Hillary Clinton sets her sights on three ways to win

www.timesonline.co.uk/.../article3511833.ece

[Former senator Bill Bradley, who is a leading supporter of Obama and ran for president in 2000, accused the Clintons of “lying” in pursuit of victory.  

“The bigger the lie, the better the chance they think they’ve got. That’s been their whole approach,” he said. “She’s going to lose a whole generation of people who got involved in politics believing it could be something different.”

Bradley believes that Clinton will stop at nothing to tear down Obama even if it boosts John McCain, who was confirmed last week as the Republican nominee: “The Clintons do not do long-term planning. They’re total tacticians and right now their focus is on Obama, not McCain.” ]

Hillary has more experience (eight years) as First Lady than she has had in elective office (seven).

Obama has more experience in elective office (ten years) than Hillary.

John McCain has more experience in elective office (25 years) than both HRC and BHO combined.

So then, by Mark Penn's logic, Hillary is ready to serve as the wife of John McCain if he becomes president.

For the first time in this campaign, Obama is beginning to be defined by his actions rather than his speeches and fawning press coverage.

The narrative that is emerging about Obama is that he is deceitful (as in calling his deal with Rezko "boneheaded" when in fact it was very carefully thought through and planned); and that he is amateurish, as illustrated by six or seven major gaffes in the last 10 days (or, for that matter, by his thinking he could get away with having a man indicted for bribery owning half of his home in Chicago).

isn't now the best time for Maggie Williams to fire Penn, who is turning into a caricature of Bob Shrum?  with all the backbitting and penn-hatred inside the campaign, and the idiotic things he says, why not get rid of him?  hopefully the campaign now has enough money to pay him the $2.5 million they evidently owe him...

Well, I'd say the reasoning is that HRC isn't going to die and he can get experience as the #2. Just remember, the guy was a STATE senator this time four years ago. If the GOP was pushing a candidate with such precious little experience, Dems would be mocking the hell out of him/her. Even Bush the Idiot had been the chief executive of a huge state even if it was in a weak governor system. Clearly, experience is not a harbringer of greatness as Nixon proved, but I can't get past the fact that we're looking to elevate a guy who was representing only Hyde Park in Springfield, IL a term ago. And now we're going to put him in charge of the free world? The 3 am ad might have been ham-handed, but the reason it's effective is because Obama actually has no experience. If he get the nomination and loses in November, it's not going to because of HRC's attacks, it's going to because he can't close the deal with an American electorate skeptical of his gravitas. I'm not saying HRC's experience is in the Al Gore range, but I'll take someone who has five more years in the Senate and eight years as First Lady over Obama's rookie status.  

And Obama still VP...

What should her and her campaign's public position be if they think he is less capable than McCain to be C.i.C.?

basman-

What should Obama and his campaign's public position be if they think Hillary is a monster?

peter, if you're going to count being First Lady as "experience", then this has two implications:

1. It makes Laura Bush presidential material in your book, because in addition to her eight years as First Lady she has a decade of public service on her own.

2. You have to consider what Hillary actually did as First Lady, and there is simply no honest way to conclude that she was anything other than a Bush-level disaster of political and practical incompetence. She almost single-handedly destroyed her husband's presidency in its first 18 months, and Bill Clinton only recovered when Hillary's seat at the grown-up's table was taken away. "Experience" isn't about how many years you've been present, it's about what you've actually done in the time you've had available. Hillary's executive experience was disastrously negative. There is a reason Hillary doesn't want us to see her schedule as First Lady.

There is a third unavoidable implication, which I don't think many Democrats have thought about, but it is that by this definition of "experience," hereditary monarchies and aristocracies are necessarily preferable to democracies and republics. No one has more "experience" ruling than the ruler's closest family members, whether his children or his wife. By this standard, Kim Jong Il really was more "experienced" than anyone else to succeed Kim Il Sung as the chief executive of North Korea, at least if "experience" is defined as Hillaristas define it in her favor.

What dolt thinks experience matters if there is no history of success?

A mediocre talent who has toiled for decades writing Harlequin romances is better than a brilliant first-time author?

A seventy-one-year-old country club hack is better than a first-year Tiger Woods?

The analogies are endless. Who in their right mind listens to these witless Clintonites?

Oh, I forgot...witless and agenda-driven flunkies like George Stephanopoulos.

Hillary is the Betty Crocker of politics - a brand name running with faux credentials posturing as a real cook, who couldn't tell a stove from a microwave. Unfortunately, Hiilary appeals to the Betty Crocker audience.

There is a third unavoidable implication, which I don't think many Democrats have thought about, but it is that by this definition of "experience," hereditary monarchies and aristocracies are necessarily preferable to democracies and republics. No one has more "experience" ruling than the ruler's closest family members, whether his children or his wife. By this standard, Kim Jong Il really was more "experienced" than anyone else to succeed Kim Il Sung as the chief executive of North Korea, at least if "experience" is defined as Hillaristas define it in her favor...

Nobody has thought about this because it's hysteria.

basman-

What should Obama and his campaign's public position be if they think Hillary is a monster?...

They should keep it to themselves. What are they--three year olds?

Now answer my first question.

basman-

I think you already answered your own question. . .

If the Obama supporters can name one president in the history of this country that has less experience  than their candidate I'd be happy to listen. And don't say Eisenhower or Washington because they never held political office; I'd like to think General of the Continental Army and Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces would be considered relevant experience.

Basman, you caught me. I'm advocating hereditary monarchies because I don't think a guy who was a state senator in 2004 is ready to be president.

AaronBBrown, Rhubarbs, williamyard, tep, Wandrey, blackton, boneill, drdannyu, mpatrickhendri, rishy, epackard, jhildner, MrJauntyCookie, and all fair citizens of Talkback Nation-

I think it's high time for another contest:

THE TNR TALKBACK NATION

MERRY PLANKSTERS AWARD

for

B E S T

P A Y B A C K

for

H I L L A R Y

Please submit your own nomination here on this thread.

_____________________________________________________________________________

But just to start things off, here are a few suggestions:

1. If/when Barack Obama becomes president, he offers Hillary the position of Secretary of State, waits till she resigns from her Senate seat, allows a decent interval, then fires her white, pantsuited ass.

2. Hillary, gamely accepting responsibility for helping elect John McCain to the White House, agrees to go on pay-per-view, naked, with a cigar, knee pads, and a roofied Monica Lewinsky.

3. If payback is a bitch, and one can safely assume that Hillary is a bitch, then Hillary having to be Hillary should be payback enough.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Please submit your own nominations here on this thread.

Can HRC supporters name the Presidents in the history of the country with less experience than her?

Can the HRC supporters identify exactly why the extra 4 years in the senate are so powerful?

Can HRC supporters identify the candidates for the POTUS whose most significant government experience has been being the spouse of a President for 8 years?

