Hillary: When will the Conversation Begin?
Corcord, NH was the site of Hillary’s whistlestop campaign tour to drum up support for her candidacy. As the banner states, her slogan is ‘Let the Conversation Begin’. To the minds of concerned citizens of New Hampshire, they left the forum shaking their heads. From reading the Associated Press article, the ‘conversation’ about the Iraq war authorization was conciliatory and unapologetic at best.
From the Associated Press
Most of the questions were cordial, and Clinton was loudly cheered when she repeated her pledge to end the war if she is elected president next year. But several attendees challenged the New York senator to explain how she could reconcile her sharp criticism of the war with her vote to authorize the original invasion.
“Aren’t you trying to have it both ways?” asked a man in Concord.
Clinton acknowledged “a great deal of frustration and anger and outrage” over the war, and said she was working hard in the Senate to pass legislation capping troop levels in Iraq. She also vowed to try to bring to a vote a resolution disapproving of President Bush’s planned troop increase.
“I’m still in the arena,” she said — an apparent riposte to a Democratic rival, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. Like Clinton, Edwards voted to authorize the invasion, but he has become a staunch war critic since leaving the Senate in 2004.
“It’s very easy to go around and say, ‘Let’s end the war,’” Clinton added. “If we had a Democratic president we would end the war.”
A means to an end. Her comment suggests that if I am elected President the war ‘would end’. Quite frankly, what voters would like to hear is the following:
Roger Tilton, 46, a financial adviser from Nashua, N.H., told Clinton that unless she recanted her vote, he was not in the mood to listen to her other policy ideas.
“I want to know if right here, right now, once and for all and without nuance, you can say that war authorization was a mistake,” Tilton said. “I, and I think a lot of other primary voters — until we hear you say it, we’re not going to hear all the other great things you are saying.”
Can I say Thank You Roger Tildon for having the moral courage and conviction to hold our leaders accountable and make them face the tough questions.
From Edwards to Obama, none of our presidential candidates should get a pass on this pivotal issue. If I was in Hillary’s heels, I would knock this dinger out of the park if asked to respond. However, she takes the reserved calcuated approach…
In response, Clinton repeated her assertion that “knowing what we know now, I would never have voted for it,” and said voters would have to decide for themselves whether her position was acceptable.
“The mistakes were made by this president, who misled this country and this Congress,” Clinton said to loud applause.
These following words rushed to my mind instantly (in no specific order): triangulation, moral courage, tone deaf, and hawkish. You can decide how this correlates to my thoughts of her as a leader at the moment.
I give Hillary credit for one thing: we will all decide if her position is acceptable.
Disclaimer: I support John Edwards for President
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Silence is indeed betrayal. I am amazed by the lack of discourse over Hillary’s comments on the series of tubes
sigh. the one bright side here is that if things go haywire in new hampshire, we’ll have the chance to elect a progressive dem senator.
I never thought it would happen, but the only person who makes me as angry as GW Bush is Hillary Clinton. I supposed I’m partly to blame since I hold Democrats to higher standards than I do Republicans because I know I can’t expect much from Repos.
But lately, it is Hillary who is making me angry enough to throw things at the TV when she is on saying stupid stuff. The tough questions about Iraq bring out “Hypothetical Hillary”. She said it in Iowa and now she said it in New Hampshire….IF she had been President after 9/11, she would not have invaded Iraq. IF she is President in 2009, she will end the war.
But as a Senator she authorized the Bush invasion and today she will not say it was a mistake. Hillary is flip flopping in one long sentence. Maybe because she’s flip flopping at the speed of light, no one notices.
Where is the media spotlight on this issue?
I believe that her public comments on the war are disgraceful. I don’t get where she’s coming from on this at all.
Hypothetically, she could be the best president ever…IF only she would say IF I was President in 2003, I would have ended homelessness, world hunger and war all around the world.
I guess I’m the devil’s advocate on this issue.
I don’t believe the resolution she voted on was a ticket to go to war carte blanche. My understanding has always been that the resolution was to exhaust all possible diplomatic/intelligence efforts before considering going to war, which was based on evidence presented by the administration that Iraq did indeed have WMDs.
I still believe that much of the anger in this country is misdirected. It was Bush who violated the resolution and the Republicans (perhaps the Democrats could have made more of a stink at this point) who allowed him to do so, unchecked.
Gee, Hillary triangulating and using weasel words to try to be all things to all people . . . who would have ever thought it?
By contrast, Edwards admitted that his vote to authorize the war was wrong in a 2005 editorial, by simply saying “I made a mistake.”
People crave consistency and simple honesty from their leaders. How hard is it for Hillary and her legions of handlers to understand this? I’ve consistently voted against Hillary not just because she’s an intellectually dishonest opportunist, but because she’s a stupidly transparent intellectually dishonest opportunist. She’s got all Bill’s ambition, none of his political savvy or charisma.
I’m reluctant to call this “triangulating.” I don’t know what it is and I’m not going to question her motivations. Nor do I care — it simply isn’t acceptable that she waited until this weekend to call what’s happening in Iraq a “civil war” (for example).
I agree with you about the original vote. But she should be more explicit about saying it was a mistake.
She had this to say about the term civil war in September
“We have a full-fledged insurgency and full-blown sectarian conflict in Iraq. I don’t care what you label it  civil war, sectarian violence,†she said on the Senate floor in September.
from the NYT
Yep. I saw this from the talking points memo. I tend to believe that the message is this is Bush’s war, Bush’s failure, we need to get out to fix it. Read the paragraph. I’ve added the bolded
You can read the rest here
The conversation HAS begun - However it is NOT with Hillary, she’s too busy listening to herself to hear what anyone else has to say - The converstaion is with Edwards, who not only listens to what we have to say but cares about what we have to say.