Rick Hertzberg on Hilary Rodham Clinton

He writes:

The Spat: Comment: The New Yorker: [A]s the Clinton-Obama race turned nasty, a rapid alternation was noticeable... all across the deep-blue universe: passionate Obama supporters; tentative Obama supporters; Obama-Clinton fence-sitters (including the fans of John Edwards, now bereft); and tentative Clinton supporters. (Passionate Clinton supporters, notwithstanding their candidate’s shrinking but still sizable lead in national polls, seem to be a little rarer.)

The anger was mostly directed at Senator Clinton, her husband, and her campaign, for a series of what have come to be known, redundantly, as “negative attacks.” The most egregious, because so coldly premeditated, was a radio spot that took as its hook a snippet of audio from an Obama interview in which he said, “The Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years.” A smooth-voiced announcer then adds:

Really? Aren’t those the ideas that got us into the economic mess we’re in today? Ideas like special tax breaks for Wall Street? Running up a nine-trillion-dollar debt? Refusing to raise the minimum wage or deal with the housing crisis? Are those the ideas Barack Obama’s talking about?

Uh, no. Those are not the ideas Barack Obama’s talking about. But the spot’s disingenuous questions were plainly intended to deceive the unwary into assuming that Wall Street tax breaks and the like are the very ideas Obama has been advocating.... Obama was not talking about any particular ideas. He was talking about the conservative movement’s success in marketing its policy ideas and presenting itself as an intellectual powerhouse....

[T]he Clinton campaign evidently concluded that it had no choice but to “go negative,” and Bill Clinton was assigned, or assigned himself, the task. Some of his attempts to sully his wife’s opponent--calling Obama’s consistent opposition to the Iraq war “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen” and dismissing his South Carolina victory as a racial one, like Jesse Jackson’s twenty years ago--have been untruthful or unworthy or both. Whether or not these and similar attacks “worked” (the evidence is mixed), they certainly succeeded in diminishing both the former President and his wife...

Comments

[anne]

This is rubbish, but keep on beating on a woman candidate for simply campaigning. Yuck!

[chris]

Anne, you haven't been here for a while. And 'rubbish' is strong language for you.

[elliottg]

Anne,

You are usually more clear-eyed about these things. What really matters and what shows how distasteful Hilary's campaigning is, is her going public with her desire to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Hilary's ruthless and that's a central theme in her primary campaign. She explicitly made the point last night in an interview I heard on NPR that she can fight dirty and that's what will be needed in the general. She is not shying away from these tactics; she's embracing them and selling people on how useful it would be to have a Democrat willing to act like a Republican.

[Queequeg]

Oh, fer chrissake, if Obama can't take a little lukewarm heat, he should skedaddle out of the kitchen. The guy said Ronald Reagan was a neat-o fellow, and that most people thought of the Republican Party during the Clinton era as "the party of ideas." That really pissed me off, and I don't understand why it doesn't piss off other Democrats, too.

First of all, did anyone expect the Clintons not to defend themselves when Obama said the Republicans seemed to have had all the ideas in the last 15 years? Do the math. Clinton took office 15 years ago. Why didn't people take that as a vicious and unfair slap at a popular Democratic president? What -- Bill Clinton is supposed to just grin and take it?

Second, why are limp-wristed Democrats always talking about how wonderful Reagan was, and how the Republicans are the intellectuals? When will I hear a Republican talking about how optimistic and wonderful Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter or Lyndon Johnson were? The Republicans never talk about how great a leader Johnson was on civil rights. They never talk about how the Democrats were the party of ideas during the civil rights era. They don't talk that way because it would mean they were off-message. Why don't Democratic politicians stay on message?

ElliottG is correct that Clinton's theme is her ruthlessness, her willingness to twist her opponents' words. Yes, she can fight dirty, and that's why I prefer her over Obama. I want a Democrat in the White House who is a bitter, vicious, ruthless fighter. I want to read news stories daily about despondent Republicans killing themselves in despair because the Democratic president is such a meanie. Obama doesn't seem to have that in him.

