Linus and Lucy - at War!
A classic Peanuts strip begins with Lucy shouting at an off-panel Charlie Brown to “Leave us alone, you blockhead!!” Linus arrives and warns her, “Be careful. You might offend him.”
“Offend him?” Lucy asks. “What do you mean offend him?”
Linus explains, “He might really be a blockhead.”
Michael Crowley of the New Republic argues pretty convincingly that Hillary Clinton really is just sincerely hawkish in her views, and the people who keep trying to explain her stances and statements in terms of political calculation are needlessly complicating the issue. Crowley says nothing about the Senator that those of us who were anti-Clinton in the 1990s will have trouble absorbing. There are a couple of passages that, I think, suggest how likely it is that she would be a terrible President. One comes toward the end:
But, in concluding that she would support Bush, Clinton offered another rationale of a very different sort. She argued that she was inherently predisposed to grant the benefit of the doubt to a president asking Congress for support in matters of war. In the ’90s, Clinton had watched congressional Republicans undermine her husband’s foreign policy for political gain. They mocked his interventions in Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo–Tom DeLay called it “Clinton’s war”–and they cried “wag the dog” when he launched a cruise-missile attack on Iraq in the midst of the Lewinsky scandal. “[P]erhaps,” Hillary mused in her floor speech, “my decision is influenced by my eight years of experience on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House, watching my husband deal with serious challenges to our nation. I want this president, or any future president, to be in the strongest possible position to lead our country in the United Nations or in war.”
In short, Clinton was arguing that Congress should have an innate deference to presidential authority in matters of diplomacy and war. As she explained to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in December 2003, “I’m a strong believer in executive authority. I wish that, when my husband was president, people in Congress had been more willing to recognize presidential authority.” To this day, when Clinton refuses to apologize for her war vote, she explains that she doesn’t regret deferring to Bush’s authority, but rather “the way he used that authority.”
Thanks to the excesses of the Bush administration, the phrase “executive authority” has a dirty ring to it these days, and Hillary rarely talks much about it in public. But her advisers say it remains a guiding principle of her thinking. It also explains why Hillary, despite the vitriol of Cindy Sheehan and harassment by antiwar protesters, has been so much slower than Democratic primary rivals like John Edwards to call for a swift U.S. withdrawal.
If you believe that not just the Bush doctrine but the whole architecture of the “unitary executive” state needs to to be ripped apart - if you believe in peace, civil liberties and the separation of powers, in other words - Hillary is one of the last people you want in the White House. She is down there with McCain and Giuliani on the list of people who shouldn’t get a sniff of the place.
I think Democrats should think carefully about the damage even nominating her could do - hell, even giving her much front-runner time in 2008. Because once Hillary Clinton and not Nancy Pelosi becomes the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, she’ll have a structural incentive to rein in the Democratic Congress on the thing it has done best so far, which is dig up a lot of dirt on the abuse of executive authority. Senator Clinton is not going to want to move into a fixer-upper. She’ll want all the options the previous occupant enjoyed.
Hillary’s memoir recounts her 1996 meeting with an American peacekeeping soldier in Bosnia: “[W]herever we go, the kids wave at us and smile,” he told her. “To me, that’s reason enough to be here.” Not only was it righteous, it held a certain glamour as well. As Hillary recounts in a typical passage, “Sheryl Crow, Sinbad and Chelsea and I flew in Black Hawk helicopters to visit soldiers in forward positions. … Chelsea had been a big hit with the soldiers and their families throughout the trip, shaking hands and signing autographs with her usual warmth and grace.” All this filled her with a vivid optimism. On a flight back from the region, she recalls, “I remember thinking what a perfect day it was for flying and what a perfect moment to be alive.”
