Hillary On The Defensive

The Wall Street Journal's recent piece on the Democratic Presidential candidates' "debate" on the Drexel University campus in Philadelphia, portrayed Hillary Clinton as beginning to exhibit the behaviors which I personally believe will ultimately deny her the White House.

For example, the Journal piece read, in part,

"Indeed, each of her rivals condemned Mrs. Clinton's vote on the Iran resolution as unnecessary saber rattling. Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware voted against the measure; Mr. Obama missed the voted. Several of the Democrats said the nonbinding resolution harked back chillingly to the march to war in Iraq. Mrs. Clinton said she considered the vote -- essentially for economic sanctions against Iran's elite military -- to be a part of diplomacy, not a prelude to battle.

Instead of pushing back, though, Mrs. Clinton turned her criticism on President Bush, condemning his administration on nearly every level as one that needed to be junked. She noted that if she were on board with the Republicans, "I don't think [they] got the message that I'm voting and sounding like them." A few minutes later, she referred to "the Republicans and their constant obsession with me."

Mr. Edwards couldn't let this last bit of rhetoric pass by. "Maybe they want to run against you," he said."

Two things seem apparent to me from this recounting of the Hillary's conduct during the debate.

One is that she is already becoming what I would call "brittle." It's a characteristic I have been expecting to come out sooner or later. Guess it's sooner, after all.

Hillary combines her desire to be and continue to be front-runner, with a sort of presumption that this means she is unassailable. It's almost as if thinking and acting it, will make it so.

The second thing is that she reacts to criticism and challenges from her fellow candidates by attacking our current President, for whom she has obvious hatred.

But she isn't running against him. Initially, she's running against Obama and Edwards. Next, perhaps, she'll run against Giuliani, Romney, McCain, or Thompson.

In this regard, I have to believe George Bush is having a laugh even now. After all, only 16 people have won two terms as President of our Republic. He has no need to prove himself again.

I cannot help but believe Hillary is running against the wrong adversary. In a sense, it's as if she wants to run against a defenseless candidate. And this retiring two-term President is defenseless, in the sense that he secure in his philosophy and accomplishments.

Could Hillary be making a major mistake by doing this? I think so. Even Democratic voters must realize that the next election doesn't feature Bush. And railing against him is not at all the same as advancing a positive vision of the future.

So many of Hillary's positions are taken in opposition to the current administration's actions and doctrines. Will that sell when she has live, active opponents challenging her for the nomination of her own party for President?

Her cavalier attitude regarding the release of documents informing us about her role in her husband's administration was captured by this Journal passage,

"Mrs. Clinton dismissed criticism of a ban, which her husband sought, that would keep the National Archives from releasing Clinton administration papers until 2012. Asked by the moderator if she would lift the ban, she replied, "That's not my decision to make." But Mr. Obama called the Clinton ban "a problem," saying Democrats need to open government after "one of the most secretive administration's in our history," Mr. Bush's."

Both by her dismissal of her opponents in favor of President Bush as her adversary, and her rather haughty, dismissive attitude regarding most criticisms of the few detailed plans she has put forth, Hillary seems to be assiduously cultivating an image of arrogance.

As if she naturally will win the Democratic nomination, and, of course, the Democrats have to win, because Bush is so...well....un-Democratic.

In the past few days, and especially after reading this account of the recent debate, I've come to believe that Hillary has caught that most dangerous of Presidential candidate diseases.

I call it the "I've waited long enough, it's my turn, dammit!" disease, and I wrote about it here, in March of this year.

Bob Dole had the disease. I think John McCain contracted it, as well. Now, it looks like it's infected Hillary.

Is it merely coincidence that all are or were US Senators? I think not.

And for this reason, as well as my belief that an accomplished executive- governor, mayor, CEO, etc.,- will beat a non-VP or incumbent former- or sitting Senator, I don't believe Hillary will win the White House in 2008.

More Inconvenient Truth About Ethanol

Holman Jenkins' Wednesday Wall Street Journal article about the far left castigating Toyota for its stand on CAFE standards. Standing with other auto manufacturers who rely on large, less fuel-efficient, profitable cars that people actually want, to fund the sale of the "profitless Prius," Toyota is catching flack from the same greenies who buy its hybrid car.

To provide us with a better understanding of the issue, Holman distills it thusly,

"As car companies do, it sold Prius customers a car that met their needs and/or flattered their vanity. For other customers whose hot buttons lie elsewhere, Toyota has the Tundra, its giant, fuel-consuming pickup. Auto companies only achieve efficient scale by appealing to different consumer appetites. The profitless Prius wouldn't exist if not for the non-hybrids that keep Toyota in business. Indeed, Toyota supports the House bill over the Senate bill only because it would let auto makers continue to make big vehicles that happen to be the ones Americans, with their dollars, show they actually want.