Beyond that, I worry that Obama's supporters tend to be young, naive about politics, and infatuated with him. But crushes fade away, and young people don't vote, and naive people will vote for McCain instead of Clinton because they vote for the person, not the party. Not every single supporter of Obama's is that way; no one would describe Teddy Kennedy as young and naive. But that seems to be the tendency.

[MaryLou]

As usual, the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is too pure and intellectually 'correct' to live in the real world. Obama's remarks were the trigger that set off the Clinton reaction. They were vague enough that I for one took them at face value - over the past ten or fifteen years, when Bill Clinton was president and during the Bush administration, Republican ideas were superior and ascendant. If Obama really meant the Republicans were superior at MARKETING inferior ideas, why didn't he say that? The Obama campaign has been genius in their ability to restate conservative talking points (even to the extent of reviving the recently dead Social Security debate) in a way that seems to suggest 'openmindedness' and 'willingness to work together'. This is nothing more than a clever campaign tactic echoing their theme of 'change' and 'the future' where we can all just get along. That's politics - as is the Clinton campaign's reaction to that line of marketing. It's time for liberals and progressives to stop doing the Republican Party's work for it in demonizing and undermining the Clintons. For years bloggers complained about 'Clinton rules' in the press and the apparent media attitude of 'it's ok if you're a Republican'. I'm disappointed that once again Dems are taken in by these tactics - even if they're being employed by our own. BTW, most of Obama's themes are a direct import from Edwards 2004 (e.g., One America).

[Colin Danby]

Anne there's no question that some part of the criticism of HRC has been misogynist. But it would help our discussion if you would explain why Hertzberg's comments fall into that category.

[Winston]

"The guy said Ronald Reagan was a neat-o fellow, and that most people thought of the Republican Party during the Clinton era as 'the party of ideas'."

Queequeg, have you bothered to actually watch the interview for yourself? Obama said, "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path . . . ." Anyone who has studied twentieth-century economic history knows this to be true. Read any textbook on the subject, and it will say that Reagan, together with Margaret Thatcher, precipitated a paradigm shift towards neoliberalism, even among social-democratic parties. Hence "New Labour" in the UK. Hence the "New Democrat" faction of the Democratic Party (of which Bill Clinton was a member). Hence the increasingly neoliberal discourse of the Schröder administration in Germany. Hence "Third Way" politics in general.

I don't think Obama, an African American civil rights lawyer who lived in Indonesia and worked in the projects of Chicago, would speak highly of the man who crusaded against the "welfare queens" and started his re-election campaign in a town where three civil rights workers were killed by the KKK. And the fact is, Obama wasn't speaking highly of Reagan; he was merely stating an historical fact.

So why state *that* historical fact instead of one pertaining to, say, Lyndon Johnson? It's all part of Obama's strategy to present himself as the candidate of cross-party unity, a strategy which seems to be working thus far. If you don't like his electoral strategy, that's fine. But don't adopt Hillary's disingenuous talking points.

[Colin Danby]

There's a sense of infinite regress as we discuss Hertzberg's take on Clinton's misuse of Obama's words.

But on the original text: notice how many commenters here and elsewhere paraphrase rather than quote Obama's remarks and then bounce straight into emotional reactions to their own paraphrases.

You can see the full interview here:

http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080115/VIDEO/80115026&oaso=news.rgj.com/breakingnews

The passage that gets people dyspeptic starts at 18:50. There appears to be a little break in the tape right before it, but the context leading up to it is mandates: how do you come in with enough support to govern, what does it take to really shift the political terrain. In that context the Reagan-Clinton contrast is an obvious one to make.

What you also see here and elsewhere in the interview is Obama's constitutional-law-prof habit, noted by Yglesias and others, of thinking his way through other people's arguments -- he's trying in this context to say something about why Reagan was able to appeal to people, why he made sense.

