BEWARE OF WHITE MEN BEARING GIFTS

[wertz]

Another James Wolcott piece worth pasting in its entirety:

I've never bought the pre-championship palaver that the Republicans were itching keen to face Hillary Clinton in the fall, that her mere presence in the race would energize their white-dumpling demoralized base into mobilizing into peasant mobs ready to storm Frankenstein's castle. The

Comments

[wertz]

Heh - absolutely. And, during their two year overlap, Clinton and Obama voted the same more than 90% of the time (though it is true that Obama missed 50% more votes than Clinton, so we'll never know exactly how identical their voting records are). Who can say how Obama would have voted had he been the Senate eight years ago? Sure, he made a speech once. I didn't see him holding any press conferences or issuing press releases or attending rallies and marches or signing petitions or meeting with his state's senators and representatives or, well... anything. His words are fine. Actions would have spoken louder.

And, so far as words go, people like Clinton and Kerry were much more vocal in their opposition when the Bush administration did take precipitate action - contrary to the terms of the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq.

But, yeah, the type of experience makes a big difference. Apart from two absentee years as a junior senator, Obama has virtually no experience in national politics (not to mention international politics), not to mention defense or economic policy. But the big difference, I think, is Washington experience. Clinton is an insider, a player - she knows how the bureaucracy works, she knows how the Executive branch is run, she knows the White House press corps, she knows who her friends are (and aren't) in Congress and how to work the chambers, and when that phone does ring at 3am, she knows who to call. Plus she'll get up every morning at 6am and put in a solid day's work.

Besides, it would be refreshing to have a policy wonk in the Oval Office for a change - not someone else who needs his talking point handed to him two minutes before he speaks.