Month: March 2008

by hilzoy

In my last post, I wrote about how I think Obama needs to respond to his pastor’s remarks in the world as it is. In this post, I want to talk about how I understand those remarks, and Obama’s relationship to his pastor. In an ideal world, I think, people would spend a lot less time parsing remarks by people other than the candidate and then demanding that that candidate disavow them; and more time trying to figure out what we can infer from a candidate’s relationship to someone, if we imagine both parties as actual human beings, rather than as walking position papers who relate to each other only via agreement and disagreement on policy.

In this post, therefore, I want to try to figure out what, exactly, Barack Obama’s relationship to his pastor tells us about him, not what kind of political firestorm it might create. I should say that in doing so, I will be assuming something I take to be obvious: namely, that Obama himself has not just not made the kinds of statements his pastor has made, but has tried, at every turn, to unite rather than divide, and that it is deeply unlikely that he wants to damn America, blames the US for the HIV virus, etc. Or, in short: that he disagrees with his pastor a lot, as he has repeatedly said.

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by hilzoy

I didn’t read this ABC piece on Obama’s pastor until yesterday evening:

“Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor says blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.”

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side, has a long history of what even Obama’s campaign aides concede is “inflammatory rhetoric,” including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own “terrorism.””

The video on ABC’s page is worth watching. So is this:

In it, Wright goes on about how Barack doesn’t fit the mold created by rich white people for their leaders, but Hillary Clinton does. Some of what he says is obviously true: “Hillary never had a cab whiz past her and not pick her up because her skin was the wrong color”, for instance. Some of it is obviously false: “Hillary ain’t never had to work twice as hard just to get accepted”. As this excellent post by FlyOnTheWall notes, “the sermon was delivered less than a week after Obama’s loss in New Hampshire, but well before the Illinois primary, and his frustration is almost palpable.” I can understand that frustration. But the fact remains that what Wright says is genuinely blind to the problems that women face in trying to be treated fairly and as equals. It is, in a certain way, like Geraldine Ferraro’s remarks, except without any grounds for thinking that the Obama campaign approved or might profit from them.

Bottom line: I think that Obama has to do something fairly serious to distance himself from this. He has, of course, already disavowed the statements themselves. From the ABC piece:

“Sen. Obama told the New York Tmes he was not at the church on the day of Rev. Wright’s 9/11 sermon. “The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification”, Obama said in a recent interview.”

Today, he said this:

“This is a pastor who is on the brink of retirement who in the past has made some controversial statements. I profoundly disagree with some of these statements.

Q: What about this particular statement?

A: Obviously, I disagree with that. Here is what happens when you just cherry-pick statements from a guy who had a 40-year career as a pastor. There are times when people say things that are just wrong. But I think it’s important to judge me on what I’ve said in the past and what I believe.”

I don’t think that that’s enough. I think he needs to address this directly and at greater length, and probably to remove Rev. Wright from his campaign’s African American Religious Leadership Committee. I hate saying that, for reasons I will get to in a subsequent post, but I think it’s right.

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by publius

I’ve seen lots of virtual ink spilled lately on whether the prolonged primary will leave lasting intraparty scars. The short answer is who knows. But speaking personally, even though my irritation with Clinton has spiked lately, I don’t see any lasting scars so long as the ending is legitimate – i.e., is consistent with ex ante rules.

For instance, let’s say that Obama holds a majority in elected delegates (and popular vote), but Clinton pulls it out with superdelegates. I won’t like that, but that’s a perfectly legitimate result. The ex ante rules (however silly they may be) incorporate superdelegates, so I’m not going to march off sullenly if Clinton wins through rules that everyone agreed to going in. In fact, I’m going to go out and work for her.

At the same time, however, I would not accept a Clinton victory that depended on seating the Michigan and Florida delegates (assuming no re-vote, etc.). That’s breaking the rules, pure and simple, and the Clinton campaign should understand in no uncertain terms that the “nuclear strategy” will drive away supporters for the fall and leave lasting damage. I won’t be supporting the Brian Wilson Tribute Band, but I can stay home.

