(Not the most important thing, but when you’re down, the second worst thing to do is fudge, embellish, concoct, etc. in an effort to get back up.)
“This is not OK, I thought,” Clinton writes. “It was the second presidential debate, and Donald Trump was looming behind me. Two days before, the world heard him brag about groping women. Now we were on a small stage and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces. It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.”
Clinton continues: “It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching: `Well, what would you do?’ Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly: `Back up, you creep, get away from me! I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.'”
Ah, but she’s tough and
, “biting my tongue, digging my fingernails into a clenched fist, smiling all the while determined to present a composed face to the world”.
And not once could viewers see a hint of Hillary clenching and digging. Or even one of those autonomous body reflex responses to feeling threatened.
When I read that report, it piqued my curiosity. I recall that in her Senate debate with Lazio, as have others.
“We’ll shake on this right now,” Clinton offered as Lazio invaded her personal space. Her body language was familiar to anyone who’s ever tried to escape from an overzealous conversationalist at a party.
…
Lazio made himself look like a lunatic. As she’s shown time and time again, Hillary is most likeable when she’s under attack.
I also seem to recall that in one of the early debates in ’08, Obama got too far into her face. To her benefit and his detriment. Being a quick study, he didn’t repeat that mistake. (Sanders and O’Malley seemed to know better than to go there.)
How could something as graphic and important enough to be included in Clinton’s latest memoir not have garnered attention in real time. Anything that scores a point in a debate as this should have from the still pictures and video gets wide play.
It did draw attention from CNN. Trump looms behind Clinton at the debate.
It was perfect timing to add weight to the then trending “pussygate.” If other news operations were on top of it as CNN was, it wouldn’t have answered the question as to why it quckly dropped by the wayside.
Instead of researching and speculating on that question, I did one of those unpopular things and went back to the source material, the video of her second debate with Trump. It’s a mind-numbing task to watch a debate without sound, but it’s the best way to study the visual with the least amount of distraction. Even then the amount of data available can be overwhelming and much of it calls for an interpretation which often ends up what people fight over. (For that reason, I’ll skip over that part of my observations because I don’t enjoy spats over mostly inconsequential minutia and I’ve learned that here no matter how neutrally I phrase anything about Clinton or Trump, it’s not received as neutral.)
Somehow — too much data, a lapse in attention, or ??? — I found myself nearing the end of the debate video without having seen the moments I was looking for. However, that may have been a plus because halfway through it I recognized that the perspective was often distorted. Not intentionally. It was a function of the stage set, camera angles, and shifts from full screen, close-ups, and split screen presentations. Many became more evident after I constructed a mental map of the debate stage.
It’s round with a large inner circle and a two foot border around it. The podiums and chairs for the two candidates are near what viewers would describe as near the back of the circle. The arrangement beginning from stage right is Trump’s podium, Trump’s chair, a center empty space of six to eight feet, Clinton’s podium and then Clinton’s chair, nearest to stage left. There are several feet from the stage right edge of Trump’s podium and the stage left edge of Clinton’s chair to the boundary of the inner circle.
Directly in front of the candidates and near the inner circle boundary is the moderators’ table. Directly behind the candidates is a blank space (approximately 45 degrees — give or take a few degrees (geometry isn’t my forte)). Then there’s an small audience section (45 degreees?) on both sides and those are followed with a second section of similar size. The first sections are mostly not within the candidates’ line of sight when they turned their heads in that direction; they had to turn their bodies to the left or right to get them in full view.
Draw an imaginary line down the center that’s equidistant from the stage left edge of Trump’s chair and stage right edge of Clinton’s podium and a second line from right to left along the front edge of the furniture plus a foot. Trump on the right and Clinton on the left (a coin flip or a set designer’s little joke?). That gave each candidate less than a quadrant of personal space. (Neither candidate was seen to violate this defined area of personal space.)
The remainder of the stage was treated by one candidate as open to whoever chose to make use of it. The other candidate never crossed that center line from back to front, where the moderators were seated. When not responding to a question, Clinton was mostly stationary and mostly seated and Trump remained standing and frequently moved around in his personal space or a few steps forward from the edge of the furniture.
So, how did Trump invade Clinton’s personal space and physically intimidate her with his size? (Clinton’s allegation.)
He didn’t.
