"If you support Hillary Clinton, could you please tell me why? I AM NOT asking if you're voting for Clinton as a vote against Trump. I AM asking, if you sincerely support Mrs. Clinton and would have considered voting for her regardless of who the GOP nominated."
There are so many things I want to say in response that it's completely overwhelming. Instead the best I can do is type up what I can when I can with the hope that I'll come back and add in pieces as energy/time/and small children allow — that "additional reading" section at the end is as much for you as for me, a reminder of pieces that have influenced me and that I'd like to include. I'll set some topic headings in the attempt to provide some semblance of order to is otherwise pure stream of consciousness. But first:
Yes, I'm with her.
After giving careful consideration to my vote, I was with her in the primary.*
THE CASE FOR HILLARY CLINTON
Well-Considered Policy Proposals -- i.e. Real Honesty
When I have more time, I want to talk about why she's so honest, painfully honest, in describing what she can do (and can't do) as president and what she does believe (and doesn't). During the primary, Bernie Sanders got pegged as the honest candidate because he could answer every policy question with a pithy bumper sticker slogan. Hillary Clinton got dinged because her answers were so long with so many shades of gray and so much policy detail. That's bad politics, definitely, but exactly the kind of honest, well-considered policy detail that made this policy wonk want to stand up and cheer.
Briefly before I move on for now, from Ezra Klein's piece on Clinton:
Character Versus Caricature
I want to talk about her character. I want to quote this Congressional Quarterly piece at length because if you really stop and think about it, it's remarkable. Hillary Clinton became a US senator just three years after many of her new colleagues in the Senate had voted to convict her husband in an ugly impeachment trial. She was now colleagues with people who had destroyed her healthcare proposal and humiliated her with personal attacks. You would expect her to come in very bitter, or perhaps as some kind of attention-craving diva, but instead she actively worked to build bridges with those senators in pursuit of shared goals.
But the reason I'm willing to devote so much space to that quote is that it speaks volumes to me about her character. Based on the caricature of her in the press, her Senate colleagues expected someone very different. What they got was a human being who genuinely listened to them and found ways to work together for the greater good.
If you missed Ezra Klein's piece on Clinton's approach to governing, it's worth a read. He makes a nearly identical point. In thinking about Clinton now, we never stop to consider how remarkable it is that Pres. Obama would endorse and campaign hard for her now. But in the summer of 2008, after a brutal primary that could have left Clinton feeling understandably bitter, no one would have guessed that they would be so close now. (Glenn Thrush from Politico makes a similar point in his lengthy piece about the once-impossible-to-imagine Obama-Clinton alliance.)
As Klein writes, "Obama administration officials, up to and including the president, badly want to see her win — there is something in the way she acted after the election, in the soldier she became and the colleague she showed herself to be... Hillary Clinton, they said over and over again, listens."
REBUTTING THE CASE AGAINST HILLARY CLINTON
So that's the first part of the project, the case for Hillary Clinton, still very much unfinished after a day of writing. The next part of the project is rebutting the case against her. If you fundamentally disagree with Clinton's policy proposals, that's one thing. She supports abortion rights, you might not. She supports action on climate change, you might think human-caused climate change is a hoax cooked up by the Chinese to steal our freedoms. And so on.
But when it comes to the litany of reasons why Clinton should be "disqualified" from seeking the presidency, those are pretty easy to dispute.
I Am Sick and Tired of Hearing About [Her] Damn Emails Because There's No There There
The FBI conducted an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State and concluded that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against Clinton.
Here’s the crux of the case:
I know members of Congress who won't go to classified briefings because if they do, they'll be unable to talk publicly about anything discussed in the briefing, even if the briefing is 100% limited to information already public.
But don't take my word for it, here's former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates (who's not exactly a friend of the administration):
Me: “Okay kids, we're going to a meeting, have fun with the babysitter.”
Husband: “A meeting? I thought we were going to the movies.”
Me: Facepalm.
For those of us used to a certain code of conduct from our nation’s top law enforcement, FBI Director James Comey’s unprecedented grandstanding around the case was shocking.
In a Facebook discussion, a friend of a friend declared, "Lying to federal agents is a felony." Sure. Except that Comey made clear that Clinton had not lied to them, via Politico:
So when Republican officials and pundits say "anyone else would have been sent to jail for this" what they actually mean is "no one in American history has ever gone to jail for this."