Experience is a losing angle to play in this election going against McCain regardless of the candidate.

1. JosephCuomo said:

basman-

I think you already answered your own question. .

But aren't the 2 cases different? Like between who is a monster and who should be the leader of the free world.

2. peter1943 said:

Basman, you caught me. I'm advocating hereditary monarchies because I don't think a guy who was a state senator in 2004 is ready to be president...

Sorry, I thought I was responding to someone called Rhubarbs. And my small point is that to extrapolate from an argument from experience the reductio ad absurdum of North Korean succession etc. is to engage in hysterical argument.

peter1943 -- chill out for pete's sake!  basman was jerking your chain a bit.  The experience argument is simply a bit denser that you suggest.  One takes a chance on political leaders presumably knowing that they aren't perfect.  Dems did in fact mock the hell out of Bush back in 2000 but it didn't appear to matter to Republicans who wanted a certain kind of anti-Clinton president in the White House.  Likewise, Obama represents certain qualities and possibilities that a lot of people find very desirable, and that, for them, outweighs the experience argument.  Needless to say, Clinton doesn't embody those qualities and possibilities, and therefore has to push the experience pitch with a vengeance -- it's what she has.

Obama's biggest strength is in fact something very basic, that's difficult to parlay into a campaign strategy:  the fact that he has gotten so far is a remarkable testament to the openness and vitality of the U.S. as a political system.  Worldwide, Obama is now seen as embodying the America that millions of people want to admire.  In terms of the current general antipathy to the U.S. abroad, Obama undercuts it and makes it suddenly irrelevant, uncool:  he represents a kind of intelligent, sexy, quietly confident America in the way that JFK was able to do.

That's an important thing -- this guy is worth his weight in gold when it comes to repairing our reputation and image overseas.  But it doesn't mean that he will be better (or worse) than Clinton or McCain when it comes to facing down Achmadinnerjacket or Putin or whomever.  But I think we can say for certain that none of the above will be likely to look into Putin's eyes and observe a good soul looking back out.

basman-

So, then, you think being a monster is not a disqualification for being the leader of the free world?

pccostello -

You need to back off this Rezko thing with Obama. Anyone attempting to defend HRC in a "who's sleaziest" contest is gonna have their hands full! Nothing Obama has done or is alleged to have done can compare with the laundry list of ACTUAL misdeeds HRC has racked up over the years.

good points irony road--uhm, sort of fair and balanced, with no trace of  orwellian anything.

...JosephCuomo said:

basman-

So, then, you think being a monster is not a disqualification for being the leader of the free world?...

I can only attribute this crapola to my surmise that you are joshing some, having me on a bit, a little sport at the expense of the bald  Canadian.

peter, you really need to bone up on your history because your knowledge is pretty sad. there have been numerous Presidents who have had less experience than Obama's 10 years in elected office. Lincoln being the most obvious one. But lets stick to the past one hundred years. 1901 to 1903, Taft served as the first civilian Governor-General of the Philippine, then Secretary of War. No elected political office at all. Woodrow Wilson, Governor of New Jersey for 2 years. (that was it bud). Harding: He served in the Ohio Senate (1899–1903) and later as lieutenant governor of Ohio (1903–1905) and as a U.S. Senator (1915–1921). Calvin Coolidge little previous experience before being selected as VP. Calvin Coolidge Secretary of Commerce (that is it). Shall I go on, or will you admit you are flat out wrong. FDR was a State Senator (like Obama) before his one term as Governor of New York.

And you choose to ignore Eisenhower for no other reason than he blows your idea out of the water.

The only people who can rightly claim to have enough experience are VP's who had an enormous amount of power in the White House. So peter, I take it you are planning on writing in Dick Cheney's name. Doesn't he meet your criteria?

The main problem with Hillary is not her experience, it is her unelectability in the fall. She is our Mondale, but only more divisive. I am a swing voting Democrat and she makes my skin crawl. Do you honestly know any independents who claim they will vote for her over McCain?

JosephCuomo--

In my view, your nastiness and calling Senator Clinton a "bitch" are out of line around here. You should find a blog where that kind of stuff goes and gets answered in kind. But not here.

I do take your nastiness and calling her a bitch as a sign of your desperation about the losses the Obama campaign has been suffering as some of the press begin to climb out of the tank. Obama is finally getting defined by his actions instead of his speeches.

This is why Obama is tryinjg to block a re-vote in Michigan and Florida--he doesn't want those two key states to be represented in selelecting the democratic nominee.

In other words, he would like to disenfranchise millions of voters in Michigan and Florida in order to get himself a nomination. I guess in Obama's self-interested world view, disenfranchasing voters is one way to bring us all together.

irony, forget about it, you can't hope to get though. I remember in 1984 the Mondale supporters whe were so convinced that Mondale was going to win, didn't he have a woman on the ticket? Wasn't that the future? Mondale represented the same old politics, and as we all know he lost 49 states. Yes, Hillary will certainly double, if not triple that number. Hooray. What progress. The sad thing is the electoral college looks even worse for Democrats than it did in 1984 considering the growth in population in red states compared to blue ones.

What is the difference between a Mondale supporter and a Clinton supporter? Nothing, they are just a lot older and represent about the same number.

This experience question is fascinating. Today’s times had a great piece cataloging Obama’s experience in the Senate (www.nytimes.com/.../09obama.html). It is clear is that he is about as junior as they come. The average length of service in the Senate is currently 12.1 years which means both HRC and BHO are below the mean. The mean is undoubtedly skewed by the Robert Byrd types and the median is probably closer to 10 years. Anyway, like it or not, he is green. I often wonder why he did not just wait this one out. Conventional wisdom would have him running in 2012 (if the R’s won) or in 2016 if HRC won. He would be 54 years old and a seasoned Senator. I think the Times piece answers the question and it comes down to two things: 1) He has a rare and spectacular gift of political skill that clearly has allowed him to bypass the normal trajectory and he knows it. 2) Experience is not necessarily good for him. Most politicians need to cut their teeth before being taken seriously, but in doing so they run the risk of becoming the next Bill Frist. The problem is, that were he to just sit on his hands for the next 4-8 years in the Senate, he would be billed as a do-nothing figure head – he’s headed there now. While taking an active role in the Senate process just opens him up to future scrutiny over things like Iraq timetables and the like. So it was clearly the correct decision for him to run this year, just as it was for GW Bush to run in 2000. Ironically, HRC could have done the same thing in 2004 and would have been in the exact same point in her Senate career as Obama is today. She didn’t. Who knows why? Perhaps she felt she needed the experience or that voters thought she did? Or perhaps she did not think it was her turn? Or maybe she thought the country needed a few more years to get over the Bill thing? It was probably a mistake. She would have won the nomination easily that year, and probably would have beaten Bush. So her disdain for Obama probably derives from a combination of anger at him over his decision to jump the line and frustration at herself (or her advisors) for not running in 2004. I have been and remain a Hillary supporter and I do think she would be a more effective President in the “Executive” part of the job. I happen to think the Obama aura of inspiration will be a distant memory come January 20, 2009. But she has almost certainly missed her chance save some sort of miracle or further Obama melt-down. However, I firmly believe she has a role to play here and beyond. The here part is that her presence in the race will absolutely strengthen Obama. It will make him a better general election candidate and will make him a better President. The last thing we need is another anointment. The future part is that this is a woman who despite all the hostility directed at her in this forum and elsewhere, is the most adept serious, and facile elected policy maker in the Democratic Party (or the Republican Party). She has a lot to offer Obama in a cabinet level position or as his Vice President. I urge the Obama supporters to dig deep and get beyond what has been said in this campaign to remember that Hillary Clinton is a remarkable person and politician who would almost certainly be on track to become the first woman President of this country were it not for a freak occurrence of talent. Dig down and ask yourselves how you would view her and whether you would support her if Obama had never run, or if she had indeed run in 2004. Get beyond the personal crap and ask yourselves if you really think she is a monster or if she is actually a modern political hero who has lost her way. I will grant that she has run an absolutely abysmal campaign of late, and she or her surrogates have said some bad things. But she is in no way a monster.

