Caroline Kennedy Says She Will Back Hillary Clinton, Warren camp says NY Post article...

[JDPriestly]

103. Why is Hillary qualified, because I dont' think Hillary is qualified.

Qualified is a term that presupposes the application of subjective criteria.

That is to say that there is no examination that determines whether a candidate for the presidency has learned all the facts and concepts that a president needs to know.

I think that Hillary is not at all qualified to be president at this time. She is stuck in an old reality. Her ideas will not improve the reality of today for most Americans. Hillary managed the State Department. I think that she did a less than stellar ob there. It isn't that her foreign policy was wrong. It's easy to get that right. And she did a good job with foreign relationships. But her views on economics are stuck back somewhere in the pre-computer age. She does not understand why H1-B visas are not right for America. She does not understand that Americans need to keep American jobs in America and that we need to bring back industry and move even more quickly toward alternative energy.

The job of president is to lead the country. One of the most important qualifications is charisma. Elizabeth Warren has it. It's hard to define. But her meteoric rise in popularity especially among those of us who are I have to say pretty well educated and intelligent and very, very interested in politics is quite amazing. I really liked John Kerry. I was brokenhearted when he lost in 2004 (if he lost).

But even he does not have the charisma of Elizabeth Warren. Obama has charisma. So did Bill Clinton. Hillary is well known, but as we saw in 2008, she does not have enough charisma to win in an election that everyone thought she should win.

A president is a leader. She must be able to make good decisions. As I pointed out, Hillary Clinton has not proven that she makes good decisions. Clearly, in 2008, she did not choose a staff or choose to take positions and state them in a way that could win against a relative rookie in politics. Further, as I have pointed out, her decision to vote for the Iraq War Resolution betrays carelessness and a need to please others when she makes decisions. She did not listen to those who were trying to inform her about what was really going on in Iraq and what needed to be done and not done there. We are now reaping the whirlwind that resulted from her careless vote and the thoughtless, blind votes of so many members of Congress. Horrible as he was, Saddam Hussein in power would have meant fewer lives lost and less upheaval in the Middle East I believe. It was a sign of very poor judgment in making decisions to vote for that war.

A president must take responsibility. I understand that Iowa is changing its rules for the primaries. That is not a bad idea. They need to be more inclusive. But I also understand that these changes are in response to a complaint by Hillary that people who could not participate during certain hours of the day were excluded. Apparently she thought that she would have done better if the rules had been changed. I doubt that she would have. Hillary blames others for her failings. What can I say. This is not a very nice topic. But I have the impression that Hillary is not great at taking responsibility for her own mistakes. She has admitted that her vote on the Iraq War was wrong. But I have not heard her admit that the reason was that she really did not question the bogus evidence that was presented to her. She has not really taken responsibility for her vote on that. Of all people, having recently left the White House, she was in a position to vote wisely. And she has not really taken responsibility for what she did wrong.

A president must choose good advisers. Bill Clinton did not. Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, etc. were not good advisers. Clinton did choose a pretty good attorney general. That is probably because he knew more about law than about economics. We had a lot of Clinton advisers on the Obama staff when Obama took office. Some of them, like Larry Summers, are not what America wanted or deserved. Clinton's advisers gave him a lot of bad advice -- as on handling Al Qaeda, signing the Telecommunications Act and the repeal of Glass-Steagall to mention a few mistakes. The reappointment of Alan Greenspan indicated an inability to choose good aides. I expect that Hillary will choose her favorites from among the same crew.

Mind you, when Bill Clinton ran for president, I walked up and down the hills of my entire precinct to help get out the votes and urge people to vote for him. I have done a lot of work campaigning for candidates including Barack Obama. My choice for 2008 would have been John Edwards because he was the only one who recognized very early that economy was tanking and why that was happening. I knew it in 1997 when in the back of a courtroom, all the lawyers could talk about before the hearings was their stock market investments. That's a boom. A bust is bound to follow. (I hard read books on 1929, lots of them.) Edwards' personal problems of course were a huge disappointment to me.

I think that like John Edwards, Elizabeth Warren understands our economic crisis. I think she will be a good leader in that in her life and her career, her positions in government (read her book to find out what she has done there) and in Congress, she has consistently made good decisions. Not often does a little girl from a low-income family in Oklahoma manage to become a law professor at Harvard. That indicates how much natural ability she has, what drive she has, what good people-skills she has.

Elizabeth Warren takes responsibility for her mistakes and learns from them. Read her book and you will see that is her pattern.

And as I said, Elizabeth Warren can bake. That tells me that she is able to think through concrete processes and do the small things that make life good for those around her. Her baking is, you will learn if you read the book, one of the ways that she gives to others. Her books are another way that she shares with others.

I think that Elizabeth Warren has the humility, the patience, the kindness, the understanding of the world, the ability to listen and to empathize, to understand and explain difficult concepts to people without seeming condescending. She does not have an arrogant giggle or laugh. She does not ridicule people who do not understand what she understands. She doesn't scoff at others. Hillary???? Hillary has empathy, sympathy for the unfortunate, but she does not handle those who disagree with her well. Both Hillary and Elizabeth Warren are very competitive women, but Elizabeth Warren is competitive on behalf of ordinary people. That is something unique and wonderful about her. She is competitive to a normal extent about herself, but it isn't exaggerated. She mostly wants to fight for others. I do think based on my own impression of Hillary Clinton that she is not as generous with her respect for others as is Elizabeth Warren.

Elizabeth Warren is a better communicator than Hillary and that is very, very important in a president. There's more but I have said enough for now. I have to fix supper. I'm in California.

Edited to correct typos that changed my meaning. Thanks. good question.