Centerfield

Translation: She was for it before she was against it, but she would have been against it if she had known that being for it would have been baggage with her target base in the 2008 run-up. All she lacked was the prescient ability to know then what she thinks she knows now.

Takes a lot of yoga practice to contort like that without tearing cartilage and stretching tendons.

Posted by: Tully at December 18, 2006 09:33 PM

You got that right. Anything. You know it's pandering because she is in trouble with the voters in the democratic party and they are holding the war against her.
And she will do whatever. I even heard she is going to have a whispering war against Obama and make it seem like it came from republcans.
And with the re-release of her book, seems like she's playing follow the leader. Obama writes a book, goes on book tour, is begged by millions to run, a huge stir goes up and he is the hot dem with all the media talking about him and it's Hillary who. So, she re-releases her book and tries to get the same. hey, if it didn't work for Edwards, what makes her think it's gonna work for her. They both look like follow the leader.

Posted by: vwcat at December 19, 2006 12:55 AM

This doesn't bother me at all. I think lots of folks who voted for the Iraq war would not do so now if they had known that our pre-war intelligence was way off, and had they known that we didn't have a really good plan at all to do something extremely difficult, midwife a democracy.

I give most folks a mulligan on the former, even though I had serious suspicion that our intelligence deserved more scrutiny than it was getting. Mulligans not so much on the latter. The extreme difficulty of democratizing Iraq should have been foreseen by all of our leaders. From day 1, it was the best reason not to get involved in the first place.

Hillary is running for President, so she's one of the few who are required to take a new public position, and one of the few who is going to be seriously pilloried for it. But a LOT of folks voted to support this war, and I think a lot of those folks regret it now, even though most of them aren't rushing to admit they feel they messed up.

Posted by: bk at December 19, 2006 09:07 AM

Brian;

I think lots of folks who voted for the Iraq war would not do so now if they had known that our pre-war intelligence was way off, and had they known that we didn't have a really good plan at all to do something extremely difficult, midwife a democracy.

Agreed. However, I wish folks were more comfortable saying, in essence, "at the time it seemed like a good idea...". Hillary needs to be careful here. As GW has found out, admitting you were wrong doesn't get you very far. And as Tully pointed out, she'll need to careful she's not too close to the "Kerry Zone"

Posted by: c3 at December 19, 2006 01:15 PM

Sounds shallow to me. I agree with Tully, it's nothing more than pandering to her base.

So removing a mass murdering tyrant is a mistake when we are having a hard time? 'Cause we sure patted ourselves on the back when we captured Milosevic.

If we are not willing to "midwife" a nation, then we must prepare to be an isolationist one. Because what were we doing with Afghanistan? Were we willing to give it back to tyrants once we had bin Laden's head? Democracy is done voluntarily, but tyranny is not.

And for pete's sake Iraq has been independent for only a year and it seems that everyone wants to give it up. There have been definite mistakes, but I don't want it to end up like Rwanda in the Sand. and I don't think our troops (nor in America's conscience, ourselves) want to end it like that.

Posted by: Rachel at December 19, 2006 01:32 PM

Rachel, I find it a bit peculiar to see a willingness to change one's mind as necessarily shallow. As always I continue to believe that our willngness to "midwife" a democracy has to be connected to 2 things, not just 1.

I have no problem with considering the downsides of our failure to intervene. That's the one many pro-war folks continue to focus on. What I have a problem with is the near-total unwillingness to assess our actual prospects for success when deciding what our strategy ought to be going forward. The need for us to succeed in democratizing Iraq doesn't speak to our actual ability to succeed. Iraq sits at the conflict crossroads of Iran, the Saudis, and the Turks. There's ample reason why the expression "discretion is the better part of valor" came into vogue.

I am not in favor of a withdrawal right now, but I'm sympatico with anyone who questions the wisdom of our original decision to invade. As bad as Saddam Hussein was (and seriously, who questions that? Why even bring it up?), the possibility remains that in the aftermath of his ouster, we are on the brink of a situation that could be even more dangerous and volatile than what we previously had.

It seems to me Hillary is always going to be accused of being a pander bear by folks that hate her. I find it to be an extremely ugly mindset which suggests that some person never ever undertakes any action as a result of true belief, rather only as a function of political calculation. At base, the suggestion is that such a person lacks any moral compass, or soul, if you will.

Hillary Clinton is not the anti-christ. She is indeed ambitious, but I don't get the sense that she doesn't care. And as I pointed out, it is entirely plausible to me that many folks who once voted to support the war now experience genuine feelings of regret.

