It’s Gotta Be Hillary
I’ve made it pretty clear I have no love for the Clintons.
But she’s got to be / is going to be the Veep.
1. Barack needs to make sure that there is a gender gap that works in his favor. With Hillary’s help, he can do much better with white women which will give him enough of the white vote to win the election.
2. Hillary is the only Veep choice that brings him a candidate who can move the base and turn people out in droves to events and fundraisers. And Bill is pretty good at that as well.
3. Hillary clearly wants it, and actually does have something of a claim to it, given the race she has run. If she doesn’t get it, she could create problems.
The disadvantage is figuring out what to do with Hillary and, even more with Bill, after January. Barack will come up with something. (I don’t think putting her or him in charge of health care reform is in the offing, however.)
But if Barack doesn’t win in November, there is no January.
Tick, tick, tick
Sure, placing Hillary Clinton on the ticket can seem like the answer to all of the Presumptive Nominee's problems, the ultimate graduation present for Barack as he moves on to the next phase of his life and his campaign.
But watch out for what might be in that box.
It's not so much that I distrust Hillary's intentions, I just think that The Obama/Clinton Dream Ticket has a great potential to blow up in all our faces.
I don't dislike Hillary. Despite my strong misgivings for some of her campaign's tactics after Obama seized the lead for good in February and March, I am still awed by her achievement as a) the first woman to come so close to winning her party's presidential nomination b) the most successful presidential candidate ever to have finished second in a primary race and c) a presidential candidate whom I would have supported over every other Democrat I have voted for in a general election.
Yet I hear the ring of Electoral Truth in a series of columns that Maureen Dowd has written on this subject, and why she thinks Obama's running mate vetting process should be as easy as A.B.C. (Anybody But Clinton). She says that, basically, the juxtaposition with Hillary always has a deflating aspect to Barack's soaring, idealistic message. On May 11, Dowd explains rather rhetorically that "Hillary has a strange, unnerving effect on Obama, and whenever he is around her, he’s unable to do his best. Probably, it’s because she’s furious, always shaking his hand off her arm, ignoring him, giving him the evil eye and emasculating him."
Then she adds:
In today's column she notes how Clinton's new campaign for veep does basically the same thing. She writes:
I get that all of this reasoning is extremely gender-centered, but it still sounds valid to me. A running mate who has a bad habit of making the candidate look weak is a running mate with huge blow-up potential. And then there has to be considered the fact that both Clintons are apt to verbal gaffes that can be charitably called distracting but could metastasize into something more fatal.
If Barack needs to work a gender gap in his favor, Kathleen Sibelius, Janet Napolitano, Claire McCaskill, and many others would happily answer his phone call.
If he needs to move the base (and, come on, the base rallied around such inspirational icons as Mike Dukakis and John Kerry), then he can find another Solid Blue mate, but I don't think that will be a problem.
I agree that Hillary might create problems if she does not get the second slot, but as I say above, she's likely to create problems too if she gets it.
So I think Obama's first diplomatic mission is to figure What Hillary Wants second-most and give it to her. I'd start by promising more or less anything that Chelsea might want in a political future.
But I think Obama puts in himself in the position of potential-Pandora if he opens the box you suggest.
Pissing In vs Pissing Out
I'm sure you remember LBJ's line about why he reappointed J. Edgar Hoover: I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out then outside the tent pissing in.
Hillary needs to be inside pissing out.
Maybe she unerves Barack. I;m actually not sure. Sometimes it sure seemed that way. Other times Barack seemed to me to use an old trick male debaters use against women: be nice, polite, and calm and make the poor woman seem shrill and harsh. (I can't wait for the day when our expectations of men and women change enough that this schtick no longer works.)
And any rate, if Hillary has that effect on Barack, then having her on his side should help, don't you think? Won't it build Barack's confidence to have that female power behind him?
The alternative is having Hillary snipe at him from now until November. I think she is totally capable of that.
Or, to put the point another way, if becoming Vice President could emasculate Lyndon Johnson, it can do it to Hillary Clinton as well.
I can't wait until Hillary calls Barack election night and says, "Well it looks like we are winning Pennsylvani and Ohio but you are losing Florida."