[Queequeg]

Winston, I haven't watched the interview. I've read the relevant quotes. And I'm reminded of Louis Farrakhan saying that Hitler was a great man, in the sense that he changed history. People complained. Farrakhan denied meaning anything untoward, and that he meant that Hitler was "wickedly great."

Now Obama is saying something similar. Reagan changed history more than Clinton did. It rankles me. It doesn't rankle you. Fine enough. I don't know if it works for cross-party unity, as you say. But it surely doesn't work for inter-party unity. I liked Obama and Clinton equally before that interview, but not now.

[Colin Danby]

Queequeg go look at the %s of the pop vote that Reagan got and that Clinton got. Go compare the changes in the House and Senate during their administrations and get back to us. In context, (a concept you seem incapable of grasping) the comparison is sensible and obvious.

There's a part of the electorate that seems impervious to reality and that gets, in fact, deeply upset when anyone tries to discuss it.

[pgl]

Brad - have you noticed that the right half of the blogosphere has decided to dust off something you wrote in 2003 on whether Senator Clinton should ever be President? I'm curious if you still believe she should not. If so, then their dusting this off is fine - but if you have changed your mind, please tell us your current thinking. After all, we know how the right loves to put words into people's mouths.

Incidentally, I ask this as a Democrat who has yet to decide whether our nominee should be Obama or Clinton. But I'm very certain, I strongly support the choice of our party especially given the Bush43 wannabes that are running for the GOP nomination.

[pgl]

Brad - have you noticed that the right half of the blogosphere has decided to dust off something you wrote in 2003 on whether Senator Clinton should ever be President? I'm curious if you still believe she should not. If so, then their dusting this off is fine - but if you have changed your mind, please tell us your current thinking. After all, we know how the right loves to put words into people's mouths.

Incidentally, I ask this as a Democrat who has yet to decide whether our nominee should be Obama or Clinton. But I'm very certain, I strongly support the choice of our party especially given the Bush43 wannabes that are running for the GOP nomination.

[anne]

Sorry, for the shortened response but for some reason I was having difficulty posting (possibly a strange computer in a strange land). This is a political campaign and I could be annoyed with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama for all sorts of policy reasons, but the constant belittling of Clinton simply for being a tough campaigner or because Bill Clinton is campaigning for her, and being as tough as she must be, strikes me as entirely unfair.

The question for me is policy, and I want each candidate pushed on policy. Obama has a number of policy problems to clarify, whether on health care, or Social Security, or adding 100,000 soldiers to our armed forces, or showing a peaceful non-interventionist disposition to a hopefully democratic Pakistan, or clarifying what the supposed excesses of the 1960s and 1970s were to him so that I understand he means to turn around the current erosion of civil rights.

As for justifying Ronald Reagan, as the righter of wrongs of the 1960s and 1970s, yuck!

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/obama-does-harry-and-louise-again/

February 1, 2008

Obama Does Harry and Louise, Again
By Paul Krugman

The Obama campaign sends out an ugly mailer. * Sorry, but this is just destructive — like the Obama plan, the Clinton plan offers subsidies to lower-income families. And BO himself has conceded that he might have to penalize people who don't buy insurance until they need care. So this is just poisoning the well for health care reform. The politics of hope, indeed.

"Hillary's health care plan forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it. Is that the best we can do for families struggling with high health care costs?"

* http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/More_negative_mail.html

[Queequeg]

"Queequeg go look at the %s of the pop vote that Reagan got and that Clinton got. Go compare the changes in the House and Senate during their administrations and get back to us."

In which election did the Republican presidential candidate get 60.7 percent of the vote, while the Democrat drew 37.5 percent?

That Republican candidate won in a landslide bigger than Reagan's. And that candidate was the first Republican to win all the southern states. Richard Nixon was the architect of the hugely influential Southern Strategy. He ushered in a realignment, and an era in which Republicans held the White House for 20 out of 24 years.