Here’s what happened. At 24:55 minutes in, a man sitting in the first stage right section posed a question. Trump stood directly in front of that section as the question was asked. He responded in less than ten seconds, turned towards the moderators, motioned to Clinton that she could have the floor, and took several steps towards the moderator’s section. Clinton talked while walking stage right and ended up on the same spot that Trump had used moments earlier. Trump walked back to his podium positioned himself in front of it and faced the stage right audience section that was listening to Clinton. He stood there with few body movements as Clinton answered the question.
Stop the video at 27.21 for the fullest stage front camera view of where the two candidates are positioned. Trump is behind Clinton and is several (at least five) feet away from her.
Clinton completes her answer and returns to her chair. Trump takes up the question and moves near the spot that he and Clinton had both used moments earlier.
Stop the video at 28:37. What you see in this image is Trump in the center and Clinton behind and to the right of Trump. From this camera angle they appear to be in close proximity to each other. But they weren’t. Clinton was in her stage left chair and Trump was no further stage right than his stage right podium. Clinton was positioned to look at the stage right audience section, just as Trump had done while she was addressing that section. Stop the video at 29:46 to see a more accurate view of the distance between them at this point. Not close.
At 30:00 Clinton begins to walk back to stage right and Trump moves back closer to his podium. Trump ends up slightly further (a couple of feet) stage left in relation to his podium and chair then he’d been while Clinton first spoke to the stage right audience. He paces a couple of steps left and then right but maintains his new spot (or mark).
At 31:04 he moves his upper body and face towards the moderators. At 31:13 he gestures to the moderators with his right hand. At 31:26, the right hand gesture is enlarged with the extension of his index finger. Clinton stops speaking and begins to walk stage left and Trump begins speaking towards the moderators. Both candidates end up positioned directly in front of their own chairs, facing the moderators, but Trump appears to be further forward than Clinton. Cooper takes the mic at 31:41.
Recap on this segment:
- Clinton walks behind Trump to get to stage right.
- Clinton walks in front of Trump to return to stage left.
- Clinton walks in front of Trump to return to stage right.
- Clinton walks in front of Trump to return to stage left.
After appearing to cede the question to Clinton, Trump had to move to avoid obstructing Clinton’s view of or path towards the stage right audience section. Turning towards the back empty space and moving to a position on or behind his chair would have been preferable. Why did he move towards the moderators?
Stumped I turned the sound on for a clue. In the moments before the question was asked, Trump had been sparring with the moderators. Trump was attentive to the question from stage right and began to address it when Cooper interrupted him and said that Clinton would go first on this one. Both Clinton and Trump were gracious towards each other as to who would take the question first. If Trump sought to intimidate anyone at this point, it was Cooper and not Clinton, but if he did, the absence of any aggressive body posture, quick steps, or gestures is non-confirming. The video doesn’t include an image of Trump’s face at that point when he turned to return to his defined space. Therefore, no indication that he was surprised to see that Clinton crossed the center line to address this question from stage right.
For all the stage right audience questions, Clinton placed herself stage right in front of the stage right sections.
Later when the stage left audience sections asked questions, Trump responded from a stage right position. As if the imaginary center line between the right and left halves of the stage was a boundary he wasn’t permitted to cross. (Wouldn’t get all Freudian about this.) I don’t know what to make of this, but he did not take advantage of the opportunity to get very close to Clinton’s defined personal space.
One last note. Trump’s hand gestures toward the moderators as Clinton was speaking. He did this frequently throughout the debate. So, in one area he did do debate prep. And it was effective.
Related Note: An NYU professor staged a gender reversal reenactment of several segments of the actual Clinton/Trump second debate (Without the circular stage set that distorted visual perceptions.) The results were surprising.
I was not in the country at the time and did not watch any of the debates closely. The polling says she won the debate by about 55-35. I don’t get why she would point to that moment.
It doesn’t look to me like Trump is doing something particularly creepy. The shot is a little creepy, but they are both wandering around the stage.
The polling before the first debate shows a close race. The cumulative effect of the debates netted her about 6 points. The debates is not where her campaign went wrong.
This advantage unwound in a very similar way to the 2012 race in which Romney closed a gap that on election day turned out to be identical to the pre-debate gap.
@katereadsbks on twitter is essentially reading the book and post parts of it.
