Bush 43 redux?

Inadvertently said on a microphone not known still to be open:

Mr. John Edwards: “We should try to have a more serious … smaller group.”

Mrs Hillary Clinton: “We’ve got to cut the number…I think there was an effort by our campaigns to do that … it got somehow detoured. We’ve got to get back to it. Our guys should talk.”

When Mrs. Clinton was asked about that conversation later, here’s her reply, “I think he has some ideas about what he’d like to do.”

I don’t know that any comment is really required, but comment is the purpose of this blog so I’m going to blaze away.

First, I tend to agree that the “debate” format is a joke; enough so that I do not waste my time watching them. To expect a candidate to describe a political position in the thirty-second time limit that is prescribed is absurd, but with a dozen or so participating a real debate is probably not feasible. But to have two candidates conspiring to shut others out of the process is not acceptable and that is what that conversation appeared to be about.

When confronted about it, Edwards at least tried to clean it up as being about some better form of campaign process. I don’t think I believe him, but at least he admitted that he was “in the room” when it happened. Clinton tried to pretend that she had no part in it, that it was all Edwards.

I have heard some pretty sleazy things coming out of Mrs. Clinton’s mouth, but this may about the most despicable yet. From her comment overheard as “We’ve got to get back to it” she goes to “he has some ideas.”

This woman is a snake. Cold, shrewd, calculating and ruthlessly willing to do whatever it takes to reach her goal of obtaining for herself the power of the presidency.

We already have one president who has never made a mistake in his life. Do we really want to elect another to succeed him?

From Leonard Doyle in The Independent on July 15, 2007

…equipped only with a tin ear, when it came to working with people on her own side, Hillary managed to alienate some of the most powerful Democrats, starting with the New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who urged patience in reforming health care.

When Bill Bradley, then a senator, suggested changes to her plan he was dismissed. Forget about it, she said, threatening to "demonise" anyone who stood in her way.

As Bradley recounted later to the author Carl Bernstein: "It was obviously so basic to who she is. The arrogance. The assumption that people with questions are enemies. The disdain. The hypocrisy."

There is no way I ever vote for Hillary Clinton in a presidential election. We do not need a repeat of George W. Bush. If she is the Democratic nominee then I will write in the name of Al Gore in 2008.