OVERBREADTH

You should included a section for “related entries” such as McKanin’s one on ScoobyDoo

Nice entry, MC Funk. It should also be noted that while stagflation came out of Carter’s presidency, Paul “Motherfuckin’ ” Volcker (the man who broke the back of inflation after Carter) has come out in support of Obama.

Many criticisms of Carter grounded in Republican ideology range from “unfair” to just plain wrong. The other day, I listened to a few minutes of Tammy Bruce ragging on Carter and exalting Reagan, because it was so much better to tell America that it was wonderful than to tell America the truth - that all is not wonderful. That should be qualified by adding that Bruce’s idea of the truth is a little off: she doesn’t believe we’re in a recession, or on the brink of depression, because, she interviewed someone who lived through the first depression, and they didn’t have cell phones or cable. We have cell phones and cable, ergo we can’t be in a depression.

I like a candidate whose love of America is shown by his willingness to reform America, not empty words of patriotic self-adulation accompanied by inaction and corruption.

I further agree that Carter and Obama are linked in their relative purity to Washington corruption. It helped make Carter ineffective, and I think it will do the same for Obama. He has a few years on important-sounding senate committees, but what laws has he made? What bipartisan bridges has he built? What lessons in failure has he learned? The answer: only those in speaches. Count me as one of the few ignorant and misled voters who believes experience is a relevant factor.

But I am even more unassuaged by Mr. Funk’s suggestion that Obama’s “solutions” will somehow be superior to Carter’s. What is the basis for this promise? That Obama is not a teary-eyed evangelical? (He might just be, only for a different church).

That he has advisors? Pardon me, but aren’t we just finishing with 8 years - 8 disastruous years - of a president who was, he’ll admit, a little shaky on policy when he was running, but was buoyed because everyone figured he’d bring smart advisors with him?

In the increasingly unlikely event that we get a Democrat in the White House in 2009, he or she is going to need to make the most of little time, because a second term will not be gauranteed. I’m not even confident that he or she will get a first term at this point. We’re going to need to make the most of it.

To address the concerns over Obama’s experience, I have written another post, which will hopefully help those who have been misled or suffer from ignorance.

Matt K,

If experience is your presidential yardstick, can you tell me which experiences of Clinton’s qualify her? Lessons learned in failure? Are you saying then, that he should have more failures under his belt before he is as qualified as Clinton?

And don’t even get me started on her advisors. Call me old fashioned, you can even call me conservative, but I prefer that the presidents advisers be virgins to indictment.

As for Obama’s accomplishments and experience, I would have referred you to Mr. Funk’s blog back around February or so for a pretty impressive list, but it seems he has been kind enough to include the relative points in his next post here on Overbreadth.

Deb,

A great poet once said that “there’s no success like failure, and failure is no success at all.”

Over a decade ago, Clinton, still in political diapers, very publically and famously failed to get universal health care past a coalition of special interest groups once, but has shown that she has learned from her mistakes, building bipartisan bridges into the 21st century to spark some improvement the deplorable state of health care for Americas fighting men, women, and death benefits thier spouses.

But really, experience is about much more than just laundry lists of legislation authored or sponsored by a particular politician’s office, which often amounts to little more than a tempered spew of hot air. Experience is about the confidence of the American people that they know where a politician stands on hot button issues that matter. Frankly, it takes about as much chutzpah to sponsor a bill pleading for nuclear arms reduction, or equality in death benefits for soldiers, as it does to wear a flipping flag pin.

I want a candidate I can trust to work with all of the special interests who will demand access to the presidency, without being a pawn thereof. Special interests are entitled to have influence, provided it is not undue. I know Obama won’t be a pawn of, say, the arms industry, or tobacco lobbies, but what about the Sharptons, Wrights, McLurkins and Farrakhans? How will he handle it when pressure is placed upon him to curb Federal intervention in the abuse of people who belong to a minority sexual preference? How will he handle Israel? I have grave concerns about his ability to represent certain minorities a president must represent, in view of the most unexpected tone of tolerance-for-intolerance that he has taken during this campaign, the campaign that caused me to withdraw my support for him, and vote for Clinton, to begin with. In short, a year ago, I would have had no reason not to trust him, but now, I don’t have any confidence in where he stands on the tough social and ethnic issues that trouble our country.

My litmus test is not that I expect 100% agreement on all issues with a candidate. According to those online testers, I never get much more than a 60% match with any of them, [and apparently, I should have voted for Chris Dodd. Chris Dodd!]. But if I can’t have 75% agreement, I’ll settle for 50% agreement, and a measure of confidence that I can predict what the candidate will do.

Let me close with a movie metaphor: Obama is the “Being There” candidate of the ‘08 election. As the film suggests, a candidate whose positions are vague but optimistic has a lot of appeal. These candidates seem to walk on water (as Peter Sellers does in the final scene of the movie, to belabor the movie’s initially subtle point) to such an extent that even the mentally incompetent can ride to victory. Which is exactly what Dubya Bush did in ‘00. He was certainly the “Being there” candidate then, and he’s more likely to actually be clinically retarded than the well-educated, knowledgeable, and extremely articulate Senator from Illinois.

