Bob Schwartz

Tag: Hillary Clinton

February 10, 2016

New Hampshire Primary Aftermath: Battle of the Billionaire Front Pages

The New York Daily News and the New York Post have been tabloid newspaper rivals forever. And that battle is most deliciously seen on their front pages.

These papers are currently owned by very different billionaires: The Daily News by Mort Zuckerman (leans liberal), the Post by Rubert Murdoch (Fox News, enough said).

In the U.S., the Daily News and Post are the champions of creative, clever, crass or crude. Here is what they came up with the morning after a very momentous night in politics.

New York Daily News

NY_NYP

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February 8, 2016

New Hampshire Primary: Chinese New Year Quiz Edition

Pig Snake

It is the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Monkey. Time to guess what the Chinese lunar calendar tells us about the two Democratic candidates.

Following are descriptions of the two astrological animals representing the dates on which Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were born. The game is to guess which is which.

For those not obsessively interested in the often ridiculous and disheartening zoo/farm of this silly season, good for you.

Note: It is good fortune to wear red for the Chinese New Year, especially red underwear. You likely don’t know me well enough to know it, but I have no red underwear. I do have red ties and am wearing one today. If you are someone who does have red underwear, wear it and good luck.

And now the quiz. Which is Hillary and which is Bernie?

Democratic Candidate 1:

Born in the Year of the Pig

Elemental type of Pig based on a 60-year cycle: Fire Pig
Ambitious, persevering, but impatient.

Pigs are diligent, compassionate, and generous. They have great concentration: once they set a goal, they will devote all their energy to achieving it. Though Pigs rarely seek help from others, they will not refuse to give others a hand. Pigs never suspect trickery, so they are easily fooled.

General speaking, Pigs are relatively calm when facing trouble. No matter how difficult the problems are Pigs encounter, they can handle things properly and carefully. They have a great sense of responsibility to finish what they are engaged in.

People born in a Year of the Pig will encounter so many disruptions in their career that they will work under great pressure. It will not be suitable for them to carry out new plans or new measures.

Democratic Candidate 2:

Born in the Year of the Snake

Elemental sign based on a 60-year cycle: Gold Snake
Determined, courageous, confident, and able. A born leader.

In Chinese culture, the Snake is the most enigmatic animal among the twelve zodiac animals. People born in a year of the Snake are supposed to be the most intuitive.

Snakes tend to act according to their own judgments, even while remaining the most private and reticent. They are determined to accomplish their goals and hate to fail.

Snakes represent the symbol of wisdom. They are intelligent and wise. They are good at communication but say little. Snakes are usually regarded as great thinkers.

Snakes are materialistic and love keeping up with the Joneses. They love to possess the best of everything, but they have no patience for shopping.

Snake people prefer to work alone, therefore they are easily stressed. If they seem unusually stressed, it is best to allow them their own space and time to return to normal.

Snakes will have a smooth career after overcoming hardships in 2016. They will be hampered by unscrupulous people at the beginning of the year, but the situation will change in the middle of the year, and it will turn out smoothly at the end of the year. They will not achieve anything if they give up halfway; therefore, they must be confident about their future.

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February 2, 2016

Snow White in Iowa

Snow White - Magic Mirror
Hillary Clinton: Magic mirror on the wall, who won the Iowa caucus?

Magic Mirror: Over the seven jeweled hills, beyond the seventh fall, in New Hampshire campaigns Bernie Sanders, the winner in Iowa.

Hillary Clinton: I won Iowa. Bernie Sanders is dead. Behold the results.

Magic Mirror: Bernie Sanders still lives. You failed to vanquish him.

Hillary Clinton: Then I’ve been tricked.

With sincere apologies to Ted Sears, Richard Creedon, Otto Englander, Dick Rickard, Earl Hurd, Merrill De Maris, Dorothy Ann Blank, and Webb Smith, the writers of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). And to the Brothers Grimm.

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January 30, 2016

James Carville says Hillary is the most qualified presidential candidate since George Washington—and that includes Bill

James Carville says Hillary is the most qualified presidential candidate since George Washington—and that includes Bill. And the likes of Thomas Jefferson. Here’s what Carville just wrote to potential Hillary donors:

I read the other day that more of Bernie’s supporters have donated to support his campaign than Hillary’s.

I don’t mean to be cranky, but what in the hell is that all about?! We’ve got the best chance we’ve ever had to put a woman in the White House, and oh, by the way, she just happens to be the most qualified candidate maybe since General George Washington himself!!

Aside from Carville’s crankiness, it does make you want to list the credentials of the more than one hundred people who have run for President, some who made it, many who didn’t.

