Friday, June 01, 2012

MISS HIM YET? NOT REALLY

No matter what President Obama's done (or failed to do), I've never regretted the outcome of the 2008 primaries. Wouldn't everything be so much better with the Clintons back in the White House? No:

Former President Bill Clinton, a stalwart backer of President Barack Obama who's already helped the incumbent Democrat raise funds for his re-election bid, said Thursday that Mitt Romney had a "sterling business career" as chief executive of Bain Capital.

That record, while qualifying him to be president, won't necessarily help him win, Clinton said in an interview on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight.'

"I don't think that we ought to get into the position where we say 'This is bad work. This is good work,'" Clinton said of the private equity industry....


I know, I know: Bill is Bill and Hillary is Hillary. But Bill is Hillary's top political adviser, and vice versa.

The fat cats are Bill Clinton's pals -- he hangs out with them, he raises money from them for charities, he lives among them. To benefit them, we got rid of Glass-Steagall on his watch. Yes, it's a mixed record -- he's the last president who raised taxes, and then we had an economic rising tide that actually did lift all boats for a while. I'm not ignoring the fat-cat-friendly policies of the Obama administration ... filled as it is with ex-Clintonites. I'm just saying I doubt Hillary would have been huddling late at night in the Oval Office with Treasury Secretary Krugman and Fed Chair Warren.

I've always assumed that Hillary's presidency would have been alternately heartening and exasperating, just like Obama's. Obama has drones and kill lists; Hillary was pals with John McCain (I really think she might have offered him a Cabinet position), and she's never exactly been a dove. I'm not even sure she would have done a better job of withstanding the kinds of assaults that have hamstrung Obama as president -- they would have attacked her as a socialist and endlessly "vetted" her supposedly radical past.

Obama or Clinton? I think it's a wash. I'd be fighting to get her reelected right now, but I don't think that's because she'd have been dramatically, or even marginally, better than Obama as president.

3 comments:

Victor said...

Agreed.
If Obama wasn't in the race, I'd have supported Hillary, and worked hard to get her elected.
And she'd have been opposed by R's just as much - if not worse.

My actual love in 2004, was Edwards. But, after his VP candidacy, and living in NC at that time, too many people had me convinced that there was something hinky about him - and I'm not that easily convinced.
And Obama was easy to fall in love with, after I got disenchanted with Edwards. For me, anyway. But he was not easy to support early on.
I was the first to mention my support of him when I was addressing the Eastern NC Democratic group in very early 2007, even before he'd declared.

And the other rep's there looked at me like I'd smoked a doob, swallowed peyote and LSD, and washed it all down with tequila.

I was waiting for them to schedule an intervention, when they gave me a look that said, "What drug are you ON? A black man, with THAT name?!?!?!"

And despite his many flaws, I still support him - and can't imagine anyone else doing a better job than he's done, with what he's had to work with.

BH said...

Leaving aside the Hil/Bill speculations, we now have Bill C. following right up on C. Booker, essentially gutting the initial (and possibly strongest, until now)line of attack on Mitty. With friends like this, who needs enemies? And with campaign coordination like this, who needs an opponent? It makes me feel like Casey Stengel talking to the original Mets - "does anybody here know how to play this game?"

Regardless, I agree with Victor's last paragraph 100%, and this plute-pandering by Bill makes me even gladder that O got the '08 nomination.

Anonymous said...

No, I agree with your initial thought that Obama has been better than Hillary would have been on most things.

And I think he has been much better than she would have been on the neocon wars and everything related to Israel and the Middle East, though he is far from my own non-interventionist views.

I think we should not forget she never backed down on her vote to give GW the choice whether to go to war or not or her view that the decision whether or not to go to war ought to be, in general, in the hands of the president and not the congress.

That puts her a significant step further than Obama and the US Constitution from the view of democrats like myself that the people ought at least to have a veto on war, not only before it is started but at any step along the way thereafter.

Unrepentant and unregenerate PUMAs are right now openly hoping Obama will fail and, in company with people who are only too professionally left-ish, insisting that he is little different from Romney and now and then urging that liberals stay home or vote for a minor party candidate.

To reinforce their advice they dwell reprovingly on the influence of plutocrats on Obama and the Glenn Greenwald issues, joining him in outrage at methods of war that are in fact quite ordinary and would certainly continue under Romney.

It would be best for those who desire his victory this fall not to join them in these things but to join him and his campaign in emphasizing how far he is better and Romney would be worse for the ordinary working people of America.

Rhetorically, he’s still a long way from FDR.

But he’s on track.