning that Obama began his response to Benazir Bhutto’s death by asserting that he’d been saying for sometime that we had a big problem in Pakistan, an editorial in today’s Washington Post blasts Obama for his reprehensible attack on Hillary Clinton:

Then Mr. Obama committed his foul -- a far-fetched attempt to connect the killing of Ms. Bhutto with Ms. Clinton's vote on the war in Iraq. After the candidate made the debatable assertion that the Iraq invasion strengthened al-Qaeda in Pakistan, his spokesman, David Axelrod, said Ms. Clinton "was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, which we would submit was one of the reasons why we were diverted from Afghanistan, Pakistan and al-Qaeda, who may have been players in the event today."

When questioned later about his spokesman's remarks, Mr. Obama stiffly defended them -- while still failing to offer any substantive response to the ongoing crisis. Is this Mr. Obama's way of rejecting "the same Washington game" he lambasted earlier in the day? If so, his game doesn't look very new, or attractive.

As my recent posts indicate, Katalusis would agree.

More Misogyny Than Racism in 2008 Campaign

It’s sad to be discussing the frequency of misogynist attacks against Hillary Clinton compared to the racist slurs against Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign. This tells us what a long way Americans have yet to go to overcome the twin evils of misogyny and racism in a nation some have described as “a shining city on a hill,” begging the question, for whom?

In today’s Huffington Post, Marie Wilson reports:

Monday should have been a great day for Senator Hillary Clinton, as she worked to regain her footing and momentum in the Iowa Caucuses. She appeared on NBC's Today Show to showcase a hard fought endorsement by the Des Moines Register and Tribune. While being interviewed, she flashed on the screen with a wide grin that was hard to maintain after a grilling that was out of proportion to the occasion (and I have not complained about the press treatment of Senator Clinton heretofore). But my afternoon was shaken by an article by Jonathan Tilove, a National Correspondent for the Newhouse News Service, citing a Web search, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, had conducted to look for "racist invective" aimed at Senator Obama

What she found was a mess of misogyny directed towards Senator Clinton that was far more distressing. Read More.

The above-noted misogyny might possibly explain why there has been so little coverage in the MSM and blogosphere about the American Research Group’s findings in its latest poll in Iowa (released Dec. 24, 2007) showing Clinton in a commanding lead over Edwards and Obama.

The Significance of Likeability in the 2008 Campaign

Mark Shields’ likeability rating plummeted for this viewer with last Friday’s edition of the NewsHour. The affable given-to-stammering Shields is the liberal counterpart to the smooth-talking conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Judy Woodruff opened the Shields-Brooks weekly news analysis by asking what the latest Washington Post-ABC presidential poll in Iowa said about the contest — beginning with the Democrats.

Shields meandered his way to announcing the final poll results showing Obama in a statistical tie with Clinton before he moved into those “internals,” which, in Shields’ estimation, clearly indicate that Obama and Edwards are seen as more likeable than Clinton.

Our liberal guy pontificated as follows:

“And I think you can make the case, the Democrats lost two presidential elections to George W. Bush where their nominees, John Kerry and Al Gore, were both seen as more intelligent, knowledgeable, and in Al Gore's case, far more experienced than George W. Bush.

“But George W. Bush won, I believe, in both cases because he was seen as more steadfast in his beliefs and convictions, more honest, and more likeable. And I think Democrats, there's a certain sense among some that they've seen this movie before, where their candidate failing on the likeability, honesty, straightforward question becomes a problem.”

Brooks was quick to agree with Shields that the above should be a “significant worry” for Clinton.

Neither analyst — both displaying the smugness of male superiority — reminded viewers of the public’s current perception of George W. Bush, the latest polls showing Bush as perhaps the least trusted and most demonstrably incompetent president in our nation’s history.

And of course, neither of the NewsHour’s political gurus suggested it might be wise for the electorate this time around to consider a few weightier qualifications for the highest office in the land than this choice description of candidate Bush: “He’s a guy you could enjoy swilling a beer with from time to time.”

The deja vu was suffocating.