Just looking at the successful candidates, we’ve got a bunch of pretty qualified people. A number of them had been Vice President. Some of those who were Vice President had also been Cabinet members. And some of those had also been governors. Thomas Jefferson, for just one, comes to mind: Governor of Virginia, Secretary of State, Vice President, President. (Also wrote the Declaration of Independence, founded a university, etc.) But I guess it depends on what the meaning of “qualified” is.

One thing is clear. If Carville meant what he said, then the list of people less qualified than Hillary includes her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Don’t worry, Bill. With Jefferson and so many other underqualified candidates, you’re in good company.

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January 27, 2016

Bernie Sanders Is Barry Goldwater

Bernie Sanders for the Democrats is what Barry Goldwater was for the Republicans.

In the short run that might make the current generation of Democrats unhappy. In the long run, they should ask the Republicans how that turned out.

This is how it turned out. An unlikely, marginalized, and idealistic candidate tried to remind a party of its deepest philosophical roots. He won the party’s nomination for President, against all odds and against the wishes of many in the party, who believed he would lead them to total and inglorious defeat. Which he did.

Barry Goldwater also won. It is understandable that the Republican Party lionizes Ronald Reagan as its hero, model and godfather, since Reagan went on to serve two inspiring terms as President. But it was Goldwater, that embarrassment to some in 1964, who inspired Reagan himself and that first young generation of modern Republican conservatives (including Hillary Clinton, who began her political involvement as a Goldwater Girl).

We don’t know how the Bernie Sanders adventure turns out, either in the upcoming caucuses and primaries or at the convention. He is just as unlikely, marginalized and idealistic as Goldwater, and maybe less likely to win the nomination.

But in the long run, progressives who have been sidelined by the siren song of unwavering pragmatism—politics as the art of the possible—may be the winners. A new generation of genuine and fearless progressives may be born, even as the unlikely messenger is pushed aside.

In the words of Barry Goldwater, and as Bernie Sanders might also say:

“And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

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January 18, 2016

Bernie Sanders as John the Baptist

John the Baptist

The Democratic Party is in trouble. Politically, philosophically, spiritually, demographically. Bernie Sanders won’t save the party or win the presidency. But he is setting the scene for the party’s reform and renewal.

John the Baptist was a terrible candidate to lead a religious revolution. He was a wild-eyed radical who seemed to be crazy. His people skills needed work. But his cause found a much better spokesman and leader, who took it to the next level. And then some.

When you think carefully about the party and its recent Presidents and leaders, you look hard for real radical inspiration. Bill Clinton was affable and politically adept, but his was the politics of radical compromise, to the point of digging a rut in the middle of the road that invited neo-conservative disaster and greed. Barack Obama was genuinely inspirational, and has helped the cause of humane Americanism as much as politics would allow. But circumstances and inclination led him to solid pragmatism.

One problem with pragmatism is that it makes a terrible anthem and cause. Another is that it allows all sorts of accommodations that look to the would-be believer like nothing but surrender.

That’s where Bernie Sanders and John the Baptist come together. When the stakes are high, and the troubles are deep, that’s when you have to invoke big visions. That’s what gets people who have fallen into both practical and spiritual malaise to answer the call and start working for real change.

There are few in the Democratic Party willing or able to do this. Whether or not Hillary Clinton wins the nomination or the election, it is not her. If she wins the nomination but loses the election, the party will do some typical superficial soul searching. If she wins both, she may consolidate her power, and the power of the establishment, but the Congress will be even less effective than it is now.

Either way, it is possible that Bernie Sanders is unleashing something bigger than the Clintons or any tepid self-inquiry the party may pretend to engage in. He may not be heir to the spirit of Bobby Kennedy, but he might as well be saying this:

“There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

When Bernie Sanders is done with this election, another Democratic reformer and revolutionary will come along, and another. At that point, if we are lucky, millions of previously unengaged and disappointed people may come to the party dreaming and asking “why not?” And Bernie, like John the Baptist, will have prevailed.

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January 16, 2016

Hillary in Iowa 2008

 

Hillary Iowa State Fair

“Character is destiny.”
Heraclitus

Will Iowa 2016 be Iowa 2008 for Hillary? Here are her thoughts back in 2008, as documented in Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin:

The problem was, she hated it there. Every day felt like she was stuck in a Mobius strip: another barn, another living room, another set of questions about immigration (from people who were anti-) and the war (ditto). She’d get back on the plane, slump into her seat, heave a deep sigh, and grunt, “Ugh.”