This is the worst sort of sentimental tripe invoked to justify the gravest and most morally fraught action a state can undertake. It needs to be said, apparently, the a day looks rather different from inside one of those helicopters than from underneath one. Kids still wave at US troops in Iraq in many places - troops often have candy and kids are excitable. That doesn’t prove the worth of the Iraq War. All of the death maiming and cruelty of war is safely over the horizon for these VIP tours. Even the living children of the losing side are kept safely away. Regardless of whether you think the Bosnia and Kosovo interventions were justified - Brother Neel does, for instance - you can’t find the justification in beautiful days and starstruck soldiers. It’s the worst sort of narcissism to do so, and that kind of narcissism in the White House is something this country needs a good deal less of.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 26, 2007 @ 10:11 pm
What the Republicans deserve is Hillary with Bush’s powers. We had to suffer for eight years; if the suffering has to continue, then I for one want to make them suffer as much as we have. Bring on the political prosecutions and general lawlessness — I don’t see why it should be our part to virtuously preserve America if half of it doesn’t want to.
And as for war? Well, if people are still volunteering for the armed forces after the only way of getting Bush out of Iraq was to run out the clock, then maybe endless war is really what we want.
Comment by Madeline F —
March 26, 2007 @ 11:55 pm
I’m really hoping Richardson is the Democratic nominee. I don’t think Hillary is popular enough among Democrats, but god knows I’d hate to be wrong.
Trackback by Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator —
March 27, 2007 @ 2:20 am
Clinton Camp Aims to Minimize Differences With Obama on Iraq…
In criticizing Sen. Barack Obama over his early views on Iraq, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campai…
Comment by Nell —
March 27, 2007 @ 4:41 am
WTF, Rich? Isn’t it just a little early to declare that “half the country” wants such a thing, and to toss it overboard on the basis that we deserve such a disaster?
The big money and the worst of the Democrats’ foreign policy elite are with her, and she’s benefiting from the fame and nostalgic glow of Pres. Clinton (who looks pretty damned good in retrospect even to Dems who disliked him as much as I did; imagine how his enthusiasts feel).
I’ve been an ‘over my dead body’ opponent of HRC for years, for the reasons Jim gives, and there are a lot of Dem activists like me. She’d be the least unifying nominee of the front-runnners.
Comment by Diana —
March 27, 2007 @ 4:56 am
This article underscores that HRC is very smart about mixing up bellicose rhetoric w/kitchen-sink concerns. The fact that we can’t afford both is irrelevant.
And Rich, the Republicans may deserve HRC, but we don’t. I doubt that there would be very many prosecutions in a Clinton II Admin — power protects power. It’s a mistake to think of the clintons as repping oppositiion. And yeah, a nice-size tranche of the country does love war, at least, their cartoon version of it. Enough to support any number of invasions.
Comment by AlanSmithee —
March 27, 2007 @ 5:30 am
This is an odd discussion. It’s like people are presuming they have a say in who the democratic nominee is going to be.
The primaries of both parties have been little more than farces since ‘68. As far as the dem elite are concerned, the candidate is going to be Hillary.
No one is worried that dems won’t vote for her. I mean, comeon, they voted for John “Send More Troops” Kerry. They’ll vote for a carrot if their told to.
Comment by H. L. Mencken —
March 27, 2007 @ 9:18 am
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Comment by Leonard —
March 27, 2007 @ 9:33 am
Seriously, though, I’m not sure a President HRC would be that much worse than any of the others running (Ron Paul excepted, of course, who’d become know as President Veto). HRC would have a similar dynamic with Congress as WJC did: half of them would do doing whatever they could to stop her doing anything. On the war, the Republicans would be freed up from partisan reasons for supporting it. Of course many of them would still support since they’re stupid like that. But some would defect, I’d think, and more with time as the war continues to grind and they realized the potential to take this albatross off of the R column and place it in D. (*cough* Vietnam *cough*)
On the domestic side, President Takes-A-Village would surely start to annoy anyone with the slightest love of liberty almost immediately, and then end up like hubby as a do-little and veto-a-lot.