But the 32-year-old CAFE rules have become a fetish of environmental groups, a talisman of their clout, a ticket to a seat at a table in Washington. The policy itself has no value: It doesn't reduce oil imports. It doesn't meaningfully curb fossil-fuel use.

In the nature of things, auto buyers amortize their forced investment in fuel economy by driving more miles, burning more gas. The impressive reliability gains of the auto makers over the past 30 years are in part a reflection of this consumer demand for more miles. Ditto the conspicuous increase in vehicle size and comfort, partly a function of the increased time motorists spend in their cars."


To illustrate an as-yet unrealized hypocrisy, Jenkins notes, further down in the piece, this tasty little morsel concerning what converting to ethanol will do for total greenhouse gas emissions,

"A recently passed Senate bill would require motorists to buy 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, up from 7.5 billion gallons under current law.

At least this would benefit the atmosphere, right? Think again. A research team featuring Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on ozone depletion, recently showed that the intensive cultivation of biofuels in the U.S. and Europe produces up to 70% more greenhouse effect than the fossil fuels they displace (nitrous oxide, a byproduct of the fertilizers used, has nearly 300 times the heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide).

Passenger cars can burn fuel consisting of 10% ethanol. If our goal were really to displace conventional gasoline, we'd open our coastal markets to sugar-cane ethanol from Brazil and other Southern Hemisphere countries, produced by less intensive methods that result -- irony alert -- in a genuine reduction in greenhouse emissions.

But Washington blocks imported ethanol with a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff to protect domestic ethanol profits. So let's sum up the ways you're paying to prop up an industry that's bad for energy security and bad for climate worries: higher taxes, higher gas prices and higher food prices. Did we mention the 3% mileage penalty that comes from burning gasoline with a 10% ethanol content, thanks to ethanol's inferior BTU value compared to gasoline?"

I have to admit, I love the naive hypocrisy of the populist environmentalists.

They want less oil usage. They want to buy expensive hybrid technology cars cheaply, even though the cars still don't make economic sense to operate. They want fewer greenhouse emissions while also advocating ethanol.

But, as Crutzen's work demonstrates, there's a contradiction. Moe ethanol means more greenhouse gases to cultivate the biofuels, not to mention soil erosion and forest depletion, as mentioned here. In fact, I've read an article, the exact location of which escapes me just now, that more widespread use of ethanol is likely to lead to the accelerated disappearance of South American rainforests, the better to be replanted with biofuels.

Call me crazy, but isn't it nonsensical to use a lot of a major food source to replace a more efficiently-burning fossil fuel? We can't eat oil.

Between the water-intensive nature of ethanol production, its relative inefficiency for power generation, compared to petroleum-based products, and the devastation of more land to plant corn for ethanol, the green lobby and its citizen-followers are likely to wake up to an environmental mess sooner, rather than later.

Then there's the inflation in food costs that will result from this switch of a major consumable, corn, from foodstuff to auto fuel.

Hitting voters hard in their wallets is never a good way to secure their long term support for a still-unproven 'crisis,' i.e., scientifically proven, human-caused global warming.

Observations On Hillary's Lead Among Democratic Presidential Candidates

A seasoned newsman and political reporter, now writing for other purposes, was discussing the two party's Presidential contenders with me at a dinner party last Saturday night.


We agreed that Obama Bim Baden is too green and immature to win his party's nomination. Then, again, we also agreed that Hillary is too brittle.

As I mused about how much money she has raised, my colleague noted what happened in the 2004 Democratic Presidential race.

Not being a registered Dem, I don't recall the details. He asked me to remember Howard Dean's lead in Iowa, followed by, I believe, his victory in New Hampshire? He was the guy to beat.

Then he did that roar thing on camera. And his campaign began to unravel, losing momentum. To be candid, I had quite forgotten this.

My colleague's point was, despite Dean's money and momentum, he managed to critically, mortally wound himself while in the lead, and lost the nomination to Kerry.

That's probably why, when asked about running a near-perfect campaign to date, Hillary found some wood nearby to knock on, smiling that silly, forced grin of hers.

There's still a lot of time and uncontrollable events to unfold before the last primary vote is counted.

Wouldn't it be wild if someone like Edwards or, even less likely, Richardson, actually makes a fight of the Democratic nomination?

Most Presidential races feature a few surprises, and I have this feeling that, with everyone already expecting Hillary in the Oval Office come 2009, that's just what won't occur.