If there’s something that progressives should have a consensus on these days, it’s respect for ex ante rules and political legitimacy. That’s why it’s been so disappointing to see Jeralyn Merritt (whom I deeply respect) making the case for brazenly breaking the rules that all candidates agreed to. She writes:

The exclusion of Michigan and Florida was a penalty imposed by the DNC. In my view, it was an unfair one and should be lifted. The votes should count as is, the delegates should be awarded and seated.

In a series of posts, she makes at least two arguments for seating these delegates: (1) the candidates only promised not to campaign, not to ignore delegates; and (2) dropping out of these races was a self-serving tactic that helped everyone but Clinton. Both arguments have problems.

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Bill Clinton claims that Hillary Clinton urged him to intervene militarily in Rwanda:

And then, using a more somber tone, he explained that she had wanted the United States to intervene in Rwanda in 1994, when hundreds of thousands of people died in a genocide that lasted just a few months.

Clinton has often said that not acting in Rwanda was one of his biggest regrets. It’s a decision, he said, for which he continues to try to make amends. Had he listened to his wife, Clinton said, things might have been different.

“I believe if I had moved we might have saved at least a third of those lives,” he said. “I think she clearly would have done that.””

When Hillary Clinton was asked whether this was true, she said “It is.”

I have no idea whether or not this is true. But I do know a couple of related things. First, if Hillary Clinton did press for military intervention in Rwanda, her advocacy left no trace in the world. I have read quite a lot about the Rwandan genocide and the US reaction towards it, and Hillary Clinton’s involvement comes as news to me. I just went through my various books on the Rwandan genocide (there are eight), and she is not mentioned in any of them. And according to the Chicago Tribune, I’m not alone:

“Whatever her private conversations with the president may have been, key foreign policy officials say that a U.S. military intervention in Rwanda was never considered in the Clinton administration’s policy deliberations. Despite lengthy memoirs by both Clintons and former Secretary of State and UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright, any advice she gave on Rwanda had not been mentioned until her presidential campaign.

“In my review of the records, I didn’t find anything to suggest that military intervention was put on the table in NSC [National Security Council] deliberations,” said Gail Smith, a Clinton NSC official who did a review for the White House of the administration’s handling of the Rwandan genocide. Smith is an Obama supporter.

Prudence Bushnell, a retired State Department official who handled the Rwanda portfolio at the time and has not allied with a presidential candidate, confirmed that a U.S. military intervention was not considered in policy deliberations, as did several senior Clinton administration officials with first-hand knowledge who declined to be identified.”

In an article on the US response to the Rwandan genocide (and written in 2001, years before she met Barack Obama), Samantha Power wrote:

“What is most remarkable about the American response to the Rwandan genocide is not so much the absence of U.S. military action as that during the entire genocide the possibility of U.S. military intervention was never even debated. Indeed, the United States resisted intervention of any kind.”

So: Clinton didn’t mention that she advocated military intervention in Rwanda in her memoirs. Neither did Madeleine Albright. Neither, as far as I can tell, did anyone else. Military intervention was not considered as an option, “never even debated”, which means that any advocacy she did engage in must have been pretty ineffective.

But it’s worse than that. The Clinton administration did not simply fail to intervene militarily in Rwanda. It took a number of steps that made it easier for genocide to be committed. Not taking these steps would have been much, much easier than sending actual troops to Rwanda. They would have made a real difference. And yet the Clinton administration failed to take them.

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by hilzoy

The Chicago Tribune examines Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy experience, thereby saving me the trouble of hunting down news stories about her Macedonia trip on Nexis/Lexis. Here are the foreign policy triumphs she has cited recently:

“Pressed in a CNN interview this week for specific examples of foreign policy experience that has prepared her for an international crisis, Clinton claimed that she “helped to bring peace” to Northern Ireland and negotiated with Macedonia to open up its border to refugees from Kosovo. She also cited “standing up” to the Chinese government on women’s rights and a one-day visit she made to Bosnia following the Dayton peace accords.”

Josh Marshall had a great post about this yesterday:

“There are two ways of looking at what’s required for this aspect of the president’s job. One school of thought has it that a potential president needn’t be an expert on military affairs or foreign relations any more than he or she needs to be an experts in economics. They need to be informed and knowledgeable. But what’s most needed is temperament, maturity and judgment. Detailed expertise can come from advisors.