And lastly, about the comparison to General David Petraeus, Comey is unequivocal:
Benghazi
This is just a placeholder until I can come back to this.
Additional Reading
Michael Arnovitz, "Thinking About Hillary — A Plea for Reason," reprinted from Facebook, June 8, 2016
Michael Arnovitz, "Thinking About Hillary — A Follow-up," Medium.com, June 30, 2016
Henry Louis Gates, "HATING HILLARY: Hillary Clinton has been trashed right and left—but what’s really fuelling the furies?" New Yorker, February 26, 1996
Jill Abramson, "This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest," The Guardian, March 28, 2016
Sady Doyle, "America loves women like Hillary Clinton — as long as they’re not asking for a promotion," Quartz, February 25, 2016
There are so many things I want to say in response that it's completely overwhelming. Instead the best I can do is type up what I can when I can with the hope that I'll come back and add in pieces as energy/time/and small children allow — that "additional reading" section at the end is as much for you as for me, a reminder of pieces that have influenced me and that I'd like to include. I'll set some topic headings in the attempt to provide some semblance of order to is otherwise pure stream of consciousness. But first:
Yes, I'm with her.
No, I did not take this picture spur of the moment as we were walking out to the pool, why do you ask?
After giving careful consideration to my vote, I was with her in the primary.*
*Back then I said it would take me months to write out why I like Clinton, and it has. Which makes sense. When you're writing "why not Bernie," or "why not Trump," you just pick out the most egregious reasons and call it a day. When I was a young policy staffer, Jim Matheson once told me: "You can always find some reason to vote no on any big package." Well, human candidates are nothing if not one big package. But if you're writing why you're for someone, you have to explain all the reasons why you like her and explain all the reasons why the attacks on her aren't valid. It's a big project.And I'm with her now. I've even given her money, the only politician or cause I've given money to in years — unless you count when I let CREDO round up my cell phone bill by 80 cents.
THE CASE FOR HILLARY CLINTON
Well-Considered Policy Proposals -- i.e. Real Honesty
When I have more time, I want to talk about why she's so honest, painfully honest, in describing what she can do (and can't do) as president and what she does believe (and doesn't). During the primary, Bernie Sanders got pegged as the honest candidate because he could answer every policy question with a pithy bumper sticker slogan. Hillary Clinton got dinged because her answers were so long with so many shades of gray and so much policy detail. That's bad politics, definitely, but exactly the kind of honest, well-considered policy detail that made this policy wonk want to stand up and cheer.
Briefly before I move on for now, from Ezra Klein's piece on Clinton:
[W]hen I asked [Bob Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities] about Clinton, about what she’s actually gotten done, he gets very specific. “I can give you three personal examples,” he says immediately. The stories he told me are wonky, to say the least. ...
In each case, Clinton is contacted by somebody who’s smart and credible but doesn’t have a ton of political clout. In each case, the message is that the policy her husband is either administering or making is flawed in some very technical way. And rather than ignore that message, or become defensive about it, she listens. She dives into the details — details that would numb many professional policy staffers, to say nothing of most politicians.
Two things spring from this pattern. The first is change. Clinton is good at getting things done. The second is relationships.
Character Versus Caricature
I want to talk about her character. I want to quote this Congressional Quarterly piece at length because if you really stop and think about it, it's remarkable. Hillary Clinton became a US senator just three years after many of her new colleagues in the Senate had voted to convict her husband in an ugly impeachment trial. She was now colleagues with people who had destroyed her healthcare proposal and humiliated her with personal attacks. You would expect her to come in very bitter, or perhaps as some kind of attention-craving diva, but instead she actively worked to build bridges with those senators in pursuit of shared goals.
[D]uring the course of her first term, she worked methodically to disarm Republican colleagues who expected to battle with her. ... Gordon H. Smith, an Oregon Republican whose office was near Clinton's in the Senate, recalls how she comforted him in 2003 after his son Garrett committed suicide.Now Clinton, like any good politician, uses this history as proof that she'll be an effective president who can reach across the aisle and work with Congress going forward. I don't buy that. For reasons I've stated [HERE], I don't think any president can work with Congress so long as our senators and representatives continue to have fundamentally broken incentives.