Richard Nixon influenced this country's history, for better and for worse, more than Reagan did, notwithstanding what Obama said. (Imagine how differently things would have turned out had Bobby Kennedy been elected president in 1968.) Nixon made it safe for Reagan to start his campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., and to campaign against welfare queens. Nixon made it safe for Bush to strum a guitar while black people in New Orleans drowned.

We all understand why Obama didn't laud Nixon for his influence. Nixon is anathema to anyone to the left of Anne Coulter. No matter how influential Nixon was, no Democratic presidential candidate is going to say anything remotely favorable about him. I bristle when Obama says something remotely favorable about Reagan. I'm not the only partisan Democrat who responds that way. Why won't Obama campaign as a Democrat instead of as some Third Way cipher such as Bill Clinton?

It's odd to see Bill Clinton's wife, usually viewed as a DLC Dem, running as the Democrat, while Obama, a supposedly liberal Democrat, is running around talking about how influential Reagan was, and how most people think the Republicans had all the ideas during the Clinton-Bush years. It sounds like he's not stumping for the votes of Democrats like me, the ones who canvass houses and volunteer on those horrid phone banks.

No matter what Obama thinks about Reagan, he doesn't have to express it. Maybe there was a totally hot woman sitting in that newspaper office in Reno. If there was, Obama had the brains not to say, "My, my, you certainly are a sexy woman." That would be inappropriate. His words about Reagan were inappropriate, too. Some thoughts are better left unexpressed.

[Colin Danby]

You make an interesting case for Richard Nixon, Queequeg! But I'm not surprised you ignore the Clinton part of the comparison.

Incidentally Reagan took the Senate, which Nixon never achieved. It awaited Bill Clinton's political genius to deliver the House to the Republicans.

Your conceptual block is that you can't distinguish between an analysis and an expression of feeling. The reality is that since LBJ Democrats have either gotten whupped or governed on the defensive. Surely a potential President, whose job requires facing all kinds of unpleasant realities, should be allowed to think and speak about why the world is the way it is.

[Colin Danby]

My sympathies on the computer difficulties, Anne, but you don't respond to my question about why the quoted Hertzberg falls into the misgynist pattern of HRC-bashing. Should we just read your first comment as a generalized statement of frustration?

The excesses part is quite clear if you take the trouble to watch the interview. There is no "justifying" in a statement:

"I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating."

that is self-evidently a characterization of how other people thought.

You raise several important policy questions, some of which have been discussed on other threads here recently. But why not stick to real policy questions, or just to facts about what people actually say?

[david]

"As for justifying Ronald Reagan, as the righter of wrongs of the 1960s and 1970s, yuck!"

Of course, Obama never did this. And of course, Clinton wasn't campaigning tough, but being nasty especially via southern white strategies. And of course, apologists can't explain why Clinton, campaigning on her experience, has nothing to show for her toughness against republicans beyond a flag-burning bill, some marriage defense, and "welfare reform." The idea that we should trust her on policy is one that has yet to see much support-- Mark Penn and Robert Johnson as supporters demand some accountability.

[FreakyBeaky]

"And of course, Clinton wasn't campaigning tough, but being nasty especially via southern white strategies. "

Here's something I don't get; why would the Clintons, the two people that know the value of African-America support better than any two white politicians in history, try a "southern white strategy" in a state where the Democratic electorate is 50%+ African-American? Does not compute. I don't buy it.

As for Obama's Reagan comments, they are a perfect dog-whistle, the implied meaning of which is clear, but perhaps plausibly deniable based on a literal reading. The message to the powers that be is "Don't be afraid - I'm not going to rock the boat." And indeed, he does not propose to. That ought to be concerning to those of us who are proudly shrill.

[anne]

FS:

"Here's something I don't get; why would the Clintons, the two people that know the value of African-America support better than any two white politicians in history, try a 'southern white strategy' in a state where the Democratic electorate is 50%+ African-American? Does not compute. I don't buy it."