Others think it’s precisely the expertise that’s needed. So someone like a Joe Biden is the kind of person you want — someone who’s deeply schooled in every aspect of foreign relations and has been at it for literally decades. John McCain has some of that and he was also career military which gives him, at least arguably, some special grasp of the military components of the job. Bill Richardson had at least some cred on that scale based on his time in the Congress, UN Ambassador and general ad hoc rogue regime diplomacy.

Hillary Clinton seems to think she’s a strong contender in this latter category. But that’s a joke. She’s starting her second term in the US senate, where, yes, she serves on the Armed Services committee. Beside that she’s never held elective office and she has little executive experience. I think she can argue that she’d make and would make a strong commander-in-chief. But she’s pushing a metric by which she’s little distinguishable from Barack Obama. I’m honestly surprised she’s not drawing chuckles on this one.”

And Steve Benen adds:

“In some ways, I think Obama’s early efforts to define himself pushed Clinton in this direction. Recognizing from the outset that his resume on the national stage is thin, he immediately began touting his strengths — temperament, maturity and judgment. Clinton, reluctant to say “Me too!” felt compelled to embrace the “expertise” label, and began pointing to specific moments from her husband’s presidency. (…)

I’d argue that this is wholly unnecessary. Clinton, as far as I’m concerned, is qualified to be commander-in-chief. She’s been a senator for eight years; she’s a bright and creative thinker; she’s served on the Senate Armed Services Committee; and she’s seen various foreign policy failures and successes up close over the last 16 years. If she were president, she’d have my full confidence.

Which is all the more reason that I’m puzzled by the style and substance of her campaign pitch. Clinton simply isn’t a Joe Biden-like candidate. Why pretend that she is?”

I imagine that there are several reasons. First, if she took judgment, not experience, to be what makes a good commander in chief, she would have a hard time explaining why voters should choose her over Obama without mentioning her vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq. That vote is a strong argument against her claims to judgment, and in her shoes, I’d want to avoid a line of argument that forced me to address the elephant in the room. Second, the idea that she has experience and Obama doesn’t is one of her main themes, and this lets her reinforce it.

The obvious downside to making this case is the inconvenient fact that she actually doesn’t have extensive foreign policy experience. She must, therefore, be gambling that people won’t notice this, any more than they noticed that a significant chunk of her thirty five years of experience working for change occurred while she was working full-time as a corporate lawyer. And so far, it has paid off: as Josh Marshall says, “Hillary Clinton is getting the free ride of all free rides on her repeated invocations of foreign policy experience.” So let’s examine her foreign policy achievements in more detail.

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by hilzoy

Having taken yesterday off, I’m late on this one. But these comments by Hillary Clinton are inexcusable:

““I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.

Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a “distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,” Clinton said, “Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold. That is a critical criterion for the next Democratic nominee to deal with.” (…)

She and McCain “bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign, Clinton said, while “Sen. Obama will bring a speech he gave in 2002,” stating his opposition to the Iraq war as an Illinois state senator.”

It’s not that I think one candidate can’t ever say this about a candidate in his or her own party. It could happen that some candidate in one’s own party was obviously unsuited to be President. (Jack the Ripper. Hitler. Pick your own imaginary nightmare candidate.) If that candidate seemed at all likely to win, I think one should say say: listen, this would be a complete disaster. The reason I think Clinton’s comments are out of line is that Barack Obama is not, by any measure, that imaginary candidate. Moreover, I assume that she knows this.

However, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that she actually believes that Barack Obama cannot “cross the commander-in-chief threshold.” One of the most important jobs a President has is to defend the country. If she thinks that Barack Obama is not qualified to do that job, then she should not support him over anyone who can. Specifically, she should support McCain over Obama.

That’s why I think some enterprising reporter should ask her whether she would support Barack Obama if he were nominated. If she would, then she should be asked why she would be willing to support someone she does not believe is qualified to be commander in chief.

Whatever her answer, it would tell us something we need to know: either that her doubts about Obama are so serious that she would not be willing to support the nominee of her own party, or that she would support someone she thinks is unfit to serve, or that she does not believe a word she said about Obama, and is willing to impugn a fellow Democrat’s fitness to serve as President because her own interests matter more to her than her party’s or the nation’s.

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