Comments on: Swiftboating

By: Lambert Strether, Philadelphia, PA

Lambert Strether, Philadelphia, PA — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:57:32 +0000

And if the claim was “single handedly brought some solution” I suppose there would be some point to what you write, demeur. (I remember then “straw man” went viral in the Obama Fan Base over at the 527 that used to be Daily Kos. Oh, the humanity!)

By: demeur

demeur — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:33:11 +0000

Oh come on people. She was not an elected official at that time so anything said by her would only be an opinion. To say she single handedly brought some solution in any country is absurd.

By: ditto

ditto — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:29:33 +0000

The term swiftboarding orginated with John Kerry where there were 2 stories, 6 people agreed with the Kerry version which reminded me of a cross between Washington crossing the Delaware and The PT 109 story, which wasn’t exactly true either, and 250 people who were there who had an eintrely different version, If I have a chioice of believeing 6 people or 250, I’ll go with the 250.
John Kerry is the only person I know who carried more film into battle then he did ammunition.

By: Susie

Susie — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 14:32:28 +0000

Blue Sun, you do know the right wing in Ireland hated the Clintons, right? And that the Telegraph is an extremely right-wing paper? (I’m surprised they didn’t dig up Ian Paisley’s grave and ask him.)

http://susiemadrak.com/2008/03/11/20/56/hillary-in-ireland/

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:44:49 +0000

Hi Susie. This is a really well-written defense of HRC; good job. (And I write this as an Obama supporter - shhhh.)

By: Buzzcook

Buzzcook — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 06:16:02 +0000

Ya but ya but yabut.
With Clinton’s experience being denigrated on both the right and the left, just stating the facts don’t do it.

You get so many “what abouts” it makes your head spin.
Clinton’s time as first lady was just sitting in the same room no matter what the record is because she “didn’t hold elective office”, “Didn’t draft legislation”, or what have you. Her pre-1992 experience doesn’t count either because, well just because. Time in the senate doesn’t count either.

If we were just getting this stuff from the right there’d be no problem. It’s the combination from both sides that’s drowning us.

By: Blue Sun

Blue Sun — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 04:15:53 +0000

Funny, but William Trimble (former First Minister of Northern Ireland wh shared the Nobel Peace Prize) called Hillary’s claim “a wee bit silly…I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill (Clinton) going around… being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.”

Peter King, an Ulster Unionist Party negotiator at the Good Friday talks in 1998, insisted “Hillary Clinton was totally invisible at the actual negotiations…As far as I am concerned, Mrs Clinton was as relevant to peace in Northern Ireland as Tony Blair’s wife or the ex-wife of Bertie Ahern [the Irish prime minister].”

“In fact, both Both Unionist and Nationalist negotiators told [the Telegraph] that while Mrs Clinton’s work with women’s groups was positive her overall role was peripheral and she played no part in the grueling negotiations that took years.”
- The Telegraph (UK)

Both George Mitchell, who chaired the Northern Ireland talks, and Madeline Albright, then Secretary of State, have written and spoken extensively on the negotiations, and hardly mentioned Mrs. Clinton. Mitchell has said that Clinton “was not involved directly” in the negotiations.

‘Chris Thornton, a political reporter for the Belfast Telegraph, said that Hillary Clinton’s visits to northern Ireland contributed to the “mood music” that made an eventual settlement possible, but were hardly key to reaching an agreement. “Would we have reached a settlement without that kind of stuff? Yes. Would we have got one without the intervention of Bill Clinton and George Mitchell? No.”‘
- Washington Post

The Post also pointed out that Hillary is making much more of her role in Northern Ireland now than she did in her own memoir, “Living History.” She now tells a story that gets more and more dramatic with each stump speech about how she brought Protestant and Catholic women together “for the first time” at Belfast City Hall. She claimed that they were enemies “who saw each other not as caricatures or stereotypes, but as human beings who actually had common experiences as mothers and wives and people.”

But, in her memoir, the story is set in an entirely different location, a fish restaurant, the women weren’t enemies but peace activists, and she herself wrote that she was only a supporting witness - not the key player she now claims to have been.

As for SCHIP:

“It was a bipartisan bill. I don’t remember the role of the White House,” said Representative Henry Waxman, (D-CA) …who was the chief Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which deals with health matters. “It did not originate at the White House.”

John McDonough, former Democratic politician and now executive director of Health Care for All, an advocacy group said, “I don’t recall any signs of Mrs. Clinton’s engagement…I’m sure she was behind the scenes, engaged in lobbying, but it is demonstrably not the case” that she was driving the effort, he said.

If Senator Clinton was so passionate about SCHIP, why did she skip the critical vote last November 1 to extend SCHIP?

Its clear that Hillary played a part in history - as has every First Lady - but that now, desperate to build a case for her “experience” she is “puffing” her resume rather dramatically.

As Chris Rock pointed out, “I’ve been a comedian for 20 years. I’ve been married for 10 years, but that doesn’t make my wife funny.”