UPDATE on

the Nominations for:

THE TNR TALKBACK NATION

MERRY PLANKSTERS AWARD

for

B E S T

P A Y B A C K

for

H I L L A R Y

_____________________________________________________________________________

1. If/when Barack Obama becomes president, he offers Hillary the position of Secretary of State, waits till she resigns from her Senate seat, allows a decent interval, then fires her white, pantsuited ass.

2. Hillary, gamely accepting responsibility for helping elect John McCain to the White House, agrees to go on pay-per-view, naked, with a cigar, knee pads, and a roofied Monica Lewinsky.

3. If payback is a bitch, and one can safely assume that Hillary is a bitch, then Hillary having to be Hillary should be payback enough.

4. After losing the last of her remaining superdelegates at the Convention, Hillary is forced to spend an entire afternoon in a stalled elevator with pccostello.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Please submit your own nominations here on this thread.

chmaclean,

I just posted this elswhere, but it is the anwer to your efforst to avoid the Rezko issue, which is festering sore for Obama.

McLaughlin and Comapny just had a totally devasting look at Obama's land deal with Rezko--showing the property and making it clear that Obama's intial claim that the land purchases were not coordinated is completely untrue.

In other words, that Obama lied to hide details of his land deal with Rezko.

Also, the show made it clear that at the time Obama made the sweetheart land deal with Rezko, it was obvious to everyone in politics in Chicago that Rezko was dirty. The question of Obama's judgment was strongly raised.

Finally, the show raised the possibility that Rezko significantly improved the specific slice of property that he sold to Obama as a way of making a hidden gift to him that was worth a lot of money.

The show was devastating for Obama. I don't think he has the answers that will put this story to rest. And in the absence of detailed answers, the story will have very strong legs throughout the campaign and into November.

eweiss, at last a sane Hillary Clinton supporter. Great stuff.

I wish Obama would just say that under no circumstances would he consider being VP if he held the clear lead in pledged delegates at the end. And he can ask reporters to ask Hillary if she would consider being VP if she held the clear lead in pledged delegates at the end. The idea is laughable on its face.

Unless Obama melts down, she can only steal the nomination, at which point Obama supporters walk and Hillary goes down in flames. I am fine with that given that I would be very happy with a McCain Presidency.

And the three people who still watch McLaughlin and Co. are with you, Pccostello!  Huzzah!

pccostello -

I am not going to argue that the Rezko incident does not have legs, or that there might not be something smelly about the deal. My point is that this is the ONLY incident you cite that might stick to Obama, vs. the absolute sh*tstorm that awaits HRC if she is the nominee. It may be that Obama is dirty on this, which means we (potentially) have two flawed candidates to choose from. But no serious argument can be made that BHO is MORE flawed than HRC, or that the Rezko thing will hurt him to a greater degree than HRC's past misdeeds will hurt her. No matter what you think of Hillary's accomplishments, qualifications, etc., the Republicans will eat her alive.

We missed you JoCo!  Where you been?

And I like HRC as SecState, then firing her ass!

kgrant, this is the thought process of pccostello. Obama is a corrupt venal politician, hence Hillary says he would be a great VP. Go Hillary go. You are right, she has a certain loony toons charm about her.

So how about it Pc? Will you be consistent and say Hillary is wrong to want Obama on the ticket?

Obama doesn't need or even want Hillary on his ticket, hence doesn't need to lay down any hints about it.

For Pete, here's Presidential Experience:

W. Bush: 6 yrs as Gov. of TX

Clinton: 12 yrs as Gov. of Arkansas

H. W. Bush: 8 yrs as Veep, 1 yr as CIA head, 2 yrs as "ambassador to China" 2 yrs as UN Ambassador, 4 yrs in House

Reagan: 8 yrs as Gov. as CA

Carter: 4 years as Governor of Georgia *

Ford: 24 yrs in the House, 8 as Minority Leader, 1 yr as Veep

Nixon: 8 yrs as Veep, 2 yrs as Senator, 4 yrs in the house

L. Johnson: 3 yrs as Veep, 8 yrs as Senate Leader, 12 yrs in the senate, 12 yrs in the House

Kennedy: 8 ys in the Senate, 6 ys in the House

Eisenhower: The Army (WWII)

Truman: 3 months as Veep, 10 yrs in the Senate

FDR: 4 yrs as Gov. of NY, 8 yrs as Asst. Sec. of the Navy, 2 yrs in State Senate

Hoover: 8 yrs as Sec. of Commerce

Coolidge: 2 yrs as Veep, 2 yrs as Gov. of Mass *

Harding: 6 ys as Senator

Wilson: 2 yrs as Governor of NJ  *

Taft: 4 yrs as Sec. of War, 2 yrs as Gov. of Philippines

TR: 6 months as Veep, 2 yrs as Gov. of NY, 2 yrs as Asst. Sec. of the Navy

McKinley: 4 yrs as Gov. of Ohio *

Cleveland: 2 yrs as Gov. of NY *

B. Harrison: 6 yrs as Senator

Arthur: 6 months as Veep, *

Garfield: 18 yrs in the House

Hayes: 5 yrs as Gov. of Ohio, 2 yrs in the House

Grant: The Army (Civil War)

A. Johnson: 4 years as Gov. of Tenn, 4 yrs in the Senate, 3 yrs as Mil. Gov. of Tenn, 1 month as Veep

Lincoln: 2 yrs in the House *

Buchanan: 4 yrs as Ambassador to the UK, 4 yrs as Sec. of State, 10 yrs in the Senate

