Obama Runs From His On-Air Statements

So much for the courage of his convictions. Obama is in full retreat from some of his recent on-air comments.

The other morning, he was interviewed on CNBC. In the space of just a few minutes, he managed to backtrack on lauding Reagan as a transformational President.

Originally, he hailed Reagan as a "transformational President." Now, he says he really meant it derogatorily, observing that Reagan

'got blue collar voters to vote against their own interests,'

or something close to that terminology.

Then he was asked about his accusation of Bill Clinton being a liar. Again, originally, Obama was quite forceful claiming that Slick Willie is not telling the truth in statements he's made about Obama.

Under close examination, however, the novice Illinois Senator backpedaled at lightspeed, giving Bill a plea bargain down to something like 'getting his facts wrong,' and giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Then he recently backed away from his generic, demonizing statements about corporations when being questioned by Jack Welch on CNBC. Obama is all fire and brimstone about how bad big corporations and their workers are.

When Welch challenged him to offer something to employed workers with benefits, Obama declined. But claimed he knew the value of having functioning, profitable companies. Once again, he backed away quickly from his campaign rhetoric.

Peggy Noonan, in this weekend's Wall Street Journal, calls Obama "accomplished," with which statement I vociferously disagree.

However, I am in agreement when she observes that he never really goes for the jugular. He faints at striking back, then stops. It seems he's the same way when fighting back against accusations.

Perhaps this trait will either ultimately sink Obama in his bid for his party's nomination, or cause him to lose the general election.

It very much reminds me of a 1964 Henry Fonda movie concerning a race for the White House. Entitled "The Best Man," with a Gore Vidal screenplay, it revolves around Fonda's inability to use every means at his disposal to win his party's nomination. Being by Gore Vidal, it turns on homosexuality. Cliff Robertson's character, a rival for the nomination, is learned to be homosexual, and Fonda must use it to crush Robertson. If memory serves, he doesn't.

It seems that Obama is similar to Fonda's character. He just can't pull the trigger and be honest about his criticisms of his opponents. When confronted by the media, he inevitably pulls back and goes into denial mode.

Who wants, or needs a President with this characteristic. We need someone who will be truthful and willing to stand behind what s/he says.

Evidently, that's not Obama. Or Hillary, either, for that matter.

Slick Willie Demonstrates Why We Distrust Politicians

In a shocking display of ill-gotten gains, the Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday detailing Bill Clinton's looming multi-million dollar payoff from being President.

This is the sort of post-office holding development that enrages voters. Or at least it enrages me. Bill Clinton would have none of this, had he not been elected President. In fact, as the article notes, much of his wealth actually resulted from political favor-seekers helping him to raise money to pay his impeachment-related legal bills.

It's ironic, of course, that Slick Willie is now the type of corporate fat cat that his 'partner,' Hillary, would soak with her tax hike plans.

According to the article,

"Former President Clinton stands to reap around $20 million -- and will sever a politically sensitive partnership tie to Dubai -- by ending his high-profile business relationship with the investment firm of billionaire friend Ron Burkle.

The former president has had links to Yucaipa since early 2002, when Mr. Burkle -- a longtime friend and political contributor -- offered him a role there. Mr. Clinton's association with the firm began at a time when he was looking to earn large amounts of money, partly to pay heavy legal bills accumulated to defend himself and Mrs. Clinton from several investigations during his presidency.

Profits from the sales helped to push the funds above the earnings threshold needed to generate a multimillion-dollar payday for the former president, according to public documents related to the sales and other information.

The deals were announced in February and March 2007, respectively -- around the time Mr. Clinton's involvement as an adviser to the domestic funds was set to expire. By not closing out his Yucaipa relationship before those sales were completed, President Clinton probably increased the amount of money ultimately due him, say people familiar with such transactions."

Thus, we see that Slick Willie gained access to tens of millions of dollars of profits from 'unearned' income that most of those who voted for him could never achieve. More than any other former President, the former First Philanderer has traded on his term of office to make a fortune. While his wife, a Senator, rails against....exactly what he is doing.

