Let's examine the record: Hillary spectacularly failed at delivering health care, failed to read the intelligence estimates that might have changed her vote on Iraq and (much as I hate to bring up this cheesy soap opera stuff) coudn't even control her marriage. Where the hell does she get off claiming to be a better manager than Barack? Isn't it time for the media to start to blow some holes through this "more experience" myth she's been peddling for the last year?

President as Luca Pacioli.  Feel the excitement!

Hillary's new-found love affair with office management is so tone-deaf that it makes me choke up.

Woman, you're running for president of a country that elected Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush FOUR FREAKIN TIMES. No one thought these guys would be on top of paperwork. They were elected because of their persona.

I used to believe in Hillary's candidacy. As a race horse, she had a couple of things going for her. First, she wouldn't just sit down and get clobbered by another swift-boat campaign. If anything, she'd probably swift-boat the swift-boaters.

Second, she's been in national politics for 15 years, and judging by her senate career, has learned from her old gaffes, her ill-advised public rants, and political miscalculations.

Oops. That last rationale is in the tank. Her campaign has generated one gaffe after another, one miscalculation after another. Starting with her "Iowa won't vote for me because it's sexist" line. It might play if your main opponent weren't, say, a BLACK man. Politically, it was DOA, but luckily it managed to needlessly insult an entire state.

And now, she's running as some sort of wonk-in-chief. Did I miss something, or has she really been living in America for all her life? Americans DO NOT VOTE FOR WONKS!!! It's not what we do. We like a candidate with a  hazy, fuzzy, warm persona. We vote for "likable" candidates.

Does it make sense? Not really. But that's our freakin country.

It doesn't matter how many debates you win. George W. Bush was an atrocious debater, but managed to keep his "neighbor next door" persona. Dick Cheney was an excellent debater, but became the most hated man in American politics.

Which brings me back to one of my old rationales for believing in Hillary's candidacy: her willingness to swift-boat the swift-boaters. George W. Bush could retain his "aw shucks" persona because he couldn't easily be tied to the swift-boaters.

Hillary's "give em hell" image will slowly push her toward Cheney-like public approval ratings. Far from actually giving the Republicans hell, they'll be circling her like the vultures they are.

Micro-manager in Chief.

Huntlib writes: "If anything, she'd [Hillary] probably swift-boat the swift-boaters."

While I agree with your ultimate conclusion about her general unfitness, I have to take exception to your rationale, above. This is EXACTLY what appeals to me about Obama. He's secure and mature enough not to have to "swiftboat" anyone in order to make his own case. Hillary, however, is way too tied to the politic tricks of the past. (And, frankly, she'd be a much more tempting target for a swiftboating than Obama, who is more like Reagan in that he's so far proven to be a Teflon candidate.)

Can we please discuss something that matters instead of letting Hillary control the content of the Plank? How about that Nevada lawsuit?

Bill Clinton lost it today:

www.youtube.com/watch

This just seems like more bad play-calling by the Clinton campaign. Who is in charge of these moves? The polls are close--some give her a small lead. Why give the Obama campaign such an easy and powerful rallying cry?

Nice post ralphnelle! Thanks for the link.  

I said before that Hillary definitely scored a point with her response to Obama's remarks on this issue, but I also think he very deftly took that point away with his great reply:  Well, Bush is very punctual and I'm sure never misplaces a piece of paper!  (Laugh -- one of three he scored that night to the other candidates' none -- that correctly reframed his previous comments as about a *relatively* trivial matter.)  Seriously, though, he went on, Bush's problem wasn't that he relied on people around him (any president must do that), but that he didn't listen to anybody that didn't fit an ideological gameplan.  He was stubborn and his office was an echo chamber.  This is, honestly, one of Obama's main strengths, and it's neither trivial nor fuzzy.  Where the Bush administration gravitated toward an extreme ideology, and shut out opposing viewpoints, an Obama administration would welcome outside viewpoints and take them seriously.  He would try to bring a wide consensus along when moving forward on policy goals.  Some Democrats may be suspicious of this approach, because they're, reasonably enough, very angry about the past 7 years, or more.  But you can't get much of anything we want to get done done without bringing the country along with you.  It's also, dare I say, the right way to look at your job if you're president.  We're not voting for party-hack-in-chief.

Agree, by the way, that Hillary trumpeting this issue sounds increasingly hollow and lame, especially her repeated reference to "managing the economy."  First, the president doesn't really "manage the economy" in a free markets system.  Second, and more importantly, Obama's remark about management style (which was about his office and desk, of course, and not about managing the administration generally) clearly had nothing to do with economic policy or any policy.  She was on firmer (though not very strong) ground when talking about managing the bureaucracy in the debate, but, of course, bureaucracy is not a pretty word and Michigan has taught us that it's the economy stupid again, doncha know.

Anyway, for my part, I respect a messy desk.  My desk is messy.  It's the sign of an active mind.  Bush may have never have lost a piece of paper because he so seldom looks at any!

jhildner: I'm not trying to attack Hillary's paperwork argument per se, since I'm going to vote for whomever the Democratic candidate is in November.

My concern is that it shows that Hillary is tone deaf. She (and her team) thinks she's scoring points against Obama, and she's not.

She's hacking away at every ball that comes into her court, and doesn't seem to care that she's smacking them all into the net.

She is as bad a politician as I have ever seen, with the possible exception of Nixon, but even Nixon was smarter than she is.

Please, please, please nominate her.  BHO would be hard to beat, but HRC is loathed by so many on your side of the aisle, and the indies already hate her.

We should lose, but maybe not, if the nominee is HRC.

huntlib: agree totally

Fine!  She belongs in a room with a lot of papers, doing something or other, and nowhere near a microphone.