Pierce: 5 yrs in the Senate,  4 yrs in the House

Fillmore: 1 yr as Veep, 8 yrs in the House

Taylor: The Army (Mexican War)

Polk: 2 yrs as Gov. of Tenn,  14 yrs in the house, including 6 as Speaker

Tyler: 1 month as Veep, a yr as Gov. of Virginia,  10 yrs as Sen. including 1 yr as Pres. pro tem

W. H. Harrison: 3 yrs as Sen., 12 yrs as Gov. of IN Territory,  3 yrs in the House, 1 yr as Ambassador to Colombia

Van Buren: 4 yrs as Veep, 2 yrs as Sec. of State, 2 months as Gov. of NY, 7 yrs in the Senate

Jackson:  2 yrs in the Senate, >1 yr in the House, >1 yr as Gov. of FL Territory, The Army (War of 1812)

Q. Adams:  8 yrs as Sec. of State

Monroe: 6 yrs as Sec. of State, >1 yr as Sec. of War, 3 yrs as Gov. of VA

Madison: 8 yrs as Sec. of State

Jefferson: 4 yrs as Veep, 4 yrs as Sec. of State, 2 yrs as Gov. of VA,

Adams: 8 yrs as Veep,

Washington: The Army (Rev. War)

Asterisks follow Presidents with less or as much experience than Obama, which include Presidents Carter, Coolidge, Wilson, McKinley, Cleveland, Arthur, Lincoln, and if going by higher office only (Senate, House, Cabinet, Veep, Gov) both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt.

Thanks for the kind words, rishy.

Your vote has been duly recorded (below).

_______________________________________________________________________________

UPDATED VOTE TALLY

for

THE TNR TALKBACK NATION

MERRY PLANKSTERS AWARD

for

B E S T

P A Y B A C K

for

H I L L A R Y

_____________________________________________________________________________

ONE VOTE FOR: 1. If/when Barack Obama becomes president, he offers Hillary the position of Secretary of State, waits till she resigns from her Senate seat, allows a decent interval, then fires her white, pantsuited ass.

2. Hillary, gamely accepting responsibility for helping elect John McCain to the White House, agrees to go on pay-per-view, naked, with a cigar, knee pads, and a roofied Monica Lewinsky.

3. If payback is a bitch, and one can safely assume that Hillary is a bitch, then Hillary having to be Hillary should be payback enough.

4. After losing the last of her remaining superdelegates at the Convention, Hillary is forced to spend an entire afternoon in a stalled elevator with pccostello.

______________________________________________________________________________

Please post your own nominations on this thread.

The Clintons have long delayed releasing their tax returns and have refused to name the donors to the William J Clinton Foundation in Arkansas. Archivists are also blocking the release of hundreds of federal papers on White House pardons. “We need to know whether there were favors attached to $500,000 contributions, such as the granting of pardons, squelching an investigation, awarding a contract or deferring a regulation,” Bradley said. “The Democratic party has got to be in dreamland if they think the Republicans are going to let these matters go.”

pc. game, set, and match. Hillary will go down.

pccostello

I realize you've become a Clinton/Republican shill, pushing their propaganda, but you really need to come up with something better than Rezko.  There simply is nothing there, there.  Let me acquaint you with the facts.

The Real Story of Rezko and Obama: 10 Myths Debunked

www.dailykos.com/.../445627

And you want proof that Hillary Clinton is a MONSTER?  Here is irrefutable video evidence.

Hillary Queen of the Monsters

www.youtube.com/watch

:-)

The "bitch" issue raises an important point that we as a county need to address for the sake of advancing women's ability to compete for top jobs. And that issue is, what is the gender-neutral equivalent of "bitch"? Because I for one am not comfortable calling any woman a "bitch." I'm perfectly happy to use the adjective "bitchy" or the noun "to bitch" in the appropriate settings, particularly when talking about men (I mean, seriously, there is no better word in the entire language to describe Rudy Giuliani's basic approach to life than "bitchy"). Used in that sense, it doesn't mean effeminate or womanish or girly, but rather a specifically passive-aggressive mix of petulance and entitlement. But calling a whiny, passive-aggressive woman "bitchy" is awfully close to calling her "a bitch," which is inappropriate in any setting.

For a man, the next-best candidates would be "son of a bitch," which doesn't actually solve the problem, and "asshole," which overstates what you mean when you say "bitch." So what is the gender-neutral way to describe a bitchy person who happens to be a woman without making her gender the central element of your insult?

As to the payback question, there is no payback for Hillary Clinton. By not either giving her the nomination by acclimation in January or finishing her off quickly on Super Tuesday, the Democratic Party has ensured that Hillary Clinton will be an albatross around our necks for at least the next six years. As long as she remains on the national scene, the only payback will be what Democrats suffer at her hands.

Good work, Croc . I was just going to mention Lincoln and leave it at that. Your due diligence is to be commended.

pccostello, you sound every bit as desperate as your favored candidate. You can keep saying "Obama is incompetent" all you want, but saying it over and over it won't make be true. I have looked in the mirror every morning and said "Clooney," but alas, I still look like Woody Bombay. Your shrill, irrational, hysterical lies and distortions about Barack Obama do no service for HRC. They only reinforce ugly 'kitchen sink' stereotypes about her.

Your supporting HRC by smearing Obama with corruption charges reminds me of Karl Rove. Attack your opponent's strengths. Just recently he praised the McCains for adopting a child in Bangladesh, when only eight years ago he ran a vicious push poll in South Carolina asking voters if they knew that McCain had "fathered" an "illegimate black baby." Corruption and incompetence really are not places you want to take this discussion. Obama hasn't. He has obliquely referred to HRC's "baggage," and has always quickly added that most of her "baggage" is unfairly attributed to her (the Whitewater nonsense and all the other crap that came with it. SImilarly, he has not mentioned at length (maybe I've missed it) how she so completely and thoroughly screwed up universal health care in1993 that the Dems lost control of Congress because of it, which of course later led to Bill's impeachment. Where's the competence there?

crock, well done, but I have long gotten used to Hillary supporters throwing out made up facts that take less than a minute to verify as being useless. I guarantee this peter fellah will never acknowledge he was wrong.

Generally the rule of thumb I have found it when Obama supporters make statements they like to back it up with facts, Hillary supporters like to rely on the voices that buzz in their heads. (ok, ok, just pc)

Of course McCain wins the experience argument hands down. And the scary thing about the Clintons is this: The Clintons have long delayed releasing their tax returns and have refused to name the donors to the William J Clinton Foundation in Arkansas. Archivists are also blocking the release of hundreds of federal papers on White House pardons. “We need to know whether there were favours attached to $500,000 contributions, such as the granting of pardons, squelching an investigation, awarding a contract or deferring a regulation,” Bradley said. “The Democratic party has got to be in dreamland if they think the Republicans are going to let these matters go.”