The Yucaipa connection became public recently, as I noted in this post from last September.

Then we have the incredibly rich irony described in this passage,

"Mr. Clinton is also looking to close out partnership interests in a Yucaipa fund that focuses on investing in foreign companies. This fund -- called Yucaipa Global Partnership Fund LP -- has raised several hundred million dollars from a range of investors. Unlike his deal to advise the two Yucaipa domestic funds, Mr. Clinton invested an undisclosed sum of his own money in the global fund and has a limited partnership interest.

Mr. Clinton is also one of three owners of the global fund's general partner. The others are Mr. Burkle, who is the managing member, and an entity connected to the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

Severing the tie to Dubai, a U.S. ally, will remove a potentially tricky problem for Mrs. Clinton. Questions raised about the activities of sovereign wealth funds -- giant pools of money controlled by foreign governments -- have become a campaign issue, as the funds have made a spate of multibillion-dollar investments in such corporate giants as Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mrs. Clinton said such purchases are "a source of concern," partly because the foreign funds "lack transparency" and could be used by foreign governments as "instruments of foreign policy." "

So here we see Bill making hay while the sun shone, with his Dubai partners. Then, as soon as his wife's bid for the Presidency made that investment questionable, he dumped it- but not the profit, of course.

This way, Hillary has her funding, and the contradictory, hypocritical political position, too.

What, precisely, did Slick Willie do for Burkle that allowed him to earn- and I use the term incredibly loosely- all that money? The Journal piece states,

"Mr. Clinton's duties and activities as a Yucaipa adviser have never been completely clear to outsiders. He has met at times with people involved in various Yucaipa business deals. And the former president's vast global network of contacts probably has been an asset for Mr. Burkle in dealings with business, labor and political leaders. Over the years, Mr. Burkle has said publicly that Mr. Clinton's prestige and connections have helped Yucaipa get its business proposals in front of top corporate decision makers.

Asked about the unwinding of the Yucaipa relationship, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton said the former president "is taking steps to ensure" that there will be "an appropriate transition" for the business relationship should Mrs. Clinton win the Democratic presidential nomination.

The spokesman added it isn't yet known how much Mr. Clinton will receive from his involvement in Yucaipa. A Yucaipa spokesman declined to comment on the firm's relationship with Mr. Clinton.

As part of the effort to sever financial connections that could complicate Mrs. Clinton's presidential bid, the couple in June disclosed that they had sold millions of dollars worth of stock in public companies and put the funds in cash accounts."

Before reading this article, I thought John Edwards' working at the hedge fund Fortress, described here, was the height of hypocrisy.

I was wrong.

Slick Willie has sold his status as ex-President for something north of $20MM. Not content to have stained the office while actually holding it, he now continues to dishonor it by brazenly turning it into cash. Reading Burkle's contention that just by having Slick Willie's name associated with business proposals, they get attention, confirms that the former President is 'doing' nothing for the millions he is paid by Yucaipa.

While masquerading as a champion of the poor and disenfranchised, the Slick One from Arkansas has managed to monetize all those millions of votes from his two Presidential election.

Disgusting. Just stomach-turning. It's exactly why voters in America have become so jaded by the political, governing class. Nothing is ever done out of a public service ethic. There's always a payday around the corner from every public office held.

I shudder to think of what the Billary could concoct, should she actually be elected to even one term in the Oval Office.

What The People Want

I happened to see some clips last night from the recent Democratic debate in which Hillary and Obama savaged each other.

It was great television. The two sparred like alley cats. Obama tossed out barbs about not knowing which Clinton he's running against. As well as reminding everyone that Hillary was, for the most part, just a lawyer in Arkansas who happened to be on the Wal-Mart board.

Hillary, for her part, shown a spotlight on Obama's many 'present' votes in the Illinois Senate, as well as his involvement with a Chicago slumlord now under indictment.

What was really entertaining, though, was watching two Democrats, a self-styled female 'strategist' whose name I can't recall, and NPR/Fox News pundit Juan Williams, go at it on Bill O'Reilly's program about the clips and catfight.

