This is getting to be embarassing. I know she’s desperate, but she’s doing her best now to look desperate as well.
Here’s her latest “argument” against the Obama candidacy.
“Speeches don’t put food on the table,” Mrs. Clinton said at a General Motors plant in Warren, Ohio, on Thursday morning. “Speeches don’t fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night.”
“My opponent gives speeches,” she added. “I offer solutions.”
So the implication here is that Hillary has a stellar career of getting results. The problem is that she hasn’t accomplished much. She talks about 35 years of experience, and then tries to claim credit for the acomplishments of her husband’s administration.
Clinton and her supporters claim we must scrutinize Obama’s record, but scutiny of her record leads one to question her competence.
The two most important policy challenges faced by Hillary Clinton are health care and the Iraq War. Her attempt to reform health care in the 1990’s was an unmitigated distaster, plagued by secrecy, bad policy, and an inability to negotiate a good settlement. Bob Dole tried to get a compromise together that looks very similar to the health care plan she is offering now. She rejected it. Americans got nothing.
The health care debacle let to the 1994 Republican revolution, resulting in the loss of the House and the Senate by the Democrats. Thus, she created a policy disaster and a political disaster.
Then, in the Senate, she was faced with the decision of whether to support the Iraq War. Many Democrats and some Republicans had the judgement and the courage to stand up to the Bush administration and the rush to war. Hillary Clinton did not. The result was the biggest foreign policy disaster of our lifetimes.
Now, years later, she has the nerve to claim that she didn’t believe she was authorizing war, but instead was giving Bush the tools he needed to get the inspectors back in. This is pathetic. Everyone with a brain knew that Bush was heading toward war and that this resolution gave him the authority to go to war. Now we have our army stuck in a Muslim country trying to keep peace between groups of people who despise each other for religious and ethnic reasons. Thousands of lives have been lost and hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted.
The facts are simple. Hillary Clinton faced two huge challenges in her career, and she had two opportunities to demonstrate her judgement and competence. In both cases she failed miserably. The price paid by the country for her failures have been huge.
Obama should welcome a debate with Hillary about competence and the ability to deliver.