Would Hillary lead in any bold new directions that the Congress would go with, whereas Obama or Edwards wouldn’t? I can’t think of any. But I also can’t think of any the other way. I mean, has Obama or Edwards come out against the drug war, or some equivalently important issue as that? Reforming social security? The oocupation of Iraq is the only one I can think of, and even there I am not hearing radical “let’s flee and leave them to their genocide” noises from anyone. Which means that all of the electables, at least, will attempt to manage the thing better than Bush, to spin the resulting mess.
Comment by Rattlesnake Jake —
March 27, 2007 @ 9:46 am
A new Zogby poll shows that 18% of Democrats will not vote for Hillary under any conditions. No Presidential contender has ever won an election with that much opposition within his own party. I think the Democrats need to be looking for another nominee.
Comment by Mooser —
March 27, 2007 @ 9:56 am
We had to suffer for eight years; if the suffering has to continue, then I for one want to make them suffer as much as we have.
Given those same powers, the same people will suffer, and the same people get advantages.
Comment by bryan —
March 27, 2007 @ 10:23 am
well, often when I am reading something sufficiently complex I like to think what would I mean if I was in this persons situation and saying the same thing. Well, what I would mean is that:
1. A Democratic President was doing a lot of really good work for the country.
2. The republicans made this difficult for him.
3. The good work that he was doing is in some ways very similar to the very bad work that the Republicans are doing now, the main difference being that he succeeded and the Republicans really messed up.
4. Don’t you remember how much better everything was when Bill Clinton was president. Did you notice his last name was Clinton.
5. The really ironic part is that lots of the Republicans complaining now when Bill Clinton was not fucking things up in a war and making things difficult for him are the same people that whine if anyone complains now when George Bush is fucking things up in a war. This is because Republicans are really not nice people
6. I am willing to let the Republicans have it easy, because I am a better person than they are, even though they tried to stop Bill Clinton from making things better. Did you notice his name is the same as mine?
Comment by Barry —
March 27, 2007 @ 10:49 am
“On the war, the Republicans would be freed up from partisan reasons for supporting it. Of course many of them would still support since they’re stupid like that. ”
Nah. There’d be very, very few exceptions, IMHO. The overwhelming majority of the GOP Congress would exploit HRC as ‘Commander in Chief’ as eagerly as a starving person eats pizza.
It’d be their golden opportunity to blame her for losing it; we’d see two decades of ‘*we* were winning, until *she* screwed it up’.
Now, this problem will be faced by any Democratic president taking office in ‘09, but HRC (IMHO) is too much part of the system to counter it. I see the only counter as merciless exposure, reform and punishment.
Comment by Jim —
March 27, 2007 @ 11:41 am
Neither party actually has a problem with executive authority. They both want all of it they can get. They just don’t like it when the other side has it. Face it, y’all: the Republic is on its last legs and one more large scale terrorist attack will kill it. Then it’s Caesar till the end.
Comment by Max —
March 27, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
All of you so called politically minded readers here are forgetting a crucial fact of American politics: It doesn’t matter who gets elected demo or repub. The war is everlasting either way, the bill of rights is fading away, and in the richest nation in the worlds entire history, we still have unemployment poverty no health and the most prisoners. And u.s. is only furthering the gap of post indust, industrialized, adn third world people’s gdp and income. Why? so keep on discussing hillary, barack, edwards, mccain, it really couldn’t effect you less. Why not pick up a third party? its gotta start somwhere
Comment by Reed Richards —
March 27, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
All,
Max is right, Democrats and Republicans are two wings of the same war party. It does not matter who occupies the oval office, because the Republic is already dead. Only the masses here, as with everywhere else, do not see it. 400 BILLION DOLLARS has been spent bombing two third world countries back to the stone age while Louisiana and Mississippi, almost two years after Hurricane Katrina, still to this day LOOK LIKE THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES. While the masses argue amongst themselves who they think should be king, their lives are being impoverished to the maximum extent possible………..