"I was in the well of the Senate, had just cast a vote, and Hillary approached me and asked to walk back to our offices together. We walked around the Russell Building several times talking about my son, the difficulty of raising children in this confusing time and the state of mental health law in our country. She revealed to me, by that unselfish outreach, her humanity and her decency," he says.
The following year, Clinton helped Smith enact a law named for Smith's son, to screen teenagers for depression, and later helped promote Smith's 2007 book, "Remembering Garrett." After Smith was defeated by Democrat Jeff Merkley in the 2008 election, Clinton and then-Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. were the only Democratic colleagues to call to offer consolation. "I will never forget that," says Smith, who now heads the National Association of Broadcasters. ...
"I found her to be easy to work with, smart and willing to reach agreement on complicated issues," says Judd Gregg, the former New Hampshire [Republican] senator. And Gregg believes her "approach to governing, of seeking principled compromise" could break the logjam between the Congress and White House. ...
A 2006 profile in The Atlantic describes how Clinton stunned GOP colleagues by showing up one day in 2001, shortly after being sworn in, for their weekly prayer meeting. Then-Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas was so moved by her appearance that he asked her to forgive him for having hated her. Clinton became a regular at the meetings and partnered with most of the regulars there on legislation. ...
Smith recalls her regular attendance at hearings of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, which he chaired. "It's a B-level committee at which usually I and the ranking member were the only ones who showed up," he recalls. "Hillary showed up regularly and was prepared and made important contributions."
Her workaday approach won over colleagues on both sides of the aisle who had figured she would upstage them. "They thought she would come with a national agenda and spend a bunch of time showboating in front of the cameras," recalls Blanche Lincoln, the former Democratic senator from Arkansas. "She wasn't the person they thought she was." ...
Perhaps most famous was her partnership with GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who teamed with her on a 2003 amendment to a supplemental spending bill that permitted National Guard and reserve troops to buy insurance policies in Tricare, the military health care system. Graham, as a House member in 1998, was one of the impeachment managers who urged the Senate to remove her husband from office for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. ... The two went on to work closely on military issues and to travel together to Iraq.
And during her eight years in the Senate, Clinton worked with a number of other senators still in office. She teamed with Pat Roberts of Kansas on a bill to better distribute flu vaccines, and with Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma on 2001 legislation to expedite payments to families of public safety officers injured or killed in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Susan Collins of Maine were her partners on a 2006 bill to improve respite care, and she collaborated with Johnny Isakson of Georgia and John McCain of Arizona on a 2008 auto safety law.
But the reason I'm willing to devote so much space to that quote is that it speaks volumes to me about her character. Based on the caricature of her in the press, her Senate colleagues expected someone very different. What they got was a human being who genuinely listened to them and found ways to work together for the greater good.
If you missed Ezra Klein's piece on Clinton's approach to governing, it's worth a read. He makes a nearly identical point. In thinking about Clinton now, we never stop to consider how remarkable it is that Pres. Obama would endorse and campaign hard for her now. But in the summer of 2008, after a brutal primary that could have left Clinton feeling understandably bitter, no one would have guessed that they would be so close now. (Glenn Thrush from Politico makes a similar point in his lengthy piece about the once-impossible-to-imagine Obama-Clinton alliance.)
As Klein writes, "Obama administration officials, up to and including the president, badly want to see her win — there is something in the way she acted after the election, in the soldier she became and the colleague she showed herself to be... Hillary Clinton, they said over and over again, listens."
“I love Bill Clinton,” says Tom Harkin, who served as senator from Iowa from 1985 to 2015. “But every time you talk to Bill, you’re just trying to get a word in edgewise. With Hillary, you’re in a meeting with her, and she really listens to you.”...
Colleagues say Clinton uses the tension between her and Republicans to her advantage. Former adversaries feel awkward when they first meet her — they expect bad blood, bitter feelings, sniping. Instead, she’s friendly, charming, interested in them. She treats them like an old friend. She — here it is again — listens intently to what they say and tries to find common ground.Klein also adds additional juice to the CQ argument about bipartisanship above:
To go back to Tannen’s theory of rapport communication versus status communication, Clinton takes interactions that past foes expect to be the continuation of a bitter, long-running status conflict and turns them into an opportunity to build rapport [emphasis mine].