The Iowans didn’t seem to be listening to her, just gawking at her, like she was an animal in a zoo. Hillary would hear from her staff the things voters were saying about her: “She’s so much prettier in person,” “She’s so much nicer than I thought.” It made her ill. She found the Iowans diffident and presumptuous; she felt they were making her grovel. Hillary detested pleading for anything, from money to endorsements, and in Iowa it was no different. She resisted calling the local politicos whose support she needed. One time, she spent forty-five minutes on the phone wooing an activist, only to be told at the call’s end that the woman was still deciding between her and another candidate. Hillary hung up in a huff.

“I can’t believe this!” she said. “How many times am I going to have to meet these same people?”

Over and over, she complained about the system that gave Iowa so much power in selecting the nominee. “This is so stupid,” she would say. “So unfair.” She bitched about Iowa’s scruffy hotels and looked for excuses to avoid staying overnight. But among the sources of her frustration and bewilderment, the absence of connection was paramount. “I don’t have a good feeling about this, guys,” she told her staff on the plane. “I just don’t have a good feeling about this place.”

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January 10, 2016

The Unasked Simple Question About Hillary’s Emails: Why the Private Server in the First Place?

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton listens to her introduction at a campaign event in Sioux City, Iowa, United States, January 5, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young

We are lost in the tall weeds of questions about the emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server. Did a particular email contain classified information? Was it classified at the time it was sent or received? Did she know it or should she have known it?

All of which ignores an early question that is not repeated often enough: Why did she have a private email server in the first place? The early answers vaguely had something to do with convenience, or multiple devices, or a bunch of other explanations—none of which should be satisfying to fair-minded observers (not to mention partisan opponents).

It is a simple question, with a reasonably simple answer. She wanted to have maximum control of her email communications while she was Secretary of State. Which, while it completely transgresses the principle of relatively transparent and accountable government, is completely understandable. If you were in her position, the country’s top diplomat, but also a controversial politician aiming to finally become President of the United States, wouldn’t you want to reduce the risk of being misunderstood—or worse, being perfectly understood?

Of course if she did say exactly that, that it was done entirely to keep maximum control, she would be more than lambasted. She would be done, or close to it. So that isn’t how she answers. And now, the question is supposedly settled, so it isn’t asked much anymore, if at all.

But maybe it should.

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October 9, 2015

The Sad Politics of Realism

Besides the politics of pessimism being peddled by Republicans, we have a new wrinkle courtesy of some of Hillary supporters. The sad politics of realism.

While most advise being gentle with Bernie Sanders in the upcoming debate to avoid alienating his supporters, others are pushing her to take him on as promoting unrealistic ideas that are “pie in the sky.” According to Politico:

“I think she needs to show that she isn’t taking the nomination for granted and that Bernie’s ideas are not realistic,” a Nevada Democrat said….

Added a New Hampshire Democrat, “His pie in the sky policy ideas, while wonderful, have received very little scrutiny by the press. It’s about time they did.

The sibling of realism is expedience. Not quite twins, but very close, sharing much of the same DNA.

Optimism and aspiration are never out of place in politics. Without them, all you’ve got left is the past and the present, and a future that looks like some version of that. Of course for some, the idea of redux, of say, another Clinton White House, is an outcome worthy of killing dreams, interesting ideas and hope, unrealistic fables appropriate only for children. Grownups know what it takes to win the real prizes, unpretty and sad as the path may be.

Suddenly the politics of pessimism doesn’t look so bad, or at least won’t be so lonely in the company of its companion, the politics of realism. Please put down that pie in the sky. You just might get ideas.

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October 3, 2015

Bill Is Houdini, Hillary Is Not

Bill Clinton is an escape artist. It is fact, not conjecture, that he has gotten away with things that would crush other politicians and public figures.

Hillary Clinton helped enable and engineer some of those escapes, some might say against her best interest and integrity. But doing that, she may have drawn a skewed conclusion. She may overvalue those escapes as feats of engineering and scheming, and undervalue the essential role of Bill being Bill.

Bill Clinton is sui generis in American political history, one of a kind, maybe more so even than Barack Obama. The qualities are hard to describe; charm and charisma fail to completely capture it. He is special, the bad boy who is not really bad, just a little naughty, and no matter what you discover or discover he has hidden, it is nearly always alright. At least alright enough to move on.

Hillary is absolutely sui generis too. But she is no Bill and she is no Houdini. And while it is true that Houdini’s escapes were technical wonders, meticulously planned, that is not what made him the star he was. It was the personality and drama he brought to the stage that enthralled people, so much so that audiences actually wanted him to get into big trouble because they wanted him to get out of it—they needed him to get out of it. In that respect, Hillary is no Houdini. Nor is she Bill.

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