Of course.

[anne]

Rick Hertzberg column is, to be mild, ignorant and sexist. Simply notice the language. From my perspective, this is just Hillary Clinton slandering rubbish and masks any decent discussion of policies.

[anne]

What Hertzberg and other such pretend analysts have done is make it impossible to discuss Barack Obama's specific ideas or lack of specific ideas for the sake of slandering Hillary Clinton. The same tricks were used to stifle policy discussion in pitching for George Bush in 2000. When Paul Krugman tries to discuss policy, the same shrillness calls come as when he asked to examine Bush's policy in 2000. I am not pleased.

[Colin Danby]

I can read too, Anne. Repeating insults about Hertzberg does not an argument make.

I have no idea what you mean with regard to Krugman, who is an excellent example of an adult who engages the substance of Obama's ideas in a way that, while tough, does not rely on making things up or on reiterating vacuous expressions of personal distaste.

[elliottg]

Of course it computes. Race is an issue and African-Americans are going to vote for Obama simply because he is Black. Gender is an issue and women are going to vote for Hilary because she is female. Is that true of everybody? No! Is that even true of anybody in particular as the sole reason? No, it's a totality issue with many factors that coalesce to a single decision. BUT we are on an economics blog and so the concept of marginal analysis should not be foreign to anyone here. Also, the concept of cost-benefit should be something everyone here gets. Hilary had written off South Carolina and the marginal utility of getting 1 or 2 more delegates and losing by 15% vs 20% (I think everyone was surprised it was over 25%) was just not worth it vs. injecting fear of race into the debate AND discounting the vote in South Carolina as racially motivated.

Is Bill Clinton a racist? No! Was he lying when he compared Obama's victory in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson's? In the narrow sense, no because race clearly influenced both. Was he being ungracious and unseemly in playing the race card? Absolutely. Hilary's strategy along with touting her ruthlessness is to suggest very clearly that the general will be ugly and part of that ugliness will be the race issue if Obama is the nominee. She is just making an electability issue. Fortunately, in modern America, that's not a legitimate way to play the game and she should be punished for such a tactic.

[Winston]

I agree, Anne: we should indeed be talking about the candidates' policy proposals. That will allow us to determine who the real progressive is.

Look at Clinton's foreign policy. She votes to give President Bush the authority to use military force in Iraq, and then has the audacity to say (at the CNN debate at the Kodak Theater) that the case made in favour of the bill was "credible" and that "nobody could have forseen" the way that President Bush would abuse this authority. Erm, nice try. If my memory serves me correctly, Obama warned, way back in 2002, that the bill would lead to “an occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences.”

And remember when Hillary opposed the Levin amendment to the Iraq Resolution, which would have required the President to report the findings of the UN weapons inspectors to Congress before going to war? At the CNN debate in LA, Clinton said she didn't think it would be right to subordinate the United States to the UN in that way. Huh? Since when did opposing internationalism (especially as a check on the neocons' fecklessness) become a progressive idea?

And let's not forget that Clinton voted in favour of the resolution designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps a "terrorist organization." You know, if you're intent on avoiding war with a country, it might not be so wise to put its military on the same level of Al-Qaeda. And snubbing Iran by sending only "high-level envoys" to the country will only breed greater hostility towards those "arrogant Americans who refuse to take us seriously."

In sum, Clinton would make a very good Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Conservative Party here in Canada.

[Doctor Jay]

I don't think of myself as all that liberal, but I look at where we are, and see things that I think need to change. Well, I'm not convinced that a candidate who runs on "hope" and who campaigns in the Democratic(!) primary by going to the right will have either the desire or the will necessary to change things. I don't think Obama stands up to a direct challenge very well either, and Hillary (and Edwards) showed this in some of the debates they had.

[anne]

Rick Hertzberg has written a mean-spirited, woman-bashing article, and article that no fair woman could have written, and possibly no woman would have written even in opposing Hillary Clinton as a candidate.