Comment by michael holloway —
March 27, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
H. Clinton is an Empirist; like Bush and B. Clinton.
The death of the Republic lies down that road.
Democrats, who wish for a Democratic President with power like this one, are by extension, anti-democratic.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 27, 2007 @ 3:00 pm
And we’ll get you out of your cell in Gitmo? No? You won’t have to worry about getting tortured or shot or blown up or drilled-through-the-stomach in Iraq? No?
Sorry, I’m at a loss as to how you (or “we”, presumably meaning other Team Blue folks, unless you’re going to come out of the closet as a member of Congress) are suffering in some mysterious way Team Red fans aren’t, aside from the “not having your team in power” thing.
This is the sort of stupidity that makes me have to fight to keep in mind that it’s still potentially a good idea to support Team Blue at the moment.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 27, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
Eric the .5b, I’m happy to give you an excuse to play the “I was going to vote Democratic, but then Some Guy On The Internet said something I didn’t like” game. The demonstration of how pathetic you are more than makes up for any single vote.
Here’s a hint: the only reason not to use Bush’s newly legal Presidential powers for a Democratic agenda is because you feel some connection to the country as a whole. If you don’t feel that the country as a whole has been suffering (except for the Republican power structure) then I don’t see why you wouldn’t vote Republican. If do you feel the country has been suffering, but don’t care about it, and you’re aren’t Republican, then the obvious thing to do is to vote for whoever will use these powers to suppress the Republican power structure in favor of the Democratic one. Hillary, unlike Bush, is smart enough to know how to do it. And sure it would benefit rank-and-file Democrats, who after all would become the new base that has to be kept happy.
At present, I still favor Edwards or Obama, for the same good reasons that others in this thread have given. But if Hillary’s the nominee, I’m voting for her. If the country’s going to hell, let’s see the thugs who brought it down in hell first.
Comment by mb —
March 27, 2007 @ 6:49 pm
Lest any of you libertarians fool yourselves about the Democrats, thinking that they’re merely misguided, Rich Puchalsky should serve as all the corrective you need. He’s no better than any of his red-state counterparts wearing “Club Gitmo” T-shirts. He may not be a typical Democratic voter, but he’s all too typical of the Democrats who have any power.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 27, 2007 @ 7:43 pm
Yeah, that’s me — typical power-having Democrat.
Comment by abraham —
March 27, 2007 @ 10:55 pm
Jim (Mar. 27 11:41a) nailed it.
Hail Caeser, bitches!
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 28, 2007 @ 3:13 am
Don’t flatter yourself. Folks like you are just part of why it’s such an uncertain, frustrating thing to have voted Blue and to plan to continue for the near future. It’s really more dismaying that the folks who leap down on every even faintly unusual remark of Mona’s and hold up their disagreement with it as proof of why libertarianism is crazy/corrupt/evil/racist/whatever apparently have no problem with your blather.
And hey, let’s go over what you’ve said:
Bingo. I think we have just an idea of how much that connection really means to a partisan drone like you. You haven’t been on the receiving end of what’s going on, but you want to get even for what’s been done to “us” - and “us” ain’t the American people. “Us” is your political tribe - the party that got marginalized for six years while a stupid Texan president you laughed at proceeded to do whatever the hell he wanted, and the people who feel entitled to some “justice” because until recently, they got mocked and insulted and ignored in the national discussion. To hell with the spied-upon, the detained, the tortured, and the dead - you’re the real victims!
You know, just like the people who ranted about Clinton’s civil liberties and Constitutional transgressions and proceeded to STFU once Bush started to do worse. It’s not about the harm, it’s about who gets to wield the club. Teams Red and Blue aren’t equivalent right now, but that’s despite the folks like you on either side.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 28, 2007 @ 6:06 am
Pretty much, Eric.
