ABC News: Clinton Documents Don’t Show Great Experience
First there was Senator Barack Obama’s bad week. Is it about to shift to Senator Hillary Clinton? According to ABC News, the release of Clinton schedule documents are raising questions about her contention that she has great experience in dealing with Oval Office matters:
The release of 17,000 pages of then-first lady Hillary Clinton’s daily schedule in the White House has raised questions about her ability to answer the 3 a.m. phone call she talks about in her commercials.
…But the daily schedules released today show many of her overseas trips to be the standard first lady tourist fare, hospital visits and blinis with caviar.
(UPDATE: The Clinton campaign is now demanding Obama release all records related to indicted Chicago businessman Antoin “Tony” Rezko, arguing that if disclosure is the issue, then Obama must disclose more. This seems to be an effort to change the news narrative on this story, since it’ll be all over the news cycle, perhaps longer as reporters sift through the pages and perhaps ask Clinton for details.)
(UPDATE II: The materials have already sparked a news story that Clinton was indeed pushing for NAFTA, despite her campaign statements in Ohio.)
The devil is in the details — and it could bedevil the Clinton campaign which could start to receive incoming fire from the Obama camp as well as from reporters who will be pressing her for comment and more info to document her experience.
But what surfaces so far, according to ABC News, is not stellar:
On the day U.S. cruise missiles hit Serbia, the schedules show the former first lady was touring Egyptian ruins.
On the day when her husband announced attacks against al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, the schedules show she stayed in Martha’s Vineyard on vacation.
“They need to be a lot more open. We need to see memoranda of conversations; we need to see decision memos,” Sally Bedell Smith, author of “For Love of Politics – Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years” and contributing editor to “Vanity Fair,” told ABC News.
The documents also fail to shed light on the most controversial of the eight years the Clintons were in the White House.
And then there’s this item:
On Dec. 7, 2000, the former first lady’s schedule lists all private White House meetings with no names attached.
It was the very time her two brothers and others were trying to broker pardons for convicted drug dealers and billionaire fugitive Marc Rich.
The Clinton campaign has responded to the ABC report. It said “the release of the documents shows the transparency of Sen. Clinton, and the released schedules are only ‘an outline’ and do not reflect ‘meetings with staff and officials, impromptu strategy sessions’ or a call to a world leader.”
That response may not be enough. There ‘s reportedly sufficient eyebrow-raising material there so the issue will come up with reporters. Also, in terms of imagery, news stories will focus on what the materials show — not on what materials might not have shown, as the Clinton campaign is framing it. The Clinton response will get a paragraph in print, and a few seconds on broadcast (and likely none on Fox). The bulk of the story will be fairly long in newspapers and take up a few minutes on broadcast. Net result: a media minus for Clinton (so far).
The Obama campaign could now run counter commercials saying Clinton talked about experience but ABC News concluded, after looking at the documents, that they didn’t find it. Etc.
The documents also reportedly cast light on
–Hillary Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky scandal (it shows she was home when Monica was there at times). She was there on the “stained blue dress day.”
–Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster
–Early signs of a planned Senate run.
Note again that these are schedules and not detailed memos. But the bottom line is, it’s going to put out into the news cycles aspects of the Clinton administration that were controversial and the media could be asking for more details on some items.
12 Responses to “ABC News: Clinton Documents Don’t Show Great Experience”
[...] study off the Oval office. ??Nov. 17, 1995: Mrs. Clinton had no public schsayanythingblog.comABC News: Clinton Documents Don??t Show Great ExperienceABC News: Clinton Documents Don??t Show Great Experience March 19th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN First [...]
Surprise surprise. It sounds like she was exactly what we thought she was those 8 years. A first lady. Not a diplomat, not a decision maker, a first lady. No more qualified by that experience to be POTUS than Maria Schriver is to be governor of CA.
Maybe if her staff hadn't made such a big deal out of it I'd consider this not so important, but shows the flaws her campaign has been running the whole time. And now they demand a document from Obama they hope will show something similarly damaging. You would have thought they'd learn by now not to try going head to head with Obama's campaign like this since they've lost ground every time they've tried. Slow learners and yet typical of Democratic campaign staff since Al Gore was running for the same job.
Actually, she is more qualified than Schriver, and would be farther left if unmasked.