My favorite from the book was this:
There is a pretty good exchange with her and Ezra Klein at vox (sorry if this is thread jacking)
I watched the first debate live. Unlike his first GOP primary debate where I could see that he scored points, he was dreadful. Figured that snippets from the second and third would be good enough because he wasn’t going to improve much. What I overlooked is that Clinton gets a little worse, or more stale in repeating her lines, with each debate. Pence, OTOH, deftly handled Kaine. (Such a pity because Pence is a religious nutcase.)
In the search for excuses, this one looked good for the following reasons: 1) fits with the Trump as the menacing, threatening misogynist narrative 2) looks threatening in the still photo and 3) CNN had reported on that moment in real time. All she/her team had to do was fill in a fictional memory of her experience and thoughts during those moments. Only a highly skilled public performer (which Clinton isn’t) would have had any physical or mental consciousness of what someone a good five feet away from them was doing while the performer was focused on engaging with an audience. Had she acted on the impulse that she claims to have had at the time — turn around and say, back off creep — the broadcast would have immediately gone to full screen and her words would have appeared bizarre.
Don’t know if she/her team researched that moment or did so and thought she could get away with another fudge. (Reading through some of the Podesta emails, it seems clear enough that being honest with Clinton was avoided or massaged into non-nutritious mush.)
I’m sure lots of things happened on 9/8 that were totally unrelated to polling reports published that day. What happened in the prior six days to 9/8 that led to a drop in her poll numbers? Or was it just random sampling errors? Why no drop after her 9/11 faint?
If others want to discuss “What Happened” in this thread, I’m fine with that. There’s too much in it that I find offensive, nasty, etc. for me to put together an unbiased and objective diary on it. Sore losers reveal much of their character that can usually be hidden. One positive thing that can be said for McCain is that he wasn’t a sore loser in ’00 (when he had good reason to be sore) or ’08 (when he was a gracious loser).
The strangely fictional recollection of the debate, the griping and moaning about Bernie — so far this book tour is off to a great start. It may end up a best seller, but it is not likely to improve her popularity numbers.
As for McCain in 2000, I don’t recall feeling bad that he lost out to the entitled frat boy, as the media’s hero had gone over to the dark side on the confederate flag issue in SC as I recall. And after Junior dispatched him in that decisive primary, McCain went into full suck-up mode to Bush. Sickening.
In 08 I don’t recall any such suck up to the racists moments, and he did show signs of rare Republican Decency in that town hall with the racist woman who called Obama an A-rab. Good loser in that one, and good on him too for not allowing Palin to give an attention grabbing speech on Election Night.
But intra-party that’s being a good loser.
Agree that McCain was decent in chastising the woman for calling Obama an Arab. But I was thinking more about his concession speech (and that he denied Palin the platform to speak) and that he didn’t go on an excuse making/blaming tour.
I went back and looked – the only thing I could see that caused the race to close was a story about the Clinton Foundation.
I think in retrospect the natural state of the race was very close. Clinton got a bounce out of the convention, but it bled away in late August. In general the bounce out of the second convention lasts until either an event or the first debate. But it did not in this race.
I suspect in many ways Clinton was like an incumbent. The race was always likely to break against her late. I thought of course the opposite: that the undecided were young, and would break to Clinton.
Based on the tweets from kate of the book, Clinton says:
The list of policy differences between Clinton and Sanders is a mile long. But it goes back to something I wrote here when I was at the convention:
This is pretty interesting. It’s a lesson I think some of the politicians are learning as well.
Wonk driven solutions are too complicated to be politically useful.
The conventions were early — July instead of August (or September as the RNC was in 2004 and 2008 and DNC in 2012). Priebus or someone at the RNC was smart to go with that mid-July date.
The other aspect of the 2016 election that made it different from recent elections is that both candidates were near 100% name recognition almost out of the starting gate. Thus, the very early polling — back when HRC as viewed as a shoo-in for the nomination and Trump was viewed as a long-shot for the nomination — revealed more than usual. Aug/early Sep 2015 she didn’t have much of a lead over the guy.
Doubt her poll drop was due to an article about the CF. A month is just about the amount of time it takes the public to fully consider new information that’s been dropped on them. So, my guess is that it reflected the fact that the DNC/team Clinton had rigged the nomination. Voters didn’t take kindly to that in ’68 either, but in both instances it ended up being a minor factor.
As I said in another one of our conversations, I don’t think the popularity of a sitting POTUS in an open seat election carries much weight. The campaign gave the electorate time to consider Clinton’s SoS tenure and it wasn’t a winner for her.