My question
The other thing Hillary is said to be negotiating for is debt forgiveness. Is that an accurate perception? Would she in fact be willing to trade paying off her substantial financial debts to begin "pissing out of the tent"? Is that "enough" and how much is fair? Or is it fair at all? It has historical precedence but it also rubs me a little like extortion - "Pay me the money I spent weakening you for the general election even after most analysts said I could not actually reverse the tide or else I will weaken you more for the general out of spite". Am I politically naive to be rubbed the wrong way by that?
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
It's the bullied-into-choosing-her thing
that could have a real detrimental effect on Obama's image.
A negative stereotype that Progressives and Liberals have to be careful of is that they are weak, too weak for a job like the American presidency. Maureen Dowd cited a situation I was not aware of, with Democratic nominee Walter Mondale, who lost 49 states in the 1984 presidential election.
The iconic figure I always use when I try to communicate the image that Democrats must avoid, if they want to win a national election, is Jimmy Carter. I know, I know, there will be some of you out in YPP-land who will say "But I like Jimmy Carter!" Don't get me wrong. Carter's a nice guy, and as everyone always says, he's a great ex-president. But whether you study it or you lived through it, Carter's presidency was a blow-up moment for the country and the Democratic Party. Bad management is bad whether it's the fault of a bad Conservative executive, like George W. Bush, or a bad Liberal-Centrist executive, like Carter.
Carter's deliberativeness, and the awful failures of leadership during his presidency (the runaway inflation, the gas crisis that drove independent truckers to terrorism, Iran) make him the very image of Liberal "weakness" that can be fatal to a presidential candidate. Clinton's campaign at its worst already tried to characterize Obama this way. If Clinton really does threaten her way onto the ticket, that image could stick. And while I still think this year's national election is one the Democrats would really have to work hard to lose, branding Obama as The Guy Who Caved to Hillary would be a good place to start if you wanted to write a tragedy.
Avoid, I say. Pretty much at any cost.
Absolutely right, Sam
When I saw what Hillary has been saying about being Vice President, I thought that Obama could not pick her both for the reason you have and, also, because her statement was just one more example of the Clinton's showing really bad political judgment, bad judgment that comes, I guess, from her frustration with losing something to which she felt entitled. If she really wants to be Vice President, the right move is to endorse Obama quickly and say nothing about the Vice Presidency in public except "it is up to our nominee to make the decision."
Can Hillary (and Bill) get used to the idea that they came in second? Can she subordinate herself to Obama? We will see. If she can, the I think my argument for her being the best Vice Presidential candidate holds. If not, then she could be a disaster and should be avoided.
I wrote a week or so ago, the first goal when choosing a Vice Presidential candidates is "do no harm." I'm arguing here for taking a risk in the hopes of solidifying Obama's position now. Those two positions are in some tension, for reasons you have presented quite powerfully.
Apologia
While searching online for a "This is what a feminist looks like" t shirt to cheer up my kid, a Hillary supporter, I came upon this essay by Sarah Seltzer that not only calls out a lot of hard-to-deny misogynistic writing over at our dear old Paper of Record, The New York Times, but that specifically names the Maureen Dowd columns that I cited--albeit with a little beat of queasiness--above. Well, after reading Seltzer and, to be honest, after getting a bit emotional myself in considering Hillary's historic campaign in retrospect, that queasiness has evolved into a nodding disapproval of Dowd's characterizations of Clinton.
So skip those, if you were considering reading them, and check out Seltzer's essay.
I'm not sure if today's revelations have altogether changed my opinion re: The Dream Ticket, but I'm definitely rooting for some formal recognition of the desperate need for getting more women's voices into American government.
Best thing I ever did was help raise a feminist who could remind me of that.
welcome to the fold
better late than never ;)
though, here is the thing
as has already been mentioned, i have been acutely aware and distressed by rampant misogyny and sexism against Hillary from day one. That said, as was mentioned above, my sympathy was almost erased by the way Hillary handled the Wright controversy. Not only did she (or maybe she was not able to) take the high road, she actively attacked Obama on race and hasn't really stopped until today.
Now I have read many a bio of hers, and do believe she is for real on health care and education--a real progressive. And maybe she makes a good VP to Obama because of her commitment on those issues. or maybe she makes a good VP because she can be hung out to dry on tough issues--like health care--leaving Obama safe. BUT, the question I think a lot of us have and that Michelle and Barack have is whether or not she can be trusted not to stab Obama in the back after everything that has happened in the past two months.
