Entries associated with the tag "Hillary Clinton":

. . . your own opinion doesn't count for much. A couple of weeks ago Barack Obama whomped Hillary Clinton in North Carolina and lost to her narrowly in Indiana, outcomes that were generally expected. Overnight, the media (and apparently the Democratic Party) decided that was that -- Obama had wrapped up the nomination. The tone of the coverage underwent a sea change. Clinton was now an object of affection and indulgence:

My column on Wednesday argued for Clinton to gracefully exit the stage now that it looks like there are no more rabbits to pull out of her electoral hat. But readers -- not all of them women -- pushed back. Let her quit when she's good and ready, many argued. She's earned that right. Carol Marin, Sun-Times.

She wasn't denied the nomination. She wasn't cheated. She simply competed fiercely and did not win. That doesn't mean her candidacy was not a triumph. Michael Tackett, Tribune.

revisionist gratitude:

Does Senator Barack Obama come out a bloody mess, or a battle-tested warrior? . . . Could competing against Mrs. Clinton have improved Mr. Obama as a candidate in the same way that competing against Larry Bird and Magic Johnson in the 1980s made Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan champions in the 1990s? Mark Leibovich, New York Times.

and avuncular wisdom:

Yes, Hillary, America is worth fighting for. But the best way to fight for America now is to give up the fight. Sun-Times editorial.

But then there's today's primary in West Virginia, where polls show Clinton leading Obama better than two-to-one. Which means that the media's next assignment will be to sound less than absurd dismissing Obama's crushing defeat. It's not easy being a pundit. This will test the best of them.

Given that Barack Obama so obviously hasn't closed the deal, as they say, with blue-collar Democrats, the question is why, and reporter John McCormick makes some useful observations in Friday's Tribune. Obama's "sometimes aloof," can sound "a bit smug," and "tends to pace across the stage as if there is a giant blackboard behind him." What's more, according to a Tribune analysis, he "tends to speak two grade levels above" Hillary Clinton -- high school senior to her high school sophomore.

What all this adds up to is an apparent deficiency of what pundits who probably don't have it either like to call the "common touch." I sounded this alarm myself  back in 2006, but the matter went untended and now the partridges have come home to roost.

If there's an undertone to McCormick's matter-of-fact report it's more amused than alarmed. Nobody likes a didact, but Obama actually was a professor -- he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. And McCormick rounds up a colleague to testify that "the notion that he looks down on working people is the most ludicrous thing you could imagine" and a former student to say that "he was one of the least hubristic professors I had."

So now we have both a University of Chicago law professor and a U. of C. law school graduate vouching for Obama as a man of the people.

It's a start. 

Carol Felsenthal made an interesting observation about the Clintons to me recently. Back in '98, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal was new, a lot of people thought Hillary should have thrown Bill out of the house. But the White House was his house. Giving the bum the heave-ho would have raised constitutional issues. If she's elected in November, he'll have to watch it.

Felsenthal, a friend of mine, is coming out with a new book, Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House. Even in 2001, when he moved out on his own terms because his presidency was over, she says, it was a pretty miserable leavetaking. He was in semidisgrace, thanks to the Marc Rich pardon and stories (way overblown, according to Felsenthal) of his staff trashing Air Force One and the West Wing. TV comics "made him into a ridiculous, pitiful figure." To top it off, he had nowhere to go. The Clintons had bought a place in Chappaqua so she could run for senator in New York, but now that she'd been elected she was never there and it meant nothing to him. "He was stranded with his dog Buddy and his butler and the Secret Service in the garage," with Maureen Dowd hiding out front in the evergreens waiting to pounce, she says.

Felsenthal predicts that Clinton won't be back in the White House anytime soon, but if she's wrong she has no concern that Bill would be, or would even attempt to be, a Putin to Hillary's Medvedev. "She would say, 'Forget that, buddy.'" So what would the ex-president do with himself? Apparently he had trouble with that as president, too. "Hillary goes to sleep at night and in the morning she's wide awake and ready for action," says Felsenthal. "Bill would stay up all night on the telephone and playing cards and then he'd go into a policy meeting and fall asleep." Felsenthal thinks Hillary would get him out of her hair, turning him into an envoy forever on the move, serving his nation by spreading his bad-boy charm.