However, the “Being There” candidate does not have to be an imbicile or a Republican. The movie itself was largely satirizing Jimmy Carter, the original “being there” candidate, who at least initially seemed to walk on water by comparison to the corrupted Ford administration that preceded him.

For many Democratic and some independant voters, Obama’s audacious hope (a Jeremiah Wright coined phrase, if I recall), has lifted him to where he walks on water. I say, “it works and gets a Democrat into the White House, then so be it, I’m for it.” But I don’t think it will. In my view, he has already lost his wings. How much longer will it take the media, and independant voters, to turn on him?

I know it took nearly 5 years for W’s charm to wear off, and for people to finally realize the real W. Bush. But he had the help of 9/11 and “victory” in Afghanistan and other “weapons of mass media distraction.” People get smarter and more aware, and news travels faster with every minute of every day. I don’t predict a 5 year Honeymoon for Obama. I’m not even sure it will last 5 more months. Relying on a President’s “hope” just does not reliably work.

I understand your concerns about Obama being a “Being There” candidate, but I think this is a misconception fed by the fact that his candidacy exploded into the wider media only after he’d scrupulously determined his various positions and presented them with lesser fanfare.

In fact, by contrast with McCain or Clinton, his policy positions are pretty specific and steady. Even when politically unpopular, they are stuck to. Here are a few good references, if you’re interested.

For foreign policy, check out his essay from last July. He published with Romney, both the first of the major ‘08 candidates, and both, I felt, were superior to subsequent essays:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86401/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.html

For issues pertaining to sexual preference minorities, I covered the illuminating LGBT Debate the Dems had in August ‘07. This was one of the first things that turned me against Clinton:

http://matthewfunk.net/blog/2007/08/10/the-democratic-debate-on-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgendered-issues/

Those are the issues dearest to my heart. The economy is addressed in the Foreign Affairs article in part, but for his broader vision, I’d refer to his Web site. Empirically, I’ve been impressed with how numerous economists laud his ideas, contrary to those of his opponents, from the middle-class tax cut, to his solution to the gas crisis.

I take from what you wrote that you have another issue - that of “tolerance for intolerance” - that initiated your disfavor. What in particular are you referring to?

The original comment I responded to was that experience was important to you. Faced with a list of Obama’s accomplishments you spend a lot of time and energy saying it isn’t so important after all.

Or it is only important in so far as knowing where a candidate stands, so lets explore that.

Here is a very incomplete list of some of Hillary’s Golden Flip-Flop issues:

ETHANOL

Flip: Voted against several ethanol bills in 2005 and in 2002 Senate energy bill debate scathingly said, “We are providing a single industry with a guaranteed market for its products - subsidies on top of subsidies on top of subsidies and, on top of that, protection from liability. What a sweetheart deal.”

Flop: July 2007 at the Iowa State Fairgrounds she declared, “Now, Iowa is way ahead of the rest of the country,” pausing to deliver her best proud matron look she continued with, “What you’ve done with ethanol … you’re setting the pace.”

NUKES

Flip: “I have said publicly no option should be off the table, but I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table” April 2006.

Flop: “I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.” August 2007

Flip: “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

PAKISTAN, TALKING & HYPOTHETICALS

Flip: Referring to Obama’s statement that the U.S. would go after Bin Laden in Pakistan Hillary said, “You can think big, but remember, you shouldn’t always say everything you think if you’re running for president, because it has consequences across the world.” She later added, “I do not believe people running for president should engage in hypotheticals.”

Flop: “If we had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan I would ensure that they were targeted and killed or captured.” Hilary - August 2007

IRAQ

“Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.”
Hillary Clinton, September 13, 2001

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members…

It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”

Hillary Clinton Addressing the U.S. Senate October 10, 2001

“There is a very easy way to prevent anyone from being put into harm’s way, that is for Saddam Hussein to disarm. And I have absolutely no belief that he will. I have to say that this is something I’ve followed for more than a decade. If he were serious about disarming, he would have been much more forthcoming. . . . I ended up voting for the resolution after carefully reviewing the information, intelligence that I had available, talking with people whose opinions I trusted, trying to discount the political or other factors that I didn’t believe should be in any way part of this decision.”

Hillary addresses Code Pink, March 7, 2003.

“We must stay the course” in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and asked for more troops to finish the job.

“We have to exert all of our efforts militarily”
November 29, 2003 Hilary visits the troops In Iraq and Afghanistan.

I could fill pages with her flip-flopping on this one, so we’ll stop here. In the interest of time, please insert Hillary’s latest “I’ll get us out of Iraq” quotes.

I have to tell you, listing Hillary’s flip flops is a project I put aside because of the enormity of it. We are not even scratching the surface here.

One last question for you, why exactly did you mention Sharpton?

Yeah - a lot of those really aren’t even contradictory.

You really have it in for her, don’t you?

I do truly loath her, yes. I have a low bullshit tolerance and resent having it shoveled at me in such heaping servings.

The Iraq list isn’t contradictory because I quit at 2003 and figured recent memory should be sufficient to make the point.

Can you tell me clearly where she stands on any of the other issues?

P.S. Why did you mention Al Sharpton?