The Xerox
The Democratic debate in Cleveland had a clear winner: Tim Russert.
Other than that, it was more of the same old, with the exception of a few notable moments that showed up like dust on the photocopier bed.
Clinton said, “This is too important,” again in order to continue to talk about health care when both Tim Russert and Brian Williams wanted to move to another subject. She and Obama argued about which plan was favored by most independent experts, each claiming his or her own plan to be superior. But really, if we are to look at what independent experts say, it becomes clear that they favor neither plan, as both are remarkably similar. What’s more, neither, according to said experts, is financially realistic, and neither will cut costs nearly as much as the candidates want us to believe. Phew. That’s like a can of raid on this cockroach of a topic.
Anyway, as per my previous suggestion, Obama was finally on Clinton’s left hand side, so each could write without worrying about accidentally making a political statement.
The buzzword changed, too. It wasn’t “change,” this time, but “accurate” (or derivations thereof such as “inaccurate”). Clinton said it thrice in the beginning. Obama said it eleven times after that. It appears we’ve actually honed in on substance rather than abstractions like “hope” and “change.” You can’t be called out for your accuracy with regard to hope. Keep in mind, each time a candidate says the other’s statement is inaccurate, it’s the equivalent to calling the other candidate a liar or an uninformed buffoon.
Obama has become strikingly good at trying to interrupt Clinton, and then pretending to be interrupted himself when she keeps talking.
Tim Russert, sly devil, asked the candidates whether they would leave Iraq immediately if the Iraqi government told the United States to simply get out. Both Clinton and Obama, recognizing the sovereignty of Iraq, said that they would have to do so in such a scenario. But when asked whether the U.S. should re-enter Iraq should al Qaeda establish a stronghold there upon our exit, Clinton said, “You know, Tim, you ask a lot of hypotheticals.”
Point of interest: Clinton is not yet the president. Ergo, any statement about a Hillary Clinton presidency is, by its very nature, a hypothetical. Each time Clinton spoke about something that would happen while she is president, she spoke in hypotheticals. I honestly didn’t keep count, but she probably used hypotheticals a couple hundred times during the debate.
But beyond that, when Russert said, “But this is reality,” Clinton reponded with, “No — well, it isn’t reality.” Aside from the political convenience that such a statement offers by allowing her to dodge the actual question, Clinton inadvertently disgraced the thousands of U.S. soldiers who have fought and died in Iraq. If there is no al Qaeda threat in Iraq (regardless of whether or not that threat has been perpetuated by an American presence), then what have they been dying for? Hypotheticals, according to Clinton. Here, Clinton is wrong. The threat is real, regardless of the policy we pursue to deal with it.
Surprisingly, Obama provided the right answer, although he disguised it in strings of political rhetoric. He said that he would indeed go back into Iraq should the need arise. But again, you could hardly tell what he was saying as his statement was dripping in phrases from the job description of commander in chief.
The correct answer, with no strings attached and no fluff statements to act as political buffers is as follows. “Yes, if al Qaeda strongly established themselves in Iraq after an American withdrawal, then the U.S. would have to reenter Iraq, as we have seen that it is neither in our interests nor the world’s interests to have an historically violent and irrational terrorist organization hold power in a country over an authoritatively weakened government.” Period. End of story.
Tim Russert: 1. Clinton and Obama: 0.
Clinton also has to get better at making analogies. She said that not making a health care plan manadatory for everyone would be “as though Franklin Roosevelt said let’s make Social Security voluntary.” Of course, because Social Security carries the benchmark of an effective use of spending, a system that will aid, at best, three generations of Americans before totally bankrupting the country. It’s like taking out a several billion dollar loan from your great grandchildren.
Not that Social Security wasn’t a good idea, it just didn’t work ideally — because things never work ideally. Perhaps if Social Security had had more restrictions at its inception, it wouldn’t spell financial doom for my generation. But this analogy with health care is merely indicative of Clinton’s assertions that government can fix everything at whatever cost. Ideally, yes. But as we said, things never work ideally. We don’t live in an ideal world.