Clinton showed up onstage with Hillary and Chelsea Tuesday night to bask in the Pennsylvania victory, but he hasn't been seen much since the night of the Iowa defeat. His staying away has been tactical, Felsenthal says, not a sign that the couple's on the outs. They seldom see each other, but they talk all the time, and despite how odd the marriage is it's a strong one, she believes. If Hillary's president she'll be the boss, but he'll be her top consultant, "and that's why the vice presidency in a Hillary Clinton administration would be a bucket of warm piss." In other words, a return to normalcy. That's what John Nance Garner called the vice presidency when he served under FDR, long before the office was taken over by Rasputin, I mean Dick Cheney. 

The book jacket calls Clinton in Exile a "definitive biography," which it isn't. Instructed by her publisher, Morrow, Felsenthal cut some 80,000 words from her original manuscript, most of them telling the pre-2001 "back story." The biographical stuff, in short. Felsenthal has been promoting her book by writing on the Clintons at huffingtonpost.com. She had a good post recently about Bill Clinton's wristwatches. When he was governor, and even after he was elected president, "he was infamous for wearing a cheap plastic Timex Ironman" -- or so Felsenthal was told by a watchmaker who does business with Clinton now. Timex had a big operation in Arkansas. Now Clinton has more than 50 watches, one of them valued at more than $100,000. Felsenthal regrets that "no one has reported which watch the former president sported when he traveled in Pennsylvania bashing Obama as an out-of-touch elitist."

On Tuesday the New York Times ran an op-ed piece in which a couple of academics and a former defense department official proposed some questions for General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who'd flown in from Iraq to be grilled by Congress.   

Because that was the point of their visit, right? To face tough questions from the people's representatives? The nation's at war. The people running it are accountable. Petraeus and Crocker didn't come all this way just so three candidates for president could strut their stuff.

But did the coverage focus on the questions and the answers? No. Tribune headline: "Gen. Petraeus answers his next boss: Presidential candidates take turns grilling commander." Sun-Times headline: "Top Iraq general faces next commander in chief." New York Times headline: "At Hearings, a Chance to Explain Iraq Views and Audition as Commander in Chief." 

Those headlines would do if senators McCain, Clinton, and Obama had led the questioning. The coverage offered no evidence that they did. The Tribune article (top story in the Wednesday paper) offered details on a "complex, often indirect discussion" between Petraeus and the three senators who seek the White House. Note the verbs employed: ". . . said McCain. . . . McCain's assertion. . . . she said. . . . Clinton said. . . . Obama acknowledged. . . . Obama told Crocker. . . . McCain said. . . . Clinton argued. . . . Obama contended. . . . Obama also suggested. . . . McCain said..."

Did any of the three senators ever actually ask the two witnesses anything -- in the old-fashioned sense of not knowing but wanting to find out? The Sun-Times wasn't reassuring. Here I read that "McCain asked questions designed to support his argument that the United States should maintain its troop presence in Iraq." But that would be the sort of question to which the desired answer is "Doggone right!" "You said a mouthful," or "I couldn't have put it better myself." 

Meanwhile, "Clinton argued" and "Obama pressed." 

The Times story (registration is required for this and other Times sites) told us that McCain "said there was significant progress in Iraq" and that Clinton disagreed, but that the two of them "reserved their real fire for each other." Meanwhile, Obama called the war a "massive strategic blunder." But finally, a breakthrough. The Times reported, "'What conditions would have to exist for you to recommend to the president that the current strategy is not working?' Mrs. Clinton asked General Patraeus, with only a slight edge of exasperation in her voice." An actual question had been cited in a newspaper! It sounded rhetorical -- according to the Times Clinton promptly declared that the conditions "are unclear, they lack specificity." But a rhetorical question beats none at all. Another such question was attributed to McCain. Wondering about the recent fighting in Basra he asked Patraeus, "What's the lesson that we're to draw from that, that 1,000 Iraqi army and police deserted or underperformed?" and then told the general, "Suffice it to say, it was a disappointment."