Is it really the true (subconscious or conscious) hypothesis of Hillary haters that this woman is entirely incapable of genuinely felt political views?

Posted by: bk at December 19, 2006 02:37 PM

This doesn't bother me at all.

It doesn't bother me either, but it still plays to her weaknesses and gives her opponents ammo.

Posted by: Mathew at December 19, 2006 02:38 PM

Matthew, agreed. It plays to her main weakness, which is residual Clinton Derangement Syndrome, the mutant Hillary strain. Itr sort of goes like this:

She's the anti-christ, you know. An ambitious and souless single-minded bitch-automaton determined to be President by any means necessary, and entirely lacking in any genuinely felt political views, to say nothing of her gross lack of any humanity. Oh, and she's a liberal too, and some liberals like her. And she'll always come home to liberal, which further proves that she's evil. And souless.

Posted by: bk at December 19, 2006 02:43 PM

I think that "soulless" is supposed to have 2 Ls, by the way. Souless refers to a poor french person, perhaps? :-)

Posted by: bk at December 19, 2006 03:26 PM

Is it really the true (subconscious or conscious) hypothesis of Hillary haters that this woman is entirely incapable of genuinely felt political views?
---------------------------------------------

In a word ... Yes.

Or more precisely, I believe that she is capable of genuinely felt political views.... but genuinely incapable of sublimating her own political ambition to to the furtherance of those views.

Posted by: cengel at December 19, 2006 04:25 PM

I think there were actually three major positions on Iraq before it started:
1) In favor of doing it
2) Opposed to doing it
3) In favor of doing it, because we didn't realize just how incompetent the Bush administration would be in its execution of the effort.

Those in groups 1 and 2 can stick to their position without change. Anybody in group 3 is faced with deciding, at some point, whether to change. Even though they thought it a good idea originally. Even if they sincerely believe that it COULD have been done effectively. Because the fact is that it wasn't done effectively. And the facts at this later point in time mean that it no longer is possible to do something good.

Personally, I wish it was still possible to salvage the situation can't be salvaged. Better for America. Better for the Iraqis. Not to mention better for the countries neighboring Iraq. But wishing won't make it so.

Posted by: wj at December 19, 2006 05:43 PM

Or more precisely, I believe that she is capable of genuinely felt political views.... but genuinely incapable of sublimating her own political ambition to to the furtherance of those views.

I don't agree with that. I don't like the woman, and I have spent a lot of time trying, but I do get a sense that she genuinely wants to make a difference, and that is the real reason behind her chosen path. I think it is her approach to politics that is failing her in that it isn't hers, it is her husband's, and she can't pull it off like he could. I don't believe, for instance, that Hillary Clinton worked tirelessly to propose Health Care reform because she first saw political value in it. I think it is a shame, for instance, that Carville and McAuliffe are her main strategists. She needs her own identity. The American people need to see the side of Hillary Clinton that you would get in a coffee shop one-on-one, and not the political machine. If it seems I am rooting for her it is because I am, not because I want her to win, but because I generally think she has been dealt more BS than any one human being deserves. Maybe she brings most of it no herself, but still.

Posted by: Mathew at December 19, 2006 07:41 PM

She was for it before she was against it, but she would have been against it if she had known that being for it would have been baggage with her target base in the 2008 run-up. All she lacked was the prescient ability to know then what she thinks she knows now.

Translation: Gordon Smith without a va-j-j. Or with one..depending on your POV, I guess.

I'll leave my ballot blank before I vote for Hillary for President.

Posted by: carla at December 19, 2006 09:27 PM

Some thanks Hillary gets for putting centrism above her country. Ingrates.

Posted by: AlanDownunder at December 20, 2006 05:24 AM

Meh. I doubt any of the people here who'd call themsleves centrists wants Hillary, or anyone else, to put centrism above country. On the contrary I think most of us who are centrists support it because we think it's good for our country.

Posted by: bk at December 20, 2006 01:24 PM

Meh. I doubt any of the people here who'd call themsleves centrists wants Hillary, or anyone else, to put centrism above country. On the contrary I think most of us who are centrists support it because we think it's good for our country.

Posted by: bk at December 20, 2006 01:24 PM

OK this is one centrist who is softening on Hillary. However, she can't eliminate one issue/concern I have "What does it mean to have an ex-President as the 'first person' especially in light of prior spouses having significant influence on their president-spouses". Having said that, I have to admit she's smart, she can compromise and she's taken some reasonable centrist positions. I do think that some folks don't like her because they see/hear assertive female and equate that with b**ch

Posted by: c3 at December 20, 2006 05:08 PM