You could call her a passive-aggressive-pain-in-the-ass-spoiler-enabler-turncoat.

Rhubarbs-

Here is Clintonista Tina Fey on the subject:

Tina Fey: "I want to say something about those calling Hillary a bitch. She is a bitch. So am I. So is she [pointing at Weekend Update news host Amy Poehler]. Deal with it! Bitches get shit done."

As for the male equivalent of bitch, it would have to be weenie (as in, according to the neocons, George H.W. Bush was a weenie for not going all the way to Baghdad when he had the chance).

blackton-

Thanks for your contributions, which have been duly recorded (below).

____________________________________________________________________________

UPDATED Nominees for:

THE TNR TALKBACK NATION

MERRY PLANKSTERS AWARD

for

B E S T

P A Y B A C K

for

H I L L A R Y

_____________________________________________________________________________

1. If/when Barack Obama becomes president, he offers Hillary the position of Secretary of State, waits till she resigns from her Senate seat, allows a decent interval, then fires her white, pantsuited ass.

2. Hillary, gamely accepting responsibility for helping elect John McCain to the White House, agrees to go on pay-per-view, naked, with a cigar, knee pads, and a roofied Monica Lewinsky.

3. If payback is a bitch, and one can safely assume that Hillary is a bitch, then Hillary having to be Hillary should be payback enough.

4. After losing the last of her remaining superdelegates at the Convention, Hillary is forced to spend an entire afternoon in a stalled elevator with pccostello.

5. During President Obama's first term, HRC is appointed Ambassador to Kazakhstan, where (for a cool 130 million dollar payoff) she can have dinner with that nation's thuggish dictator, call him a great humanitarian, and also do charity work for the miners off whose backs that $130 million came.

6. After her meltdown at the Convention, Hillary, accepting her blue-collar penance, applies to do night shift work at Walmart.

7. During President McCain's first term, Chelsea Clinton enlists in the military and serves in Iraq, while Hillary reconsiders whether she maybe, just maybe might have made a mistake with her Iraq war vote.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Please submit your own nominations here on this thread.

Hillary Clinton's "My Lai" Strategy?

blogs.abcnews.com/.../hillary-clinton.html

Sen. Gary Hary

["By saying that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the country, particularly in times of crisis, Hillary Clinton has broken that rule, severely damaged the Democratic candidate who may well be the party's nominee, and, perhaps most ominously, revealed the unlimited lengths to which she will go to achieve power. She has essentially said that the Democratic party deserves to lose unless it nominates her." ]

Jonathan Chait

["Pennsylvania is a swing state that Democrats will almost certainly need to win in November, and Clinton will spend seven weeks and millions of dollars there making the case that Obama is unfit to set foot in the White House. You couldn't create a more damaging scenario if you tried.]

chmclean,

I never quite know what the obama/republicans around here are pointing to when they complain about Sen. Clinton's ethics. Ken Starr spent how much?--was it $40 million looking at Whitewater, and he came up with what---a blowjob. But nothing about Hillary.

The Rezko deal had a feel of personal self-enrichment about it that I don't see with Hillary. So, if I am simply uninformed, as may be the case, what is it that Hillary has done that is like Obama having a man indicted for influence peddling and sham real-estate transactions gain influence over him by engaging in a sham real-estate transaction?

Rhube,

"asshole" probably is the closest equivalent to "bitch." but the "bitch" word doesn't really translate to men because the word is gender-specific in what it derogates. In this sense, the word "bitch" is more like the word "nigger" in that the derogatory intent of "nigger" is ancestry specific. It doesn't mean much if you call a white person a "nigger" because the word is intended to harm those with darker skin color. The word "honky" is really not an equivalent for whites. The way in which Tina Fey uses the word "bitch"--as a badge--is like the way the word "nigger" may be used by some African-Americans, and helps to make the analogy.

A difference between "nigger" and "bitch" is that "nigger" hasn't really been acceptable usage for about 50 years, but the word bitch is still widely used to attack or degrade a woman and is still acceptable usage among "assholes." ;-)

maxblum13-

Thanks for your contribution, which has been duly recorded (below).

_______________________________________________________________________________

an updated list of the Nominees thus far.

______________________________________________________________________________

THE TNR TALKBACK NATION

MERRY PLANKSTERS AWARD

for

B E S T

P A Y B A C K

for

H I L L A R Y

_____________________________________________________________________________

1. If/when Barack Obama becomes president, he offers Hillary the position of Secretary of State, waits till she resigns from her Senate seat, allows a decent interval, then fires her white, pantsuited ass.

2. Hillary, gamely accepting responsibility for helping elect John McCain to the White House, agrees to go on pay-per-view, naked, with a cigar, knee pads, and a roofied Monica Lewinsky.

3. If payback is a bitch, and one can safely assume that Hillary is a bitch, then Hillary having to be Hillary should be payback enough.

5. During President Obama's first term, HRC is appointed Ambassador to Kazakhstan, where (for a cool 130 million dollar payoff) she can have dinner with that nation's thuggish dictator, call him a great humanitarian, and also do charity work for the miners off whose backs that $130 million came.

6. After her meltdown at the Convention, Hillary, accepting her blue-collar penance, applies to do night shift work at Walmart.

7. During President McCain's first term, Chelsea Clinton enlists in the military and serves in Iraq, while Hillary reconsiders whether maybe, just maybe her Iraq war vote was a mistake.

8. Outside the Convention in Denver (the Mile-High City), Hillary is chased off a cliff by an angry mob of naked superdelegates.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Please submit your own nominations here on this thread.

Oh, more on HRC's incompetence - remember Travelgate? Twasn't no big thing - the Clintons wanted to get rid of the previous travel office and put their own team in. Nothing at all wrong with that. Except that Hillary was in charge, so naturally what should have been a no-brainer turned into a major scandal because of her 1) incompetence, and 2) instinct to go for the jugular, always.

And if you don't see any "personal enrichment" in HRC's dealings, pc, I suggest you brush up on her magnificent luck in cattle futures.

I believe that HRC is laying the ground work for 2012 just in case this primary is lost. The pitch for the VP being made by slick Willie is very calculated. It could help Hillary get the nomination in the way it co-opts Obama or it could make her the VP. Being the VP  inoculates HRC from a bad loss to McCain - top of the ticket gets the blame for losses - so she can then run in 2012. She's already making sure by her tactics that if she does not get the nomination, Obama must lose to McCain.   But if her plan fails and Obama wins the white house - a not so safe bet, considering her scorched earth strategy - she'll be the vice president, anyway.

eweiss

That last post of yours was great. I wish most HRC's supporters were that honest.

no, not a-hole but bastard. Rudy Guiliani is a bastard. Is it really possible to call Hillary a bastard? Does it fit? Now Bill certainly is one. Getting bj's in the Oval Office while your wife is in the East Wing is by its definition bastard behavior. But Bill was impeached, and America paid the price since his impeachment helped ruin Al Gore in the old guilt by association bag.