My inaugural post for Katalusis in late August was titled Charm versus Substance in which I reached back to the 2000 campaign to quote pollster John Zogby from a typical NewsHour transcript:

Zogby opined: “Well, I think basically if you go back to 1988, that's the classic example. Dukakis never really built up his likeability, therefore it was easy to knock him down. But America likes George W. Bush. They seem to like what they see. And at the same time, they don't like Al Gore very much.”

From the 2004 campaign, I grabbed this quote from a NewsHour transcript featuring Shields and Brooks:

Shields comments: “I’d add one more thing: George Bush’s likeability edge, which I think everybody acknowledges over John Kerry, and his congeniality and just his naturalness were bigger assets in 2000 than they are in 2004.”

In the same post, I noted that in 2004, the American electorate allowed charm to trump substance once again by electing Bush to a second term, but I added that according to the latest polls, charm had worn out its welcome in the White House.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post recently concurred in his post in The Trail last Wednesday titled What Happened to Liking the Candidate You Support? Balz noted that both Giuliani and Clinton, national frontrunners for their respective parties, scored lower than their rivals on likeability in the latest Washington Post-ABC poll. But Balz points out that in the same poll, both Giuliani and Clinton were seen as being the strongest leaders in their fields.

Balz has stumbled around a lot in covering this campaign, but he finally reaches the conclusion I’d reached earlier in interpreting Clinton’s lead: “In part, what voters may be reflecting is a reaction to what they have seen over the past eight years. Given Bush's low approval rating and the harsh assessments of the administration's competence in managing the war in Iraq and the Katrina aftermath, there's no doubt that voters are looking for more than likeability in their chief executive. "

Yeah. Qualities such as competence; responsibility to all the people, not just her or his base, gravitas, etc.

One can only hope that pundits such as Brooks and Shields will eventually catch up, as Balz evidently has, with the maturing of the American electorate.

The Conservatives’ Veneration of Masochism

It’d been awhile since I last gave Margaret Thatcher a thought, although I may have caught a glimpse of her on TV at Reagan’s funeral (See her on YouTube from this site). Recently, her name has been popping up in the US presidential campaign in comparison to Hillary Clinton. In one of Giulani’s bizarre, convoluted attempts to ally himself with a conservative stalwart, he loudly asserted that “Clinton was no Iron Lady.”

Amplifying Giuliani’s sentiments, an article by Peggy Noonan appeared yesterday in the WSJ Opinion Journal titled: Things Are Tough All Over, But Mrs. Clinton is no Iron Lady.

According to Noonan’s detailed, rhapsodic description of Thatcher, we can hope that Clinton will never earn that designation. Here’s a sample of what Noonan considers meritorious about England’s one and only female PM:

In fact, she wasn't so much a woman as a lady. I remember a gentleman who worked with her speaking of her allure, how she'd relax after a late-night meeting and you'd walk by and catch just the faintest whiff of perfume, smoke and scotch. She worked hard and was tough. One always imagined her lightly smacking some incompetent on the head with her purse, for she carried a purse, as a lady would. She is still tough. A Reagan aide told me that after she was incapacitated by a stroke she flew to Reagan's funeral in Washington, went through the ceremony, flew with Mrs. Reagan to California for the burial, and never once on the plane removed her heels. That is tough.

Wow! Now that’s impressive: a woman in her old age so adapted to enduring the torture of high heels for the sake of appearance, that she won’t take them off and treat herself to a few minutes’ relief during a plane trip.

Makes you wonder if conservatives, along with sexists in general, consider masochism an admirable trait for women in leadership positions. That would explain their rabid defense of eight men (with the exception of Richardson) personally attacking Clinton in the October 30th debate and wondering why anyone would question their right to do so.

Aren't women supposed to suffer in silence?

Noonan did jog my memories of Thatcher’s tenure as PM and my impression of her at the time. I recall feeling sad and disappointed that one of the few world leaders of my gender would try so hard to outdo the most mindless, intemperate macho males in the universe: "Here I am ready for war at a moment's notice."

