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Under the Hammer - 4/24/08
April 24, 2008
They say those who don't know history are destined to repeat it. How can the resume of George Stephanopoulos be history? The man looks like an aging teenager. But it appears the American people have forgotten why he is an ABC info-dude. Stephanopoulos was just another Capital Hill staffer toiling away in obscurity. If you spend any time on Capital Hill you will see hundreds, even thousands of them. The majority are good looking, earnest, hard working, too humorless to be much fun and they come from all over the US to change the world by working in Washington. The hours are incredibly long and the pay is bad. If you don't feel like working the long hours for low pay, there are 10 more just like you standing in line waiting for their chance.
In the 1980s, when I lived on Capitol Hill, I had a housemate who was a CPA with an MBA and then went back to school and got a masters degree in divinity from Yale. He had to work for six months as an unpaid intern before he got a paying job on Capitol Hill.
Like my housemate, Stephanopoulos was just another policy wonk, toiling endless hours on Capitol Hill. He worked for fellow Greek Michael Dukakis when he ran for president, but when that campaign went down in flames it was back to the coal mines on Capitol Hill, until the Clintons reached down into the muck and pulled him up. Stephanopoulos owes his career to the Clintons. He was director of communications and a senior advisor for President Bill Clinton and was one of the architects of Hillary Clinton's health care plan. In Clinton's second term, Stephanopoulos wisely left, wrote the required book for better money than he had ever made and then used his handsome face to get hired on at ABC.
So here you have a fellow who owes everything to the Clintons, and in a crucial debate he asks Hillary Clinton's opponent tough question after tough question while softballs are lobbed at his former boss. What is truly unbelievable about all of this is that more people have not written about Stephanopoulos' relationship to the Clintons. He didn't just work for the Clintons, they made him who he is today. Without the Clintons he is just another pretty face on Capitol Hill, and at this point, a pretty face that is getting some wrinkles.
What I want to read and haven't been able to find anywhere is why Sen. Barack Obama agreed to allow George Stephanopoulos to be one of the questioners. Certainly Obama's handlers knew what was happening. Maybe they decided it would be a good idea to get the attack debate out of the way before the fall. If the debate was going to be fair and Stephanopoulos was going to be one questioner, then Rev. Jeremiah Wright should have been the other. If the Clinton campaign refused to agree to Wright, then the Obama campaign should have insisted that Michelle Obama take his place.
What is just as astounding is that some of the folks writing commentary about the event seemed unable to explain why Stephanopoulos would attack Obama about his lapel pin and other silly stuff.
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Hillary Rodham Clinton has won Pennsylvania, and it appears she has closed the gap on Obama by 13 delegates. But that still leaves her about 126 delegates down. According to our unofficial calculations, at this rate, in the year 2015, Hillary Clinton will have caught Obama.
Hillary Clinton does well in the Rust Belt, in the part of the country where people are leaving just as quickly as they can get the gas money together to get out. These are the people who think they should be paid $50 an hour for sweeping the floor, have six weeks of vacation plus a month of sick leave and a 15 minute coffee break for every hour they work. When the companies they work for have to close up shop because they can't compete in the national market, much less the world market, with the entrenched labor force they have, then the former employees blame everyone in the world except themselves for their job loss.
The news media is making a big point of the fact that Obama outspent Hillary Rodham Clinton almost two to one in Pennsylvania. They state it like that proves that Hillary Clinton is the better candidate. But the only reason Obama spent more money than Hillary Clinton is that he has money and Hillary Clinton does not.
It will be interesting to see if Bill Clinton can twist enough arms to get enough money into Hillary Clinton's coffers to keep her in the race. Of course, Hillary and Bill Clinton have enough money to pay for the campaign for the next couple of weeks out of their own pockets. Are they willing to spend their own money on the slim chance that Hillary will somehow get the nomination?
Hillary Clinton did loan her campaign $5 million earlier in the race, but that was just a loan. The Clintons have made over $100 million in the past eight years. How much of that are they willing to put on the line on a bet that Hillary Rodham Clinton will get the Democratic nomination? Because if she doesn't get the nomination it is all for naught.
North Carolina is the state left with the most delegates up for grabs, and the only question at this point is how big Obama's margin of victory will be.
That means it is a near certainty that Obama is going to go into the convention with more delegates, and he will also go in having received more popular votes. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a strategy, and you can rest assured it isn't to lose. But what is her strategy? For a while it looked like her strategy was to win the nomination with the majority of super delegates, but that doesn't appear any more likely than going to the convention with the majority of regular delegates.
If Obama loses, he takes a little vacation and then starts gearing up for the 2012 race. If Hillary Rodham Clinton loses, after declaring herself the inevitable candidate, she should be off to the barn. There is no reason that Hillary Rodham Clinton couldn't run again in four years, but the Clinton clan always appears on the verge of a complete breakdown or break-up. Does Hillary Rodham Clinton really want to keep her sham marriage alive for another four years? If he isn't going to help her win the White House, does she have any use for Bill Clinton. Or for that matter, if Hillary Rodham Clinton is not going to be president does Bill Clinton have any use for her?
It would change the dynamics of the Hillary for president campaign if it were her ex-husband, ex-President Bill Clinton, out campaigning with some woman younger than Chelsea with big hair sitting on stage smacking gum and laughing at inappropriate times at her boyfriend's remarks.
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It's too bad that former President Jimmy Carter can't be denied entry back into the US. The man has never had much sense about terrorist groups and it appears he hasn't gained any with age. Carter's solution to Americans being kidnapped by terrorists and held in Tehran when he was president was for him to cower in the White House and whine about it. Fortunately the American people got tired of the commander in chief of the most powerful armed forces in the world acting like a kicked puppy and elected Ronald Reagan president.
The Iranians didn't want to mess with Reagan, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the Iranians didn't want Reagan messing with them, and freed the hostages about the same moment Reagan was sworn into office.
Carter is making a fool of himself as an ex-president meeting with the terrorist group Hamas. Carter must realize the credibility it gives to a terrorist organization like Hamas to have an ex-US president do its bidding. Certainly he can't be so dense that he doesn't realize what he's doing.
While Carter is meeting with terrorists, Bill Clinton is selling his ex-president status to the highest bidder. It's too bad there isn't some provision for taking ex-presidents' pensions away if they misbehave.
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The mainstream media is revealing what kind of race is in store for Sen. John McCain. The Los Angeles Times is questioning whether McCain really deserves his military disability, and if he does is he then fit to be president. It is incredible. McCain was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. He broke both his arms and smashed his knee when his plane was shot down, so he wasn't in the best of shape when he was taken prisoner. Imagine having to recover from those kinds of injuries while a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. When McCain was released over five years later, he was on crutches. If anyone deserves a check from the government for the rest of his life it is McCain.
McCain says he can't raise his arms over his head, and his knee hurts when it rains, but it doesn't appear that should stop him from being president.