There are other women to pick after all, and I have many reasons to believe that Obama particularly has not demonstrated a commitment to female leadership development, but Hillary on a VP ticket. Real question mark. No?
On the other hand, based on how many votes she got, isn't there--leaving her rhetoric aside--some consideration of her nomination as VP as a simple way to service our democracy? I mean it seems just to pick someone like her who the American people know, and at least half of Democrats like, as opposed to some random Governor?
Ha ha, I said remind me
As in I already knew better but I sometimes struggle with an almost imperceptible personal insensitivity that I'm sure you've never encountered in me, Ray.
I too noticed (though I failed to note) those awful sexist characterizations of Hillary in the media, probably because I was so caught up with getting Barack elected.
Should he choose her as a running mate? You make some good points re: her value over, say Sebelius or Napolitano (let alone my other secret favorite, White Male Webb).
That terrific speech may make the best case of all.
I'm still not sure, but I admit that I'm starting to drift a bit toward The Dream.
Haha
I was reading yr first comment Sam and trying to think how to say what I then scrolled down and saw Ray had immediately said. Specificially re: Ms. Dowd's stupid attempted-ly trendy misogynism.
Don't know as I'd go as far as that
You may see black-and-white where i see a darkish gray, a trend where I see something identifiable in a lot of traditional writing, and as Seltzer says, identifiable throughout decades of Dowd's own writing.
There likely is a gap between what you think is permissible, and what I think.
But I get what you mean too, and as I noted the Dowd is off-putting, especially the earlier one.
this one WAS pretty funny
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/opinion/21dowd.html
Since you brought it up
Also good:
To clarify a bit
the use of "emasculating" and "henpecked" is over the top, sexist, and I shouldn't have quoted it, and the Mondale reference is, I think, historically questionable.
However fuzzy or stupid the Pat and Mike reference may seem though, for wrongly super-imposing a romantic narrative on the Barack/Hillary story, the comparison of Obama to the Katharine Hepburn character is still apt in the sense that very negative language really is damaging to the image, and probably the psyche, of an idealist. Clinton has said what she's said. We really can't consider her "leaving her rhetoric aside," since, as Ray suggests, the only rational way to consider her for v.p. is to weigh both her negative rhetoric and negative campaign style along with the wonderful things she's done and the great hope she represents for so many.
The question of whether to ask her to be the running mate really is painted in shades of gray.
Yes, so it is a trend
that she has been working to cultivate for years. Let's not get into the various waves of certain types of reactionary post-feminism being more or less culturally acceptable. Anyway I know I like black and white but lord, between me and Maureen Dowd, you are saying I am the one that doesn't see gray? Ha.
Gotta say
Hillary's speech today hit a lot of the notes I looked for her to hit on Tuesday and didn't happen - till now.
Cheers to sincere attempts as Democratic unity.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Surprising poll
File it under the heard-it-on-NPR-so-can't-really-source-it category, but... according to a recent poll, Hillary's favorables/unfavorables have actually improved since before she started her Presidential campaign. They were something like 50/50 in 06, and 55/45 now.
There's almost certainly been some shifting -- i.e., much more popular with Reagan Democrats, significantly less popular among African-Americans -- but it suggests that one of the older counterarguments to Hillary as VP (that her high negatives hurt rather than help the ticket) may be overblown.
In general, I think the Team of Rivals ticket is very appealing.
Litmus Test
One of the hurdles that Clinton will face, whether she's on the ticket or not, is questions from pundits/reporters about her claims that Obama wasn't ready to be commander-in-chief, was naive about policy towards Iraq and Iran, etc. Especially since McCain and the RNC are already using her words against Obama.
Now, one way to defuse that would be to say that while she raised those questions, she felt Barack Obama had satisfactorily answered those questions over the course of the campaign. To put an exclamation point on that, she could say that on Iraq, "Barack Obama has been right: this is a war that should never have been authorized and never should have been waged; and I now regret my original vote authorizing the war."
Would Sen. Clinton be willing to admit to a mistake as a VP candidate she wouldn't admit to as a presidential candidate -- especially if it helped Obama to win over centrists uncertain about Obama's credentials and liberals still upset by Clinton's war vote and its aftermath?