“I want Penny-Kasich dead in three days” was not her husband's decision or words.
“… going head to head with Obama's campaign like this since they've lost ground every time they've tried [...] typical of Democratic campaign staff since Al Gore”
The Clinton team seems to have made quite a few mistakes. Maybe they stayed stuck too long with the assumption or presumption that Clinton was obviously going to be the nominee. It is similar to Gore in that Bush didn't win in 2000 (he was a desperation insider-clique “brand name” candidate run by the GOP) but rather Gore managed to lose it, beginning at the debates. (Losing the debates to…uhhh, uhhh, D-Dubya…was what got the public to realize Bush had a chance to prevail after all, which he eventually did.)
[...] encounters with Monica Lewinsky, according to the first lady’s calendars rneoconexpress.blogspot.comABC News: Clinton Documents Don??t Show Great ExperienceABC News: Clinton Documents Don??t Show Great Experience March 19th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN First [...]
[...] Clinton spent the night in the White House on the day her husband had oral sex wiintoxination.netABC News: Clinton Documents Don??t Show Great ExperienceABC News: Clinton Documents Don??t Show Great Experience March 19th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN First [...]
The democrats just don't know how to win voters. They get confused by pollsters or something and then just react slowly to whatever the GOP does and they are always a bit behind at the end of the day.
Assumption 2000: Al Gore is the veep of a very popular president done with his 2 terms. Therefore, he's a shoe in, all we have to do is what the polls tell us and don't stray outside the lines.
Assumption 2004: Bush is wildly unpopular for a war that the wheels have come off of, and the economy isn't working for middle americans, and its been pretty obvious he's using his clout to hide back room deals and undermine limits on his authority. The people won't stand for that, lets run a guy who actually fought in a war where he got shot at to head off at the pass that he's militarily unfit for office. Again, please follow what the pollsters say and don't stray outside the lines and we can't lose.
Anyways, each campaign they fought defensively and got worn down because they didn't show any leadership, just repeated what we've heard a million times. Thats not going to cut it with the middle and left, even if it does work wonders on the right. Obama is going to kick Clinton's ass because he knows this and she doesn't. Clinton is following the exact same playbook thats lost for the dems in 2000 and 2004. Another reason I voted the way I have.
“They get confused by pollsters or something and then just react slowly to whatever the GOP does and they are always a bit behind at the end of the day.”
As they did in the 1990s after the 1994 elections. Can anybody who is awake and has an IQ above room temperature be fooled by the following?
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ka.cfm?kaid=128
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ka.cfm?kaid=132
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ka.cfm?kaid=131&yearmo…
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ka.cfm?kaid=137
(I suspect Bayh is still a major contender to be Clinton's VP selection this year if she wants an insider with Experience…)
<a href=”http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=3006″>http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=…
“they didn't show any leadership, just repeated what we've heard a million times”
Some, indeed, act as if it's still the 1950s until in some places, well into the 1970s and nobody dares to be an apostate and question the Gospel of Government; it is as if they are arrested in time, like some of the truly falling-apart places in the eastern USA that merit the term Cyanide Nation rather than only Blue Nation — there is death all over the place. The first and only thing anyone there that is in the government (state, county, municipal fiefdoms) does is a) assume they know better than everyone else what is to be done; and b) raise taxes.
[...] galore, and day jobs for these two dudes, Cliff Orr and Andrew Schuck. Theywww.seriouseats.comABC News: Clinton Documents Don??t Show Great ExperienceABC News: Clinton Documents Don??t Show Great Experience March 19th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN First [...]
Hillary is secretive just like Bush (W) because she doesn't want the voters to know the real Hillary. It doesn't take a genius to realize that if something culd help Hillary, she would use it, including her letters. Since the letters could only hurt her, she resisted releasing them, until forced to with a lawsuit. The letters reveal just what we thought (not to sound like a repeat of slamfu but I do want to make my point).
As far as Hillary trying to change the focus from her to Obama… Well, Obama directly confronted his criticism this week with his “race speech” and a lot of talking heads said that Obama went beyond (though a few- very few- said he didn't go enough). Hillary, on the other hand is trying to change the focus away from her. Personally I'd like a president who will directly confront issues, rather than try to change the conversation (or mislead us into believing a load of crap).
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