In a separate story, "Petraeus Urges Halt in Weighing New Cut in Force" (this was the page-one story, to the Times's credit), Clinton "cited," Obama "restated his view," and McCain "argued." A sidebar was labeled, "What the Candidates Said."

Eventually I found something wonderful on the Times Web site -- video links to and full transcripts of the interrogations of all three senators. Give them credit. McCain gave a nine-minute statement in which he praised Patraeus and Crocker to the heavens, but then he settled into seven minutes and 40 seconds of innocuous questioning. Clinton spoke of her reservations about the war for four minutes and 38 seconds and then asked questions for another eight and a half minutes. As for Obama, he plunged right into his Q & A. After five minutes he called it off, asked the chair's indulgence, and for the next eight minutes and 16 seconds made a "couple of key points" about Iraq that demonstrated how troubled he is. At one point he even posed a question to Crocker, though he allowed that "maybe it's a rhetorical question" and told the ambassador "you don't necessarily have to answer it."  

Maureen Dowd wrote a column for the Times's oped page that focused on the testimony and pretty much ignored the candidates. In her account, "a confused Chuck Hagel asked the pair. . . . Senator Biden asked a trenchant, if attenuated, question. . . . Senator John Warner asked the essential question," and Barbara Boxer was the "voice of reason, [asking] 'Why is it, after all we have given, . . . it's the Iranian president who is greeted with kisses and flowers?'" 

As a rule of thumb, questions from noncandidates don't seem to be as newsworthy as nonquestions from candidates. 

“Honeybun,” said the next president, “I expect the press to ask some questions about how you handled the 3 AM calls during your administration.”

“I don’t know why my prostate needs to become an issue in this campaign,” said the last president.

“Not those 3 AM calls. The ones where national security was at stake.”

“You should know,” said Last. “The smartest thing we ever did was put the phone on your side of the bed.”

“That’s because half the time when the phone rang at 3 AM it was you calling,” said Next.

“And the other half the time it was Boris Yeltsin drunk-dialing or Tony Blair needing to talk to someone about the Church of England. I wish I knew how to hang up on people but I don’t. You were totally remorseless.”

“I just said, ‘Do you realize what time it is? It’s 3 AM!’”

“And slammed down the receiver.”

“Blair would always call right back and apologize. It drove me crazy.”

Last chuckled. “Do you remember when it was the prime minister of Canada and neither one of us recognized his name and we told the FBI to trace the call. Good times!”

But Next wasn’t much for nostalgia. “Boris was worse than a telemarketer,” she brooded. “You couldn’t hang up on telemarketers either.”

Last wanted to keep it light. “I bet the press couldn’t guess in a million years that the real reason you won’t release our tax returns is you’re so embarrassed about our time-share investment in Branson, Missouri. Lordy, that gal was persuasive!"

“How persuasive did she have to be?” Next snickered.

As he’d long since learned to do when these intimate conversations took a familiar turn, Last refocused. “Anyway, the problem at hand is to demonstrate that I was cool and collected in a crisis and you learned from the master.”

“Even better,” said Next, “is to demonstrate that I was cool and collected in a crisis and you leaned heavily on my clear thinking and resolve.”

“Let’s not push it,” said Last. “I’m trying to remember just what crises did rear their ugly heads at 3 AM. Rwanda?”

“We probably don’t want to belabor Rwanda,” said Next.

“Anyway,” said Last, “I think that call came in after lunch.”

“What about the bombing of the Cole?” said Next.

Last thought and thought. “Decisive inaction might be hard to explain in a presidential campaign, when nuances get lost,” he said. Then he brightened. “There was that time Chelsea stayed over at her friend’s house and didn’t tell us. That was a crisis at 3 AM and I was the one blubbering ‘Something terrible’s happened to our little girl’ and you said ‘Don’t be silly.’ I’m not ashamed to tell that story.”

“It’s not what the press is looking for,” said Next.

“They’re unrelenting,” Last agreed. “What if we tell them that every time I had to make one of those 3 AM calls, I appointed you acting president. Between the prostate and the hemorrhoids, I could be gone a long time. You had an awesome weight on your shoulders.”