The nervousness among Clinton’s delegates that you saw reflected something they “knew” but suppressed and that was that Clinton was a weak candidate. Some of that is evident in the Podesta-Tanden email exchanges which was surprising to me because Tanden was publicly a strident advocate for Clinton.
“Means tested” public policies are best used very sparingly. “Everybody in/equal for all” broadens the potential base support and in the long run makes for a more robust system. OTOH, it’s often politically difficult to pass. That’s why so much of the early stages of the New Deal legislation excluded POC and those on the lowest income levels. Correcting the early exclusions took much too long. One reason that I have respect for LBJ was that he rejected any Medicare exclusions. Medicare beneficiaries and providers could either accept no discrimination or no Medicare dollars. They adjusted to the no discrimination quickly enough.
Somebody close to Clinton should have, after reading the manuscript of her screed, said, “It’s very good. Now stick it in a drawer for a year and then revisit it.”
With a few fairly rare exceptions — strong economy, success at waging a popular war abroad — incumbency party affiliation is probably a much stronger factor in the situation where the incumbent has become unpopular. And in the positive sense, it should be asked if the popularity of the incumbent is more due to personal approval or the incumbent’s job performance. In the case of Obama, his popularity had more to do with personal liking than policy approval — especially at the WWC level — and so Hillary, running for his 3d term, didn’t have a lot of incumbency momentum to take advantage of.
I’ve seen a counter to that take, from the historian at the SSA, who in a lengthy article argues that it didn’t have anything to do with race and the Southern Dems but difficulty of administering by the SSA and IRS (pre-computer age and pre-automatic payroll deduction system). Interesting that 3/4 of the 20m working people excluded were white (no question though, most working blacks were excluded). Farm owners and small businesses — white mostly — also excluded. Interesting too that many people, including low-income workers of all races, were reluctant to have their wages deducted now for some goat-promised benefit, what they considered only a Maybe, years in the future.
Well, except for all the excluded under age 65. Could Medicare for All have passed back then, with a 2-1 Dem majority and liberals now with the upper hand in Congress? Hard to say, and I suspect it was never seriously considered. But our side had serious momentum going for it after the landslide 64 election and much bold legislation was possible, as events would prove.
Link to SSA article.
In being concise, I phrased that poorly. I was only considering the condition of a net favorable for an incumbent. At the extreme, high net favorable, there may be carryover into the open seat election, but I’m hard-pressed to come up with an example to cite. Ike probably had the highest approval rating for an outgoing POTUS and that may have been why Nixon did so well. (Fascinating that Nixon only carried CA by 0.55%.)
A key to differentiate between personal popularity and policy approval is the prior midterms. Democrats added 49 House seats and 12 Senate seats to their majorities in ’58.
On the net unfavorable end is GWB. And yet McCain and the idiot still got 45% of the popular vote. LBJ was barely in net positive territory by election day ’68 (net negative earlier that year and in ’67), and the popular vote difference between HHH and Nixon was only 0.7%.
Then there’s Bill Clinton — with his 2000 (up to election day) approval rating between 55 and 64% and disapproval rating between 32 and 40%. Not much different from the year before when he was impeached. Was he or his policies actually that popular? Not popular enough to take back the House and Senate in ’98 (and his policies were dreadful but wouldn’t kick in for a few years). I suspect those numbers reflect pocketbook satisfaction because it was too easy for GWB to tag Gore with Clinton’s unsavory behaviors.
Thanks for the SSA explanation. Darn, that’s what I get for trusting people to accurately report an important historical bit. Still, it avoided a push back from low wage employers, including domestics.
Could LBJ have gotten Medicare for all in ’65? No. The trends argued that it wasn’t necessary. By 1959, 69.1% of those under 65 had hospital insurance and 64.4 had surgical insurance and it had been increasing for the prior fifteen years and was expected to continue increasing. For seniors (a growing population), the numbers were 46.1% and 37.1% and it was zero for the poorest. (Aggregate coverage rate 67.1%) Public insurance coverage for those two groups could be seen as a way to reduce the financial burden on public and charity care hospitals and clinics. In the aggregate that (along with further increases by employers) got the insured rate up to 80.8% by 1968 and 79.3% for those under 65.
Then it flatlined over the next fifteen years before beginning its decline for those under 65 which by 2007 had declined down to 67% and at the same time the percentage with Medicaid had increased.
