[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Clinton has run her campaign ...

[Bill Totten]

... the same way Bush has run the country

In her cynicism-sustained attempt to defeat Obama, she has shown
contempt for intelligence, decency and democracy

by Gary Younge

The Guardian (May 26 2008)


We all saw it. Indeed, that was the whole point. In the US, the networks
stopped regular programming so we had little choice. The White House
wanted to make sure we caught the full dramatic impact of the US
president landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln in a navy jet against a
backdrop of a clear sky and the sign "Mission Accomplished". America the
beautiful. America the invincible.

The soundtrack to this most flamboyant and flawed of photo opportunities
was similarly unequivocal. "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended",
said President George Bush. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war
on terror that began on September 11 2001 and still goes on".

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue",
wrote George Orwell in his essay In Front of Your Nose. "And then, when
we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show
that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this
process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or
later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a
battlefield."

And so it was, this month, that on the fifth anniversary of that stunt
the White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, insisted we did not see what
we thought we saw. Indeed, we were all mistaken. The president wasn't
referring to the Iraq war as such. Instead, claimed Perino, he made all
that effort and secured all that airtime to congratulate just that
"particular" crew on having accomplished its "particular" ten-month mission.

"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more
specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on
this ship on their mission", she explained. "And we have certainly paid
a price for not being more specific on that banner".

This kind of thing gives chutzpah a bad name. And yet, with this
administration it is a practice with which we have become all too
familiar. As median wages fall, Bush tells Americans they are better
off; as the torture continues at Guantánamo Bay - the only part of Cuba
Bush actually controls - he calls on Raul Castro to honour human rights;
as he cuts taxes and starts wars, he calls on Congress to practise
fiscal rectitude. Not content with pissing on your leg and telling you
it's raining, he tries to convince you that your leg has been dry all along.

As the primary season draws to a close it has become increasingly
apparent that Hillary Clinton has run her campaign with the same
contempt for intelligence, decency and democracy that Bush has run the
country. Like the Bush administration, her campaign has been sustained
by cynicism, divisiveness and fear-mongering, leaving a toxic and
rancorous rift in its wake. Like the White House, her aim has been to
win at all costs. And like the White House, it has produced the same
result. Failure.

It is a continuum not of policies - on that front she is closer to
Barack Obama than either of them would concede - but a mindset that has
served America ill these past seven years. Creating a bespoke reality
out of whole cloth and then hoping people will not just buy it, but wear it.

In a last, desperate bid to resuscitate her campaign, Clinton will put
her case for the ratification of the results of the Michigan and Florida
primaries to the Democratic National Committee rules and bylaws
committee later this week.

Both states held their primaries in January, in defiance of Democratic
party rules. The party warned them beforehand that their delegates would
be disqualified if they went ahead, and asked the candidates not to
campaign there. The candidates obliged. The states went ahead anyway.
Clinton won both. Her senior adviser, Harold Ickes, was on the committee
that voted not to recognise them. Obama's name was not even on the
ballot in Michigan.

Back in October last year Clinton said uncomplainingly of Michigan:
"It's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for
anything".

But then she won both. Now everything is different. Speaking before a
crowd of senior citizens in Boca Raton, Florida, last week she went into
metaphorical hyperbole, comparing the battle to seat the delegates from
Florida and Michigan to the suffragettes, the civil rights movement and
Zimbabwe - where more than forty people have been killed in
election-related violence. "We're seeing that right now in Zimbabwe",
she explained to a crowd of senior citizens. "Tragically, an election
was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the
people. So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote."

Clinton insists she is winning the popular vote. She's right. But only
if you tally votes with the same degree of selectivity as Robert Mugabe.
For her claim to make sense, you would have to count the discounted
Florida and Michigan primaries and discount the legitimate caucuses in
Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington state, three of which Obama won.
These four states do not reveal popular vote totals. It's like saying if
you include your goals that were ruled offside and don't recognise your
opponents' headers (it is football after all) then you really won the game.

The reason Clinton has had to resort to this sophistry reveals another
trait she shares with Bush - hubris. She believed she would have the
nomination sewn up by Super Tuesday. She woke up on the following
Wednesday out of money, ideas and volunteers. It was a month and nine
contests before she won again. By then the momentum was Obama's and,
though he has stumbled, he has been running with it since. By most
reckonings he leads by about 190 delegates and 400,000 votes. Even if
Michigan and Florida were counted, she would still trail in delegates.

And, like Bush, she has appealed to the basest instincts of the
electorate to dig herself out of a hole. First came fear. "It's three am
in the morning and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want
answering the telephone [in the White House]", went her ad.

Then there is racism. The most recent example of which was her claiming
that Obama's "support among working, hard-working Americans, white
Americans, is weakening again", as evidence of her own viability. Later
she would concede that equating "white" and "hard- working" was a "dumb
comment".

On Friday she was lambasted for intimating that she was staying in the
race because, like Bobby Kennedy, Obama may yet be assassinated. It was
clumsy. But a reasonable reading of the context shows she neither said
nor meant anything of the kind. Her problem is that by now the general
impression is that there is almost nothing she wouldn't do or say. It
would indeed take something that dramatic and tragic for her to win.

Like the Bush administration, the issue is no longer whether she leaves
the stage with her reputation irreparably tarnished, but what state she
leaves it in and how many people she is prepared to take with her.

g.younge at guardian.co.uk
_____

Gary Younge is a Guardian columnist and feature writer based in the US.
He was formerly the paper's New York correspondent. His most recent book
is Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States
(2006); he is also the author of No Place Like Home, published in 1999	

guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/26/hillaryclinton.barackobama


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