by Larry Beinhart
In order to be READY ON DAY ONE ... you have to be ready a long time before that.
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Hillary Clinton entered the race with the majority of the big time connections ... huge sums of money... the most expensive and well placed operators and consultants that Democratic money could buy. The race was hers — to win or to lose... But... she didn’t have a plan.
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She had a strategy of going after the big states... imagining that the system was winner take all, like the national elections with the electoral college, and failing to understand proportional representation... the wrong strategy... that neglected reality.
Once she was under pressure, she began to behave badly. She told stories like the one about being under attack in Bosnia. She tried to cheat, insisting that the Florida and Michigan delegates be counted, even though the rules had said they couldn’t be and she hadn’t complained when the ruling was made.
She was NOT READY on DAY ONE of the CAMPAIGN... she will NOT BE READY on DAY ONE of the PRESIDENCY.
Her record in government tells us much the same thing.
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Ms. Clinton faced two big tests.
The first was health care... She did the planning in secret. Even the names of the members of the task force were kept secret, Dick Cheney style. This, rightly, offended many people in the field.
When the proposal was finally released, it was ... long and madly complex... insuring that no one could read it. Except corporations and lobbyists determined to oppose it...
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went through insurance companies... insuring that it was the most expensive method. It relied on regulations to control costs... creating maximum government bureaucracy. It pushed HMOs... Finally, she did not prepare for the industry reaction, the lobbyists and the advertising campaign against her. Hillary Clinton WAS NOT READY and she set the sensible idea of national health back by at least twenty years.
The second big test was the vote on the Iraq War. She did not read the national intelligence estimate... It was possible to figure out that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, that he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction and that the post war occupation would be a quagmire without access to “secret” government documents. But she didn’t figure that out. Neither... did her staff. She, and they, were conventional Washington insiders and accepted the conventional wisdom. When it came time to run for president, she staffed her campaign with similar people, and if she is president, we should expect them to trundle along.
She now claims that she didn’t know how George Bush would use the authorization. That shows she’s a bad judge of character. It is most likely that she voted as she did... to appear “tough on terrorism.” That is, she was afraid to take the really tough position, because her eye was on presidency, and the pose was more important than the realities.
CLINTON WAS NOT READY to do the work, and not ready to deal with reality... Someone who does not read the best available information... someone who did not have the forethought to ask about the consequences and the downside risks, is NOT READY TO BE “COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.”
Read the rest of this damning article on HRC, and McCain also, at http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/22/9152/