I will say this much about differences between the teams: I think Team Red was a more effective opposition when Team Blue was in the White House. Team Red seems to be better at politics than Team Blue. Oh, Team Blue might be really good at politicizing some dumb issues and ladeling out the politial rhetoric, but Team Blue doesn’t seem to be terribly good at actually using power to check the opposition. Team Red, OTOH, seems to be better at using power to counter the opposition.
Why that is I’m not entirely sure. It may have something to do with a more fragmented base for Team Blue, or teams living up to certain bad stereotypes. Whatever the case, it seems to be true.
But, having said that, I don’t want Hillary Clinton to be the Team Blue held in check by Team Red. I’d rather have some other Team Blue candidate held in check by Team Red, because I fear that Hillary Clinton might be more effective than some other members of Team Blue.
Comment by Timmy Ramone —
March 28, 2007 @ 6:12 am
If I may be so bold… I predict that if Hilary’s negative numbers don’t improve, then Al Gore is likely to throw his hat into the ring. Right now, he’s probably the one Democrat I could bring myself to vote for.
If Gore doesn’t run, and if both wings of the War Party nominate weak and/or reprehensible candidates for President (the only thing Hilary has going for her is that her likely Republican opponent will invariably be the Greater Evil), then there’s a real possibility that a third party candidate could emerge, probably from one of the two major parties. Thoughts?
Comment by abraham —
March 28, 2007 @ 6:34 am
A great contest would be Gore vs. Hagel. Both men I hold upon at least some amount of respect (at least currently), both I consider intelligent and articulate. Good debates would likely ensue.
Anyway, back to reality, this is America. We’ll of course end up with another choice between horse shit or dog shit.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 28, 2007 @ 7:49 am
Eric, don’t blame me for your own reading deficiency. My first and last statements are consistent.
And Thoreau, I’m sure that as a member of an entirely ineffective fringe, it’s just coincidence that you describe unwillingness to use illegal power as ineffectiveness. No projection going on there.
The truth is that no, Democrats have been nowhere near as bad as Republicans, despite the obsessive wish in this thread to equate them. Well, guess what, former Bush supporters — since all libertarians are either current or former Bush supporters — I don’t see why people should continue to save you from yourselves. You went along with trashing the Constitution because it kept taxes down. Maybe you need to hear what I wrote in the first comment more often, and think about what you’ve actually been doing.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 28, 2007 @ 8:39 am
Rich, you’re becoming a troll here. I don’t know why. But you are. I know you’ve been regarded as such across much of the internet for a long time, but here you’ve historically been treated with respect and made constructive contributions. I don’t know why you’ve changed your behavior recently - maybe your contempt for me and others here just finally got the better of you - but you have.
It’s pretty obvious that this blog is very open to liberal perspectives in discussion threads generally. But you personally are wearing out your own welcome quickly. If you’re content with that, you’re content with it. But don’t imagine it’s about your politics, because it’s not.
In this thread, your own statements in the very first comment are the cause of any “obsessive wish in this thread to equate them.” Everything else is you shoving people like Eric and thoreau into an Iron Maiden called The Libertarian in Your Head, whether they fit or not.
Take a break from this site for a few days and really think about what you’ve been doing. Then decide whether it’s worth it to you to come back with at least the measure of self-control you used to evince here.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 28, 2007 @ 10:58 am
I think you have a very good and uncomfortable point, Thoreau. A Team Blue as adept and motivated as the Gingrich Congress (even if you clear away the hype) would have probably stopped the buildup to the Iraq war, if so inclined.