Newspaper readers might be diminishing in number, but they’re not getting any less inquisitive or ornery. In September I heard from Chicagoan Frank Palmer, a frequent correspondent. "The nation’s press," he wrote, "was up in arms when the Sudanese arrested a Yank reporter for the Trib." This was Paul Salopek, who spent over a month as a prisoner in Sudan, where he was accused of spying. "Freedom of the press is a universal principle," Palmer continued. "Every government should be held to it. Well, almost every government. It turns out that the U.S. military has been holding an AP photographer for FIVE MONTHS. No charges have been filed. Want to bet that the printer’s ink spilled over this case won’t be a fraction of that spilled over the earlier one?" I didn’t take the bet.

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi Sunni, was arrested April 12 by U.S. marines in Ramadi, and he’s been a prisoner since – at this point over 11 months. The U.S. military in Iraq has told journalists that Hussein's been linked to al Qaeda members and to Iraqi insurgents. The Associated Press lobbied quietly on his behalf until September, when the exasperated wire service went public. "Bilal Hussein has been held in volation of Iraqi law and in disregard to the Geneva Conventions," AP CEO Tom Curley said in a statement. "He must be charged under the Iraqi system or released immediately."

The December-January issue of the American Journalism Review carries a ten-page story on Hussein. In it, Curley’s quoted as saying the AP has tried to investigate every specific claim the military has made against its photographer and found them to be "false or total exaggerations." Says Curley, "I have no problem saying the Pentagon lied to us more than once."

AJR is a trade magazine. There was a flurry of coverage in the popular press after the AP brought Hussein to the public’s attention, but he hasn’t gotten much attention since -- though as long as the AP is working on his behalf it can hardly be said the media have forgotten him. (To keep up with the coverage, visit the Web site the AP has established for Hussein.) AP spokesperson Linda Wagner says, "Some blogs, such as Daily Kos, have referenced the situation recently, and a number of year-end stories about the dangers of being a journalist have mentioned Bilal's detention."

What about the Tribune, which was rightly preoccupied with Salopek last summer? It published a toughly worded editorial on September 21. "America is in Iraq to help foster a democratic system and the rule of law," it concluded. "That means Hussein deserves to see the evidence against him and respond to the charges. If he was using a press pass as a cover to help terrorists, bring that out in a fair trial. Otherwise, free him." According to the Tribune’s archives, the paper hasn’t mentioned Hussein since.

But newspapers can’t write about everything -- that's why it's so easy to accuse them of sins of omission. Tribune reader Robert Pruter of Elmhurst is grumpy because he caught columnist John Kass writing something that in his eyes was not only nasty but dead wrong. On December 22 Kass’s subject was Barack Obama, and he said this: "He’s a decent fellow and I like him. He might make a fine liberal president someday. And though I disagree with him on policy, I’d bet my White Sox tickets that his wife, Michelle, won’t keep 800 secret FBI files of their political enemies hidden in some White House bedroom."

Pruter recognized this as a shot at Obama's competition, Hillary Clinton. Hundreds of FBI files of Republicans turned up in the White House early in the Clinton presidency, and word was that the president’s wife had ordered them brought in. But in the end the office of the independent counsel concluded that a low-level White House aide had requested the files on his own authority because he mistakenly thought they were on people who still worked at the White House and had to be cleared for access.

"Filegate," as it was called, obsessed President Clinton’s critics, including independent counsel Kenneth Starr. The Washington Post's Bob Woodward would write, "[Starr] also would proceed with the FBI files probe. Again, Clinton was absolved. His staff had written a 400-page memo showing that they had no evidence tying Clinton to the files. Why continue? ‘My order says I have to focus on Anthony Marceca and others!’ Starr said in protest, referring to the Army detailee who had worked updating FBI files collected by the White House.... He had a duty." Robert Ray, who was Starr’s successor, shut the investigation down.

Pruter e-mailed Kass to tell him he was "appalled" by the column and to walk him through the facts. Pruter wrote editor Ann Marie Lipinski, whom he mistakenly referred to as the publisher, about Kass, advising her "to terminate his employment." Leaving no stone unturned, he also e-mailed the Tribune's public editor.

He says no one at the Tribune got back to him. The column was left to speak for itself in the Tribune archives, mainly about Kass's dislike of the Clintons.