The woman called it mudslinging, and said that Obama won, because he got Hillary down in the mud, where only Bill, her husband, is supposed to be.

Juan Williams claimed that Obama lost, because he got dirty, when his overall message is supposed to be about positive, sparkly-white change.

Williams inadvertently tipped his loyalties when he used a word like 'unfortunately' or 'regrettably,' to describe Obama's mistake. O'Reilly pounced on this immediately, but Williams was backtracking at warp speed. Not credibly, mind you, but he tried to gracefully extricate himself from the very partisan gaffe.

That said, the woman decried this 'mudslinging,' saying that voters don't want this.

Actually, I think we do. We love it. It's the very bone and sinew of American politics, and, Goddammit, it's our right to see it on display every four years.

In fact, it's gotten better during this election cycle. With these overly-ambitious egotists out running for President a full year earlier than last time, voters get a thorough look at them for much longer than we've been able to in the past.

With the internet, blogs, and YouTube, no gaffe goes away. No errant, honest admission dies silently. It's available on YouTube forever.

I think we all want to know about Hillary's taking Wal-Mart money then, and now trying to crucify corporate America.

Or that Obama smoked pot as a kid, and maybe sold it. Defended slumlords in the Chicago ghettos, and essentially skipped taking positions on an awfully lot of Illinois Senate votes.

The politicos- candidates, their handlers, the party operatives- all want voters to think they want to know only about 'the issues.'

But we know it's about character as much as, if not more than, issues. What did these candidates do for the past decade or two? How did they make their living? Who do they owe? Who have they taken into their confidences, their lives, and their campaigns?

How do they behave under stress? The stress of a heated exchange with a rival candidate?

That's what is most interesting. Watching Hillary and Obama fence directly with each other in that debate earlier this week. Trading blows in front of a catcalling crowd, while Edwards watched from an ever-more distant perspective.

I think this is what American voters want to see. Counterpunching up close between candidates, where we know they will unveil what they believe their opponents' worst secrets and greatest weaknesses are.

How better to know these things, than to let an opponent expose them for us? For free? We want total information. We don't want any more Jack Kennedy secret administrations, in which the press failed to print what it new about his affairs, mob contacts and health issues. Or the hidden secret of FDR's near-total immobility.

The political class don't want this, because it's easier to control campaigns that only focus on 'the issues.'

But, being America, in an era of unbridled, unmatched communications and access to information, that hope is long gone now. I'm not even sure Bill Clinton could have backed, filled and covered up sufficiently in this modern era to win the Presidency, if it were him running in 2008, instead of his wife.

Long live the mudslinging and investigative efforts of the rival candidates. It's the only chance we voters have to learn the total truth about him, or her, to whom we would entrust our most powerful office for the next four years.

Hillary, Obama, the Race Card & the November Election

It occurred to me this weekend that a very interesting and not yet discussed situation could easily develop by the November elections.

Suppose that Hillary, through sheer firepower, organizational depth and grit, outlasts Obama Bim Baden to become the Democratic standard-bearer in the general Presidential election this coming November.

Whether by alleging Obama played the race card, or playing 'too' rough, Hillary may trump her very junior opponent to win the Democratic nomination.

If she does, could the black voters of Democratic persuasion hand whichever Republican faces Hillary in November by simply staying home?

What if many of the blacks now moving to support the first 'real' black Democratic Presidential candidate become angry at the Clintons for playing 'hardball' a little too hard? Or just become disenchanted that the Clintons don't think one President in a married couple is sufficient, and have to ace out the black candidate running against Hillary?

Could it be that an unforeseen consequence of Hillary beating her black opponent won't be to unite black voters behind her, but, rather, see them move either to the middle, uninvolved, or even, in extreme cases, actually vote for her Republican opponent?

It would be a rich price to pay, indeed, for Hillary's and Bill's relentless, no-holds-barred style of campaigning.

To my knowledge, nobody's considered this effect. Sure, pundits constantly opine on whether the presumed ultra-right Christian vote will turn out for Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney. But what about the other side? What about blacks who feel similarly disenfranchised and ignored?

