A Word About Hillary to the Undecideds

Photo credits: Getty

At The Moderate Voice, Damozel has posted ten positives for Hillary – ten good reasons to vote for the senator from New York:

1. Hillary grasps economic concepts: knowledge a president will need in January — given our nation’s debt, job loss, credit crunch, recession….

2. Hillary has a plan to get us out of Iraq, a plan that the 34 flag rank military officers who endorsed Hillary also find impressive.

3. Hillary has a health care plan that offers the broadest coverage for Americans.

4. Hillary’s Senate committee assignments encompass a wide array of issues — including veterans affairs, education, military issues, labor, health, and the environment — which give her a solid foundation from which to help shape public policy.

5. Hillary understands foreign policy and has dealt with officials from dozens of other nations. This will be useful, as our nation tries to solve problems with nations of the Middle East, Africa, South America, Europe….

6. Hillary has broad support among American voters, evinced by her wins in the primaries of big states (e.g., California and New York) and swing states (e.g., Florida and Ohio). In short, Hillary’s in a good position to compete with John McCain.

7. Hillary has demonstrated concern for fellow Americans — starting with her civil rights activities during college and her work during the seven years after college, which she devoted to public service (instead of taking her Yale law degree straight to lucrative arenas).

8. Hillary has broad life experience. As well as public service, she has experience in private law practice and the corporate realm, which gives her the perspective needed to help reconcile our nation’s many competing interests.

9. Hillary has learned how to get things done in Washington, both as a second-term senator and as a First Lady. For seven years, she has worked with members of Congress, some of whom had been nasty to her family. Hillary put aside the personal stuff and worked on getting things done.
10. Hillary is strong, resilient, and tenacious. She has faced more scrutiny and ugly attacks than most politicians, yet she’s still standing. Better than that, she’s still fighting. That’s the spirit a president needs in order to solve the many grave problems our nation faces. (D. Cupples, Buck Naked Politics Politics)

Damozel concludes:

“The next president is going to have a hard, nasty slog cleaning up after Bush. Why put Obama through it? He only thinks he wants to be president right now because he hasn’t seen close-up with the job involves. Save him and his glamour and aura and fabulousness for the next election cycle, after he’s shown that he can stand up to harsh scrutiny as well as Hillary.”

The False Dichotomy Between Experience and Change

It takes experience to make change happen.

A lesson I’ve learned repeatedly over the years is that whenever a dichotomy arises, it almost always turns out to be false. Maybe that’s why I appreciate the recent conclusion reached by the Christian Science Monitor that the overall lesson learned in New Hampshire is that voters reject the dichotomy between change vs. experience, and value both.

But before reaching that conclusion, the Monitor noted:

“The candidate of "experience," Hillary Clinton, found the campaign experience had more to teach her. The candidate of "change," Barack Obama, felt a gust of change as runner-up. They now head to new contests, made wiser by voters who defied Iowa's results and the polls.”

I would add that in the run-up to New Hampshire, Clinton had said repeatedly that it takes experience to make change happen.

The Monitor also pointed out that “On the GOP side, too, New Hampshire's campaign and results seemed to humble the leading candidates, leaving the remaining primaries refreshingly still up for grabs in both parties.”

The lesson for the media in New Hampshire, the Monitor suggested, is to hereafter restrain the impulse to celebrate a victor and trounce a loser on the basis of poll numbers – at least have the grace to wait until the votes have been counted.