First, if you’re wondering what I as a Hillary supporter think about Hillary’s decision to continue running after yesterday, the answer is I don’t know what I think of it as a strategy. Naturally I would like to believe that she could still somehow prevail. I am not sanguine. People are speculating that she is now running for the VP slot. We’ll see.
But — and this matters more to me — I most definitely admire her for her unswerving commitment to see the process through. Despite the pissing and moaning in the media, and whatever the outcome, I predict that the day will certainly arrive when people will look back with awe and amazement at Hillary’s insistence in going the distance against all odds and wish that they had chosen her. She is indomitable. I like that in a Democrat and so should other Democrats. Alas, many of them are so beguiled by the media myths about Hillary that they just can’t see what a force of nature she really is.
Obama could learn a lot from her and he’d be a better (future) president for it. Instead, I imagine we’ll be stuck with him in his current incarnation — all rhetoric, all the time.
What do Europeans think of American election campaign tactics? Judging by this op-ed from Austria’s Die Presse, they’re nothing like those that take place on the Old Continent. Eva Male writes, ‘Smear campaigns are time-honored traditions in U.S. election campaigns. The longer the campaign wares on and the more heated it becomes, the more mud candidates are going to throw at one another, occasionally actively egged-on by the media.’
By Eva Male
Translated By Behncke
February 27, 2008
Austria - Die Presse - Original Article (German)
Smear campaigns are time-honored traditions in U.S. election campaigns. But one must take care: They have been known to backfire.
The longer the campaign wares on and the more heated it becomes, the more mud candidates are going to throw at one another, occasionally actively egged-on by the media. That’s what we are currently experiencing in the United States, where former First Lady Hillary Clinton must fear for her campaign for the nomination after the next big primaries in Ohio and Texas.
Clinton accused her challenger Barack Obama of inexperience in foreign policy, by indirectly comparing him to incumbent President George W. Bush. The fact that her campaign team circulated photos of Obama wearing traditional African garb - taken during a visit to Kenya - is being evaluated as racist and divisive. Just a few weeks ago, Hillary’s attack dog Bill barked vigorously at Obama. Meanwhile, Republican candidate John McCain was charged on the front page of The New York Times with having an affair with a lobbyist.
Ruthless tactics like these happen in U.S. election campaigns all the time. But they can backfire and earn sympathy for the attacked candidate. Surveys show that voters, especially the young, reject negative campaigning.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. election.
Was President Bush’s recent tour of Africa just a convenient and thinly-disguised attempt to whitewash an otherwise dismal foreign policy record? Mohammad Jafar Ahmed of Al-Khaleej of the United Arab Emirates writes, ‘By signing agreements and handing out donations to help combat disease at the end of his second term, Bush’s tour appeared to be an attempt to instill memories other than the American catastrophe in Iraq and the quagmire in Afghanistan.’
By Mohammad Jafar Ahmed
Translated By James Jacobson
February 22, 2008
United Arab Emirates - Al-Khaleej - Original Article (Arabic)
In his last months before leaving the White House, American President George Bush remembered of the “Dark Continent,” setting off on a six-day African tour starting in Benin, and moving on to Rwanda, Tanzania and Ghana, and ending today with a stop in Liberia.
Bush’s “farewell” tour, which is the second to Africa of his presidency, was meant to convince the world that he feels the suffering of this forgotten people, presenting himself as an advocate who wants to help them overcome the effects of war, conflict and disease. But perhaps the true purpose was to rescue a legacy tainted with the blood of thousands in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan - the result of his wars and unlimited support of Zionist aggression, in addition to the sanctions he has imposed on a number of countries that have opposed his policies.
The tour was striking in that it didn’t include the real hot spots of conflict on the Dark Continent, notably Sudan, home of the Darfur crisis, as well as Kenya, where the turmoil that has embroiled the nation since the recent elections continues, to say nothing of Chad and Somalia.
Bush’s five-country selection prompts anyone interested Africa’s difficulties to question the meaning and true objectives of his tour and whether it was for political or economic purposes. As Darfur is one of the major preoccupations of the West, particularly in the United States, which kept the crisis on the international agenda until it reached the U.N. Security Council, Sudan can be considered the greatest failure of Bush’s tour; similar to the way Palestine was the great failure after his last Middle East tour, where as result of American cover for “Israeli” crimes, hundreds have been martyred in Gaza and the West Bank.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with out continuing translated foreign press coverage of the United States.