“I’ll tell you one thing: When this Hillary gets to the Senate, if she does — maybe lightning will strike and she won’t — she will be one of 100, and we won’t let her forget it,” said then-Sen. Trent Lott, who was majority leader during the impeachment trial.Again, this doesn't necessarily prove her presidency will be effective. But it tells you something about who she is and how she works.
A few years later, they were teaming up on hurricane relief. “This is a weird place,” Lott told the New York Times.
It wasn’t just Lott. In 2006, the Times tallied up Clinton’s unusual alliances:
“With Representative Tom DeLay it was foster children. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, jumped in with her on a health care initiative, and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, was a partner on legislation concerning computerized medical records. The list goes on: Senator Robert Bennett on flag-burning; Senator Rick Santorum on children's exposure to graphic images; Senator John Sununu on S.U.V. taillights; Senator Mike DeWine on asthma.”
REBUTTING THE CASE AGAINST HILLARY CLINTON
So that's the first part of the project, the case for Hillary Clinton, still very much unfinished after a day of writing. The next part of the project is rebutting the case against her. If you fundamentally disagree with Clinton's policy proposals, that's one thing. She supports abortion rights, you might not. She supports action on climate change, you might think human-caused climate change is a hoax cooked up by the Chinese to steal our freedoms. And so on.
But when it comes to the litany of reasons why Clinton should be "disqualified" from seeking the presidency, those are pretty easy to dispute.
I Am Sick and Tired of Hearing About [Her] Damn Emails Because There's No There There
The FBI conducted an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State and concluded that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against Clinton.
Here’s the crux of the case:
- Having a private server was legal during Clinton’s time as secretary of State.
- The emails she received and sent weren't marked classified at the time, with three exceptions.
- Of those three exceptions, none were properly marked — see more below.
- And those three shouldn’t have been marked that way at all, according to the State Department.
I know members of Congress who won't go to classified briefings because if they do, they'll be unable to talk publicly about anything discussed in the briefing, even if the briefing is 100% limited to information already public.
But don't take my word for it, here's former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates (who's not exactly a friend of the administration):
RADDATZ: But with your experience, if you read a document in an email, would you have a pretty good idea whether it should be marked Top Secret even if it wasn't?Side bar #2: To be clear, this should not be interpreted as a defense of Clinton, this just amuses me every time House Republicans talk about Clinton's carelessness with sensitive information. Jason Chaffetz saying Hillary Clinton should lose her security clearance leaves me giggling. Also, it reminds me of what my husband does ALL the time.
ROBERT GATES: Sometimes not. The truth is, things are overclassified, and sometimes I would get something and it would be classified Secret or Top Secret.
RADDATZ: Even if it’s the highest classification?
GATES: And I would look at somebody and say, I'm about to tell a foreign leader what is on this piece of paper that's marked Top Secret. And that's going to do serious damage to the United States? Why are you giving it to me as a talking point if it's classified Top Secret? So it is tough sometimes. And if you don't have any markings on a piece of paper, it is tough sometimes to tell whether it's classified or not.
Me: “Okay kids, we're going to a meeting, have fun with the babysitter.”
Husband: “A meeting? I thought we were going to the movies.”
Me: Facepalm.
Via Dana Milbank at the Washington Post: When House Republicans called a hearing in the middle of their long recess, you knew it would be something big, and indeed it was: They accidentally blew the CIA’s cover. ...But I digress...
Through their outbursts, cryptic language and boneheaded questioning of State Department officials, the committee members left little doubt that one of the two compounds at which the Americans were killed, described by the administration as a "consulate" and a nearby "annex," was a CIA base. They did this, helpfully, in a televised public hearing.
For those of us used to a certain code of conduct from our nation’s top law enforcement, FBI Director James Comey’s unprecedented grandstanding around the case was shocking.
When FBI Director James B. Comey stepped to the lectern to deliver his remarks about Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, he violated time-honored Justice Department practices for how such matters are to be handled, set a dangerous precedent for future investigations and committed a gross abuse of his own power. …Perhaps Comey, the long-time Republican first appointed by George W. Bush, was attempting to protect the reputation of the FBI or perhaps he was making a cynical ploy to insulate himself against attack. Either way, he failed. Republicans immediately ordered him to appear before the House Oversight Committee for four and half hours of intense questioning. But doing so gave him the chance to rebut several major Republican talking points. And here they are:
Imagine a situation in which the Obama Justice Department investigates major conservative activists such as the Koch brothers for possibly violating the law, but finding no reason to bring charges, the attorney general holds a news conference to outline all of the ways in which she finds their conduct deplorable. …[emphasis mine]
While Clinton shouldn’t have received special treatment, she does not deserve worse treatment from her government than anyone else, either. Yet by inserting himself into the middle of a political campaign and making unprecedented public assertions, that is exactly what Comey provided.