Along the NAFTA lines, Clinton said that she would pull out of NAFTA if it were not restructured. Obama said he would use the threat of pulling out to get Canada and Mexico to agree to restructuring the agreement, thereby exposing his and Clinton’s cards. If Stephen Harper was watching the debate, he probably fell over laughing. Rest assured, if Obama is the nominee, McCain will call him out on showing too much of his hand, just as McCain called Obama out on his statement that he would attack an al Qaeda target in Pakistan. McCain then said, “The best idea is not to broadcast what you’re going to do, that’s naive.”
Tim Russert also cornered Clinton in her pledge to create jobs. In 2000 in Buffalo, while running for the U.S. Senate, Clinton said that there would be 200,000 new jobs in upstate New York. Russert pointed out that there had been a net loss of 30,000 jobs since then. He pointed out that Clinton later said, “I might have been a little exuberant.” He then asked Clinton, “Tonight will you say that the pledge of five million jobs might be a little exuberant?” Clinton’s response is loaded with revealing material.
Let’s start with her first point. “No, Tim, because what happened in 2000 is that I thought Al Gore was going to be president.” So we can take off of Clinton’s resume the bullet point about being exceptional at predicting the outcome of political contests. This kind of undermines her credibility when she says on the campaign trail that she will be the next President of the United States. According to her predictions, Gore was the next president eight years ago.
But what’s more is that it underscores a habit of making promises that she will not be able to keep. Clinton said that the job loss was due to having a Republican in the White House; yet she ran on her ability to create new jobs. Therefore, either she is using Bush as a scapegoat now, or she was telling New York voters in 2000 what Al Gore would be able to do for them, not what Hillary Clinton could get done. Either way, this reeks of dishonesty.
Clinton then said that, “22.7 million new jobs were created during the eight years of the Clinton administration, under my husband. We can create at least five million new jobs.” Now, in absolute terms, this is a postive, optimistic statement. However, with all the ambient grumbling about how a second Clinton administration would be a replica of the first one, I would argue that it is unwise for Hillary to show numerically, that the job creation during her presidency would be worse than her husband’s. It’s not that five million new jobs is a bad thing; it’s that she should realize how her statements will be taken. To ignore the contextual backdrop is to reveal a severe lack of understanding of the American people.
Tim Russert: 2.
With regard to foreign policy, Obama revealed a terrifying double standard of his. When Clinton quipped about Obama, “He basically threatened to bomb Pakistan,” Obama retorted, “If we have actionable intelligence against bin Laden or other key al Qaeda officials… and Pakistan is unwilling or unable to strike against them, we should.” So far, so good. But then he pointed to the fact that “just several days ago, in fact, this administration did exactly that and took out the third-ranking al Qaeda official.”
If Obama were using the Bush administration as a prime example of decision making and good judgment, there would be nothing wrong with this statement. However, just seconds after pointing to the actions of the Bush administration, Obama said that he has “put forward a plan that will provide a clean break against Bush and Cheney. And that is how we’re going to debate John McCain.”
Here, the logical fallacy is so dauntingly obvious that we can almost certainly conclude that McCain will eventually point out that Obama himself did, in fact, agree with much of the Bush administration’s handling of going after terrorists. The notion that somehow Clinton would be less credible in a debate with McCain over foreign policy will then vanish in a puff of logic. Should Obama be the Democratic nominee, it will happen.
Toward the end of the debate, Obama denounced Louis Farrakhan, which was not good enough for Clinton, who said that Obama should reject his endorsement. Then came a debate over the semantics of scorning anti-Semitic comments. Finally both candidates agreed that rejecting his support would be best in a sort of feel-good Democratic moment.
In this debate, Clinton let Obama get in the moving words. Going on her touching comments last time, I was almost expecting her to stand up and sing “God Bless America” for her closing statement. But she doesn’t sing. Maybe recite the pledge of allegiance. But no, the end was anti-climactic and Keith Olberman’s voice brought the professionally triumphant feel of a solid Tim Russert victory back down to the typical MSNBC level personified by the weekly cycle of Chris Matthews tearing apart, then worshiping Hillary Clinton.