Of course, I wonder how much of that is circumstantial and how much is reproducible - could we expect Red opposition any time shortly after Bush’s term not to be deeply crippled relative to the 90s Red Congress? They wouldn’t have any credibility on issues of federalism, the Constitution, oversight, separation of powers, checks and balances, or fiscal responsibility.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 28, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
I think the actual 90s Congress did a terrible job of stopping the wars of the 90s, on the basis of, they didn’t stop them. Even at the time I knew what the problem was: however much they may disagree with the premise of the war, once you start shooting foreigners, a critical mass of the nationalist party are going to get misty-eyed. So Armey et al could never sustain a unified opposition to Kosovo or even Haiti.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 28, 2007 @ 1:17 pm
True, Jim, but that’s the point - the 90s Reds weren’t really all that motivated against those wars, but for the most part, what they actually wanted to kill died. If the Blue opposition had been as competent and also had been willing to outright oppose the war back in 2002 and 2003, I think they could have sank it.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 28, 2007 @ 1:18 pm
Sunk.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 28, 2007 @ 4:01 pm
Jim-
Granted, Team Red didn’t stop the wars of the 90’s, but the wars of the 90’s weren’t nearly as massive as Iraq.
And Eric also makes a good point: The GOP stopped a significant fraction of the big things that they had talked about stopping. The budget was balanced. (OK, maybe it was just tricky accounting, but all the king’s accountants and all the king’s men couldn’t balance the budget previously, so at least it must have gotten close to balanced.) Welfare was scaled back. HillaryCare was defeated.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
March 28, 2007 @ 5:30 pm
For those of us who’ve been paying attention, they haven’t had any for, oh, I dunno - two or three decades? Three or four?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 28, 2007 @ 8:39 pm
Among other things, everyone’s paying attention, now.
Comment by Balu —
March 28, 2007 @ 8:55 pm
Max is right … it’s a two-party dictatorship and they’re laughing —
Comment by evilpaul —
April 2, 2007 @ 2:21 pm
This is incredibly naive. Bush hasn’t done much to keep his religious right, social conservative, and/or fiscal conservatives happy. He went over six years without vetoing a spending bill if memory serves, didn’t do much to reverse Roe v. Wade, enforced federal gun control laws vigorously, and did dozens of other things these people did not approve of. They simply buy into the same bullshit you do: That somehow the opposition would be worse.
Bush’s rank-and-file Republicans benefited little more than rank-and-file Democrats stand to under Hilary or whoever else. Unless of course you really believe the mythology of the multi-millionaire Democrats caring deeply for the working poor while the Republicans only care about rich people? All Americans can now be disappeared, tortured, tried (if they’re lucky) in secret, and then executed if His Deciderness sees fit to do so.
Democrats, liberals, progressives, “Blues”, etc haven’t sufferred in any real way anymore than Republicans, conservatives, Red-state fascists did under Bill Clinton. You’re just drone factionalists who hate Bush because he’s an unintelligible, incoherent, clumsy hick. Just like the drone Republicans who only hated and “sufferred” under Clinton because he was a slick and slimy womanizer.
All the proof I need is that you swoon over a candidate who’s to the right of the Bushies on Iran. Hilary is crying appeasement and you’re so opposed to Bush in principle that you’re all for expanding his stupid policies.
It’s laughable someone would claim to care about the country and then in the same breath demand more of what they say is destructive under a different brand name. The thugs who’re taking the country to hell aren’t going to be the ones to go down first regardless of which party controls the government. It’s going to be the rest of us including you drones of the Demopublican and Republicrat varieties. The sooner you accept this the less deluded you will be. Not that it’s likely to make any difference.
Comment by Terri —
April 22, 2007 @ 8:07 am
I am a first time visitor of this blog. Many points read here make a lot of sense to me, except the one about making the Republicans suffer because the Dems had to suffer for eight years. I personally am looking for a president that will make things better, not one that is elected to punish past mistakes. Maybe we should all begin to think along these lines. Yes, we are a country with many problems, but they came from both sides of the aisle. With that said, I don’t see a single candidate from any party that I believe wants to be in power for the sake of creating a better country. That is what we need, and not some power hungry person that has never known what it is like to stand in a line at the grocery, or drop their kids at the daycare. So sit and gripe about how bad it has been for the last eight years. Rub your hands together and plan your revenge. The result will only have one outcome. You will be cutting off your nose to spike your face.