In a Facebook discussion, a friend of a friend declared, "Lying to federal agents is a felony." Sure. Except that Comey made clear that Clinton had not lied to them, via Politico:
Hillary Clinton did not lie to FBI investigators during their probe into her use of a private server as secretary of state, FBI Director James Comey testified Thursday.Or another example, let's talk about those three emails marked classified.
"We have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI," Comey told House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) during one of the hearing's opening exchanges.
Rep. Cartwright: Those three documents with the little “c”s on them, were they properly documented? Were they properly marked according to the manual?Or, how about why the FBI didn't charge Clinton, via Politico:
Director Comey: No.
Rep. Cartwright: According to the manual, and I ask unanimous consent to enter this into the record, Mr. Chairman. According to the manual, if you’re going to classify something, there has to be a header on the document, right?
Director Comey: Correct.
Rep. Cartwright: Was there a header on the three documents that we’ve discussed today that had the little “c” in the text someplace?
Director Comey: No, there were three e-mails. The “c” was in the body in the text, but there was no header on the email or in the text.
Rep. Cartwright: So if Secretary Clinton really were an expert at what's classified and what’s not classified and we're following the manual, the absence of a header would tell her immediately that those three documents were not classified. Am I correct in that?
Director Comey: That would be a reasonable inference.
"No reasonable prosecutor would bring this case. No reasonable prosecutor would bring the second case in a hundred years focused" on those facts. ...Just for background, when Comey says charging Clinton would make her only the second case in a hundred years, he means that since enactment of the statue in 1917 only one person has been charged with what Republicans want Clinton charged with. That was the case of of James Smith, who according to Washington Post was, "an FBI agent accused in 2003 of having a sexual relationship with an informant who was alleged to have been a Chinese spy." And ultimately, that charge was dropped.
"I know from 30 years there's no way anybody at the Department of Justice is bringing a case against John Doe or Hillary Clinton for the second time in 100 years based on those facts," Comey added.
The FBI director also appeared to take a shot at former U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani and other ex-prosecutors who have been saying they would've charged Clinton with gross negligence.
"I know a lot of my former friends are out there saying where they would. I wonder where they were the last 40 years, because I'd like to see the cases they brought on gross negligence. Nobody would, nobody did," Comey said.
So when Republican officials and pundits say "anyone else would have been sent to jail for this" what they actually mean is "no one in American history has ever gone to jail for this."
And lastly, about the comparison to General David Petraeus, Comey is unequivocal:
The Petraeus case, to my mind, illustrates perfectly the kind of cases the Department of Justice is willing to prosecute. Even there they prosecuted him for a misdemeanor. In that case you had vast quantities of highly classified information, including special sensitive compartmented information. Vast quantity of it, not only shared with someone without authority to have it [his mistress and autobiographer, Paula Broadwell], but we found it in a search warrant hidden under the insulation in his attic, and then he lied to us about it during the investigation. So you have obstruction of justice, you have intentional misconduct, and a vast quantity of information. He admitted he knew that was the wrong thing to do. That is a perfect illustration the kind of cases get prosecuted. In my mind it illustrates importantly the distinction to this case.If someone really wants to get into all the various details, the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters has the transcript of key details from Comey's testimony.
Benghazi
This is just a placeholder until I can come back to this.
Additional Reading
Michael Arnovitz, "Thinking About Hillary — A Plea for Reason," reprinted from Facebook, June 8, 2016
Michael Arnovitz, "Thinking About Hillary — A Follow-up," Medium.com, June 30, 2016
Henry Louis Gates, "HATING HILLARY: Hillary Clinton has been trashed right and left—but what’s really fuelling the furies?" New Yorker, February 26, 1996
Jill Abramson, "This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest," The Guardian, March 28, 2016
Sady Doyle, "America loves women like Hillary Clinton — as long as they’re not asking for a promotion," Quartz, February 25, 2016
Comments
Post a Comment