Recall that Newsweek’s headlines in the spring of 1982 declared, “The Empire Strikes Back” when Thatcher sent a naval task force to recapture the Falkland Islands that Argentina had claimed since the 1830s.

Thatcher, one of the longest serving PMs in England’s history, was eventually ousted by an internal party ballot over concerns including her tax policies, high interest rates, divisions within the Conservative Party, and European integration.

Wikipedia states:

Her {Thatcher’s} distaste for consensus politics and willingness to override colleagues' opinions, including that of Cabinet, emboldened the backlash against her when it did occur. Others cited her strong uncompromising personality. The dislike for Thatcher that had previously come primarily from her political opponents was now being expressed by some members of her own party.

The obvious differences between Thatcher and Clinton are even more reason to elect Clinton as president. Clinton’s judgment, ability to get things done, competence, leadership skills, wisdom, knowledge, and experience have all been well demonstrated over the years.

Thatcher may have had little in common with Hillary Clinton, but in reviewing the biography of England’s first woman PM, I was suddenly struck by how many traits she shared with our current president, also noted throughout his tenure for his disdain for consensus politics, his willingness to override colleagues’ opinions, and his uncompromising personality that many have described as his stubborn streak.

And about that Newseek headline, "The Empire Strikes Back," Dubya and cohorts have also emulated Thatcher’s leadership by attempting to build the empirical presidency — the US Constitution be damned.

What Bush’s Successor Must Face

Founding Father George

Famously could not tell lies

George Bush: not so much

...haiku by Arianna Huffington

As I’ve followed the presidential campaign over the past several months, I’ve consciously measured each candidate by envisioning how she or he would be able to clean up the mess George W. Bush will inevitably leave behind. But I’ve not as yet sat down and listed separately the nightmarish components of Bush’s likely legacy.

Not to worry. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson has accomplished that task in his column today. Here’s Robinson’s take on the situation Bush’s successor will inherit:

Throughout much of the world, the United States is seen as an arrogant bully whose rhetoric about freedom and the rule of law is disgracefully empty. The lawyers and students who are being tear-gassed in the streets of Pakistan's cities will long remember that, when push came to shove, Bush chose to stick with a cooperative dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, rather than live up to his words about the universal value of democracy.

The next president will be left with more than 100,000 U.S. troops bogged down in Iraq, with an unfinished war in Afghanistan -- and, between those two crises, a strengthened and emboldened Iran that hopes to dominate the world's most dangerous region. Nice work.

Bush's successor will, incredibly, assume control of a United States government that interrogates suspected terrorists with "enhanced" techniques known throughout the world by a much simpler term: torture. The new commander in chief will almost surely take custody of hundreds of people detained without formal charges and on questionable evidence, and held for years in secret CIA prisons or at Guantanamo. The next president will take over a government that claims the right to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without meaningful judicial oversight.

Whoever takes office in January 2009 will be left with a more polarized economy -- an America where the rich have been made richer during the past six years with generous tax cuts, while more than 40 million people struggle without
health insurance. The new president will be left with a government that not only failed miserably in its response to the most extensive natural disaster the nation has ever faced but that also reneged on Bush's pledge to rebuild a better New
Orleans -- and to make it possible for all those who lived in the city to return.

The next occupant of the White House will find the nation's coffers depleted by Bush's wars -- the price tag doubtless will have reached $1 trillion by Inauguration Day -- and by
whatever it eventually costs to keep the housing market afloat.

Robinson concludes: “He or she will inherit, in short, a dismal mess. It will take most of the new president's first term to begin to set things right.”

Every item on Robinson’s list makes me shudder, but it’s the “enhanced” interrogation, our compassionate conservative’s euphemism for torture, that strikes me as the very dregs of Bush’s legacy. How low has America sunk under this evil man’s leadership?

In casting our vote for the next president we’d best ask ourselves which candidate has the integrity, wisdom, courage, experience, knowledge, leadership skills, and strength to restore America and lead us forward. As I've said before, never mind the “likeability” factor. That’s what gave us Bush in the first place.