As to what to call Hillary, she is not an a-hole. And I have never heard a woman called bastard before. So if it OK to call a man a bastard, then it must be ok to call a woman a bitch.

here is the definition of bitch; a malicious, unpleasant, selfish person, esp. a woman.

Well, she is a malicious, unpleasant and selfish person, and she is a woman. People can draw their own conclusions then. One thing she will never be called is Madam President.

crock701,

Thank you! May I use your list (attributed to your post here) elsewhere?

rozenson and asnevitt-

Thanks for your contributions, which have been duly recorded (below).

Here is an updated list of the Nominees thus far.

______________________________________________________________________________

THE TNR TALKBACK NATION

MERRY PLANKSTERS AWARD

for

B E S T

P A Y B A C K

for

H I L L A R Y

_____________________________________________________________________________

1. If/when Barack Obama becomes president, he offers Hillary the position of Secretary of State, waits till she resigns from her Senate seat, allows a decent interval, then fires her white, pantsuited ass.

2. Hillary, gamely accepting responsibility for helping elect John McCain to the White House, agrees to go on pay-per-view, naked, with a cigar, knee pads, and a roofied Monica Lewinsky.

3. If payback is a bitch, and one can safely assume that Hillary is a bitch, then Hillary having to be Hillary should be payback enough.

5. During President Obama's first term, HRC is appointed Ambassador to Kazakhstan, where (for a cool 130 million dollar payoff) she can have dinner with that nation's thuggish dictator, call him a great humanitarian, and also do charity work for the miners off whose backs that $130 million came.

6. After her meltdown at the Convention, Hillary, accepting her blue-collar penance, applies to do night shift work at Walmart.

7. During President McCain's first term, Chelsea Clinton enlists in the military and serves in Iraq, while Hillary reconsiders whether maybe, just maybe her Iraq war vote was a mistake.

8. Outside the Convention in Denver (the Mile-High City), Hillary is chased off a cliff by an angry mob of naked superdelegates.

9. Bill Clinton, in an effort to upstage his wife, decides to run for Secretary General of the UN. Hillary, being relegated to wife status once again, visits even more countries and answers yet more phone calls at 3 AM to solve crises that she, as Bill's wife, is suited to handle. And her own superdelegates abandon her in droves.

10. When having tea in each of the 80 countries she visits, Hillary is asked, again and again and again, to bake the cookies.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Please submit your own nominations here on this thread.

I posted this on another thread, so I'll start with the summary: Obama should do a deal with the Clintons for the Veep position. Though spectacularly maladroit, I think Penn is on the money here. Rezko could help Obama in a paradoxical kind of way.

----------

No question a Clinton/Obama ticket would overwhelmingly be the preference of Democrats nationally, and no question it makes the most political sense for both candidates. It should and probably will result in due course, not too far in the future.

Undoubtedly Obama has been thinking seriously about such outcome an outcome for some time; for a very long time if he's as adept as one should surely hope if he plans on being President one day.

The Rezko matter is significant and a pitfall for Obama that won't go away. Obama should surely know that, too. Whether he does or does not take due heed of the risks - that's an iffy question for any ambitious politician (and a mighty temptation) -  his choices in handling them, now and in the future, will also be significant.

We know very little about his aptitude at negotiating a deal...a *real* deal, not "reaching out to the other side." Here's where getting a better picture of  Rezko deal could tell a lot.

Chicago works best (if not only) on deals, at virtually every level, smallest to greatest. Jimmy Breslin famously said the number one operative principle in Chicago is "where's mine." Obama couldn't have got some without giving some, and five hours is just a place marker no matter what anybody says.

Obama would benefit most by dealing with the Clintons and playing ball with the party. He has to know this or he's a fool, and a damned fool if he wants to have a real future in first tier national politics in the future. Somehow, Clinton and Obama have to put it together, and how Obama handles his role. He may not need Rezko now, but he'll be all the better off if he leaned how to do the deal right.

pccostello -

Are the sins one commits for personal enrichment more serious than ones committed for other reasons? Is the Rose Law Firm records misdeed okay because she wasn't aiming for personal enrichment but merely trying to cover her ass? Your absolute refusal to acknowledge that HRC is extremely damaged goods morally and ethically is simply stunning. How can you dismiss this woman's history (or her sleazy tactics in this campaign, for that matter)? There is more evidence than can be enumerated in this single post that she is dishonorable and morally flawed.

Good Lord, what decent woman with her means stays with that whoredog of a husband? Either she has been motivated to stay by her political ambitions or she is incredibly weak (the "Oh, but she loves him" argument just doesn't hold water with me).

I will say it again - the Republicans will mess her up in the GE. She has provided them with too many ways to rip her apart. To think otherwise is flat-out denial.

btw, having read the DKos story cited above, www.dailykos.com/.../445627, I'm much less convinced the Rezko story will have "legs."

blackton,

The problem with the word "bitch" is not just the dictionary definition. It is the vernacular use of the word. It has been so common to use it as a way of demeaning women just for being women - or for debasing anything feminine - that it carries with it a tone of gender prejudice. You "bitch" something when you screw it up. You don't "bastard" something. The implication being that there is something inherently bad with being female. There isn't really an equivalent word condemning the very nature of being male.

tomeg says:

"No question a Clinton/Obama ticket would overwhelmingly be the preference of Democrats nationally,.."

If that's true, why does Obama lead the popular vote and the delegate count?  I think you are simply wrong!

I think blackton's post over at the Weekend Spin Control thread (about Hillary taking credit for something--a very visibile foreign policy something--she had absolutely no part in is worthy of being reposted here (below), especially as HRC makes her case for both Super Delegates AND Elected Delegates to flip and vote for her.

______________________________________________________________________________

blackton said:

Read this damning take on Clinton lies:

www.telegraph.co.uk/.../main.jhtml

Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.

"I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player."

Mrs Clinton has made Northern Ireland key to her claims of having extensive foreign policy experience, which helped her defeat Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday after she presented herself as being ready to tackle foreign policy crises at 3am.

"I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland," she told CNN on Wednesday. But negotiators from the parties that helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 told The Daily Telegraph that her role was peripheral and that she played no part in the gruelling political talks over the years.

Lord Trimble shared the Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, in 1998. Conall McDevitt, an SDLP negotiator and aide to Mr Hume during the talks, said: "There would have been no contact with her either in person or on the phone. I was with Hume regularly during calls in the months leading up to the Good Friday Agreement when he was taking calls from the White House and they were invariably coming from the president."