Couldn't that group easily account for the margin of victory for a Republican in a close-fought Presidential election?

What If? Bill Clinton's Impeachment Conviction

Last week I was discussing the current Presidential campaign with a friend. Remarking on Hillary's trust problems among the electorate, I mused about something I had never really explicitly considered before.

Both Al Gore, Bill Clinton's VP, and Clinton's wife, Hillary, have had uphill struggles when trying to leverage their connection with the two-term President into their own stint in the Oval Office.

Let me be clear. While I don't like BIll Clinton, and disagreed with most of his policies, and his perspectives on what was and is good for America, I respect his rare accomplishment of winning two terms as President of the United States. That's more than many accord our current President, George W. Bush, also a man of uncommonly high achievement.

How is it that Clinton's own VP failed to win the White House? And prospects for his wife are similarly clouded as I write this piece.

How would the fortunes of Gore and Hillary, and US and world history have changed, had:

Hillary divorced Bill over Monica's blue dress and his own obstruction of justice and the trail of victimized, openly confessed women with whom Bill had sex over the years as governor and President; and

Gore resigned as VP upon viewing the wealth of evidence that Bill Clinton obstructed justice, using the vast machinery of the Executive branch, to impeded his impeachment and threat of criminal trial?

It's my contention that those two events, especially if they occurred within about six months of each other, would have damaged Bill Clinton's efforts to avoid conviction in his Senate impeachment trial.
If Gore had resigned, perhaps the Republicans, in concert with the Democrats, could have arranged for a Nelson Rockefeller-type VP to be confirmed, who would agree not to run again in 1996. Then both parties' Senators could have safely convicted Bill and ousted him.

I believe that Gore's defeat in 2000 was at least in part due to his defense of an obviously deceitful sitting President. Much in the manner in which voters held Ford's pardon of Nixon against him, and elected Carter in 1976, it's reasonable to assume that a fair number of voters in America's heartland never forgave Gore for defending Clinton.

Had Gore resigned as Clinton's VP for ethical reasons, he could have probably won the 1996 election with ease, had he faced Dole. A convicted Clinton would be out of the running.

Had Clinton still evaded conviction for obstruction of justice, Gore might have given Democrats a better hope of winning the White House than a damaged President abandoned by both his VP and his wife.

The 1996 election would probably have been too early for the current President Bush to have entered, especially with his father having only vacated the White House four years earlier. And it's not certain that Bush could have defeated a sitting President Gore in 2000, unless the bursting of the stock market's tech bubble contributed to a Gore defeat.

Turning to Hillary, her divorce from Bill would have garnered the emotional sympathy of women everywhere, as well as potentially smoothed some of the rougher edges off of her public persona.

Next to the sympathy she'd generate, though, such a move would have helped her answer the constant suspicion that she is purely calculating, including her seemingly unemotional, unloving marriage to her husband.

A Hillary thus softened and playing victim could have more easily followed Gore to the White House.

Would any of this have happened? Who knows. But I think it's quite reasonable to suggest that Gore could have at least followed Bill Clinton, should the latter have managed to evade conviction in his impeachment, and hung onto the Oval Office for another four years.

To me, the moral of this hypothetical scenario would be that both Gore and Hillary might have achieved their ultimate objective, the Presidency, had they 'done the right thing,' rather than sticking by a President so obviously involved with obstructing justice in the case of the probe into his lies regarding his affair and sexual activities with Monica Lewinsky.

By supporting a President who became a laughingstock for attempting to redefine the word "is," I believe both Hillary and Al Gore damaged their own plans to become President as well.

The voting public would almost certainly have trusted both associates of Bill Clinton more had they done the ethical thing and voted with their feet when evidence clearly pointed to his sexual activity with his intern, while he continued to deny it and attempted to obstruct the inquiry about his misuse of power to protect himself.

They are interesting questions to ponder.

By doing the "right thing," both Gore and Hillary may each well have been able to capture the prize that eluded the former, and may still prove unreachable for the latter.