______________________________________________________________________________

So to recap:

Hillary tells CNN on Wednesday: "I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland."

But: "I don’t know there was much she [HRC] did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," said Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of Northern Ireland.

And: Negotiators from the parties that helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 told The Daily Telegraph that Hillary Clinton's role was peripheral and that she played no part in the gruelling political talks over the years.

Wow, what a wealth of experience Mrs. Clinton brings to the table!

eweiss

Some good good points made in your argument, unfortunately at the end you make the assumption that Obama supporters started out having something against Hillary Clinton, I did not, and almost no one in America who is a diehard Democrat did either.  She created THE MONSTER, because she's proven herself to be incompetent, incompetent in her ability to choose qualified personnel to run her campaign, and incompetent personally as a politician in the face of real opposition.  

She didn't want to run in 2004 because she knew she would face real competition, and she made the political calculation that the country would be more favorable to her candidacy once they had four more years of George W. Bush. She left this nation and the American people to swing in the wind  when we desperately needed her.   And that is yet another demonstration of her incompetence, as well as a commentary on her moral deficiencies.

Before this campaign, I liked Hillary Clinton, I thought she would make a good president.  But after what I've seen coming from her and those who support her, I cannot in good conscience vote for that woman, because I wouldn't be able to face myself in the mirror.  I don't think I could vote for her even with Obama as her running mate, and if she were Obama's running mate, I would have serious difficulty accepting that, as will much of America, after what she's pulled.  In light of the genuine leadership which Barack Obama offers, Clinton represents the distasteful choices of the past, where we have always had to choose the candidate who was least objectionable.  I'm sick of those kind of choices, I've been making such choices my whole life as a Democrat, and more than anything else I want to put an end to that era of politics, for my sake, the sake of my child, and the sake of my country.

 You paint a pretty picture of Hillary Clinton, but once she put under some real pressure, we've all gotten to see who Hillary Clinton really is, and what I've seen is not acceptable for anyone I would associate with socially, and certainly not the president of my country, my United States of America.  I hate to admit it, but it looks like Republicans were right about her and her husband all along.  The way I see it, and putting my support of Barack Obama aside altogether in my evaluation, Hillary and her husband are dangerously irresponsible people that have not put the best interests of the Democratic Party or this nation ahead of their own personal ambitions.  The way I see it they have no business being anywhere near the seat of power, and I make that assessment on their personal behavior and nothing else.  I don't like it, I wish I could come to another conclusion, but there it is.

I have no fear of John McCain or the Republicans, specifically in this election, but Hillary Clinton and her behavior, which can only be described as inconsistent and unstable, that scares the hell out of me.

chmclean,

You didn't anwer my question. I really don't know what wrongdoing by Clinton you keep referring to. Ken Starr, whom Obama really is emulating, spent upwards of $40 million and found nothing. What "crime" at the Rose Law Firm are you referring to?

Lost billing records? Is that it? Obama not only claims to have lost his billing records for Rezko. He also claims to have lost all of his legislative correpsondance and records. Quoite a feat, since it was all jsut a few years ago that he was in the state legislature.

But I may not know. So tell me what Hillary Clinton has done that is like what Obama has done with Rezko? C'mon. This is a big softball question. Why didn't you answer it the first time?

pcostello, you're dangerously mixing two very different things.  One is the Rezko controversy, that Obama is going to have to answer in some way, even if it's to say, hey, sorry but that's Chicago!  The other thing is the ludicrous suggestion that Obama's campaign is emulating Ken Starr, the erstwhile Pornographer General of the U.S.  Indeed, the very lack of a muscular response by Obama to the Ken Starr slur allied with the wimpish way he immediately caved and cut ties to Samantha Power is worrying.

The best way he could have handled that event was to say, "I apologize for that remark by one of my advisors, it was unjustified and insulting.  So, also, was the remark made by Sen. Clinton's representative about my acting like Ken Starr.  If she is willing to forget the one, I'll forget the other.  Or, if she wants consequences, then I'll expect them too on her side."

The problem in this campaign is not Obama's willingness to go for the rabbit-punch to the gut, but his unwillingness to look squarely at how it's being used against him.

pccostello,

Could you please explain how Obama is like Ken Starr?  Because they are both lawyers?  Because they are both trying to beat a Clinton?  There must be something else.....

epackard and guyminuslife-

Thanks for your contributions, which have been duly recorded (below).

Here is an updated list of the Nominees thus far.

______________________________________________________________________________

THE TNR TALKBACK NATION

MERRY PLANKSTERS AWARD

for

B E S T

P A Y B A C K

for

H I L L A R Y

_____________________________________________________________________________

1. If/when Barack Obama becomes president, he offers Hillary the position of Secretary of State, waits till she resigns from her Senate seat, allows a decent interval, then fires her white, pantsuited ass.

2. Hillary, gamely accepting responsibility for helping elect John McCain to the White House, agrees to go on pay-per-view, naked, with a cigar, knee pads, and a roofied Monica Lewinsky.

3. If payback is a bitch, and one can safely assume that Hillary is a bitch, then Hillary having to be Hillary should be payback enough.

5. During President Obama's first term, HRC is appointed Ambassador to Kazakhstan, where (for a cool 130 million dollar payoff) she can have dinner with that nation's thuggish dictator, call him a great humanitarian, and also do charity work for the miners off whose backs that $130 million came.

6. After her meltdown at the Convention, Hillary, accepting her blue-collar penance, applies to do night shift work at Walmart.

7. During President McCain's first term, Chelsea Clinton enlists in the military and serves in Iraq, while Hillary reconsiders whether maybe, just maybe her Iraq war vote was a mistake.

8. Outside the Convention in Denver (the Mile-High City), Hillary is chased off a cliff by an angry mob of naked superdelegates.

9. Bill Clinton, in an effort to upstage his wife, decides to run for Secretary General of the UN. Hillary, being relegated to wife status once again, visits even more countries and answers yet more phone calls at 3 AM to solve crises that she, as Bill's wife, is suited to handle. And her own superdelegates abandon her in droves.

10. When having tea in each of the 80 countries she visits, Hillary is asked, again and again and again, to bake the cookies.

11. After she loses the Dem nomination, an oddly sympathetic President Bush appoints Hillary Special White House Word Czar, as part of his Southern-as-a-Second-Language campaign, and she is asked to share her time honored techniques for learning how to drop g's, elongate one-syllable words into two, and change one's verbal tics like a chameleon.

12. After she siphons off a majority of pledged and unpledged delegates at the Dem Convention, and after GOP nominee John McCain drops out of the race due to health problems with no viable replacement, Hillary narrowly loses the general election to Uncommitted.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Please submit your own nominations here on this thread.

Crock, good list. Touche, but you should have stopped with Lincoln. You say Obama has the same exact amount of experience as Carter and Coolidge except the former was a governor for four years and Coolidge was a governor for two years and vice president for two more. Same thing with McKinley, four years as chief executive of a major state would seem to trump Obama's four years as a legislator. And I really don't think any presidential scholar is going to argue that Obama's experience is the equal to Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt. That leaves Wilson, Cleveland, Arthur, and Lincoln not exactly a Hall of Fame except for Awesome Abe.

But Lincoln is a really good point. A 150 year old point, but a good one particularly since Obama is from Illinois. That should be a talking point for his surrogates.

Joe ... my submission ...

Hillary becomes the czar for Southern-as-a-Second-Language and is pressed into service to share her time honored techniques for learning how to drop g's and other ways to be a verbal chameleon.

tomeg,

There's a point at which your entire Obama-as-veep scenario flies off into Bizarro World: the point that OBAMA IS LEADING. He would enter any sort of deal-making from the alpha-dog position of strength. HRC is losing - she's the one who ought to be trying to cut a deal to get on as veep. Instead of her current "If I can't be the Dem president, no one can!" strategy. General Sherman was more subtle marching through Georgia. But, then again, we both/all know that the whole thing is diversionary noise, something else from the desperate 'kitchen sink' strategy.

Hey "bud" costello,

Aren't you going to get to HRC's remarkable good fortune investing in cattle futures? You were going to explain how HRC never does anything shady for "personal enrichment." Remember? You've spent so much time and bandwidth distorting the Rezko thing that I think that slipped your mind. (I think, by the way, that all stories about Rezko should run with that lovely photograph of him standing with Bill and Hillary. All three are so smiley-happy in that shot.)

You should also explain how Obama is emulating Ken Starr. That's quite a slur against the senator from Illinois. What's behind it, exactly? I've never heard Obama mention Whitewater. In fact, I've heard him say that Clinton has been unfairly maligned in the past, which I took to mean the Whitewater witch hunt. Why the Ken Starr comparison? Because the Clinton's won't release their tax returns, or explain who donated money for Bill's library? It's a pretty standard campaign move, releasing your tax returns. Why won't she? Is it Ken Starr-like to pose that perfectly legitimate question?

epackard-

I've already included your submission in the Updated List of Nominees (above).

Well Pete, I beg to differ one the relevance of Governor versus Senator: Governor's importance depends largely on a) The constitution and power of the state.  Further, a Senator, unlike a Governor, must deal with Domestic and Foreign Policy.  Governors don't do anything overseas other than make the occasional attempt to dredge up some foreign investment or buck up their National Guard.  Because of the FP dimension, and the iffyness of Gubernatorial power in instances, I'd say they're about equal.  As for experience relative to the Roosevelts, TR had time on the Civil Service Commission, and was Leader of the GOP State Reps in the NY House, but in big positions (even Governor and his Sub-Cabinet job at the Navy), TR didn't have much  big job experience. The big difference for FDR is his 8 yrs as Asst. Sec. of the Navy, up close with the Wilson  Administration, but again, in the big jobs he hadn't been around long.  Coolidge was two years as Veep after being elected Veep, and this was back in the pre-Nixon (as Veep) era when VPs did nothing but preside over the Senate and inquire as to the President's health.  I would definitely say Obama's experience trumps his.   As for the "Hall of Fame": Lincoln is generally 1 or 2 in any rankings, Wilson is usally somewhere between 5-8 at the lowest (Combining an aggressive Progressive agenda with winning WWI and articulating a new vision for American foreign policy that lives to this day) McKinley, Cleveland, and Arthur (remember Civil Service Reform?  He did that) are all above average.  Carter and Coolidge come out lower.  The big thing is that experience seems to be no determining factor in Presidential success or failure.  Great successes (Lincoln, FDR) can have lighter experience and some of our most experienced (Andrew Johnson, Hoover, Nixon) proved to be disasters.  All in all, if you get elected to the job, you're ready to be commander in chief if you put around you smart and talented people like Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR did.  

Also, anyone who wants my list can use it: All it came from was an hour or so of looking around Wikipedia.

Obama is acting like exactly like Ken Starr. It is an apt analogy. He is implying wrongdoing and going fishing without any rationale except his own animosity and self-interest. Sounds like Ken Starr to me. And, BTW, you ignore the fact that she will release her taxes on April 15--a full week before the Pennsylvania primary.

Now for a real issue: Obama has repeatly lied about his land deal with Rezko and refuses to answer straightforward questions about what he did. He repeatedly claimed the land deal was uncoordinated until it became apparent that the lie was too transparent. Now he refuses to why and when he and Rezko toured the proerty together. He also denied that he knew Rezko was under investigation, which was another transparent lie.

Obama is in deep coverup mode about Rezko. His intiail lies will become the subjects of reporters questions as the story continues to mature. Obama is using the Rovian tactic of asking Clinton about her taxes because he himself has been caught in a dirty deal. Clinton has said her taxes will be out on April 15th. Will Obama actually answer any questions about the Rezko land deal by that time?

Perhaps it's not animosity and self-interest, and rather trying to win an election.  Normally speaking, if someone attacks someone else in an electoral context, it's not seen as a basis for litigation for slander.  But  there are lines, depending on what is going on.

I wonder, however, why Clinton would want to fudge the Obama=Muslim thing on tv.  I wonder why the Clinton campaign would arrange for the Canadian government to leak comments with both Democratic campaigns as if they were only to do with Obama.  I wonder why HRC would imagine that the only elections that count are the ones that she wins.

Ken Starr went out of his way to destroy a Democratic president in 1998.  I wonder who is going out of her way to destroy the Democratic chances at winning the presidency in 2008.

"Obama is acting like exactly like Ken Starr. It is an apt analogy. He is implying wrongdoing and going fishing without any rationale except his own animosity and self-interest. Sounds like Ken Starr to me."

By your very own standard, you ARE Ken Starr.

"There's a point at which your entire Obama-as-veep scenario flies off into Bizarro World: the point that OBAMA IS LEADING. He would enter any sort of deal-making from the alpha-dog position of strength."

Bizarro World is practically upon us, then. Some Democrats wouldn't tolerate Clinton at the top. Of those some but not all would abandon the nominee for someone, or something, else. Other Dems would flee if Obama were on top, but not many. If the choice were either Clinton or Obama with an unknown as yet running mate, the argument could (and probably will) be made that Biden or another xyz for veep would be viable at the convention and in the fall, but that #2 wouldn't be much if any help to his/her running mate electorally.

So what is the plan B? For Democrats, overwhelmingly, that will be a combo. What combo, realistically? Easy. Only one is possible, really - this is the core of my argument - it would be Clinton/Obama. Only in Bizarro World could it be Obama/Clinton. Hillary will never, NEVER, not ever seek nor accept #2. If you think that is po