Two things weren’t anticipated: 1) public insurance would fuel increased and higher cost private healthcare facilities and 2) the range of services and drugs would dramatically increase. Public hospitals and clinics have been decimated (and formerly private sector charity facilities became mid to high priced). And perhaps the flawed notion that bigger pools of insureds would reduce the loss ratios and leave more left over to divvy up among the executives and stockholders.
Employers and government have been monkeying around with health insurance alternatives to reduce the financial burden on themselves and those insured for thirty years and every damn fix has at best been no more than a short-term pressure valve release and have mostly created new problems.
LBJ, always thinking politics and poll numbers, undoubtedly knew that by withdrawing from the race in 68 in March, he would become more popular. Then the beginning of the Paris Peace Talks probably helped him. It’s why, by the time of the Dem convention in August, he wanted to get back in. But his loyal people at the convention told him the delegate count didn’t look good. Who knows, given his character, it might have been his plan all along to get out, get a boost in popularity, then get back in at the right time — especially as he didn’t think much of the prospective Dem nominee, his VP Hubert Humphrey.
But HHH was saddled by Lyndon’s War — very unpopular, one of the Lichtman keys to winning another term — and wasn’t personally strong enough to completely disentangle himself from it. (HHH was against going into VN, per a 5-page memo he sent to LBJ in early 65, as escalation was about to unfold. Johnson never forgave him.)
SSA article: surprise for me too. He cites a number of lesser known historians and analysts all of whom line up with the recent revisionist interpretation about racism playing a major role. I thought he made a persuasive case that the reality is quite different.
Medicare for All in ’65: Still might have been interesting to see how such a bill would have fared in the heavily Dem House. If passed by a fair margin, then the senate, and maybe some trimming. Would have been a very bold stroke for sure, but a compromise to add younger age groups over time might have been a possibility. Never know, it wasn’t tried.
Medicare/Medicaid was the medicine required for not going with Truman’s national health proposal in ’48 (the UK did).
By ’65, it wasn’t younger workers that were uninsured but low wage workers predominately in open shop states. Unions, that were still strong enough by then, weren’t about to give up one their major bargaining tools — health insurance.
On ’68 — LBJ didn’t have the time and space to reconcile his personal “this” or “that.” So, he just sort of went all over the place hoping to land on a sweet spot.
LBJ should have listened to HHH in ’65 and MLK, Jr in ’67. (Maybe he did listen to McNamara on his way out the door 2/68 and after being instrumental in getting LBJ into the debacle.)
By election day, I think many of the anti-war voters had figured out that given a choice between HHH and Nixon, HHH as the better bet. What would those ten million between the ages of 18 to 20 have done if they could have voted? May have flipped a state or two but as later Nixon’s team calculated that they were no threat, maybe not have changed a thing.
MLK actually began speaking out re VN in the early months of 1965, in remarks to the press, then a few months later in a speech where he called for a negotiated settlement. But he got pushback from his own SCLC, and decided not to risk his relationship w/Johnson on CR and so went quiet for the rest of that year and into 1966.
McNamara: Under both Kennedy and Johnson, he felt his role was mostly to help implement the president’s policy, not influence its making, unless the prez called upon him for advice. In 1961 under JFK, he was hawkish leaning on VN, feeling we needed to do more. But by the end of the year, when Kennedy’s skeptical position became clearer, he put aside his personal views and went into loyal implementer of presidential policy mode and ended up by 63 helping to lay the foundation from a Pentagon perspective for a complete withdrawal. It was either McN or press secy Pierre Salinger who announced in Oct 63 the president’s policy of withdrawal of military advisers beginning in Dec with 1000 troops to leave.
Under LBJ, it was clear — especially from this WH tape in Feb 1964, featured in the extras in the film Fog of War — that Johnson was calling the shots and laying down the law to McNamara, that he knew of Kennedy’s withdrawal policy, and was preparing to reverse it. In fact, Johnson can clearly be heard criticizing Kennedy’s announced decision to withdraw, calling it psychologically harmful.
Johnson now was entering the phase of PR where the public would hear no more from the WH about the withdrawal policy and be gradually conditioned to accept the need for greater US military involvement (while also privately preparing for an event to occur over there justifying further involvement — what became the GoT). McN, always concerned about loyalty to the president he was serving, went along at the expense of moral and ethical concerns as for instance helping to mislead the public about the GoT mostly fake attack, and generally thereafter painting a too-rosy picture of the VN situation to the public.
In 1967, he had to have been involved in important ways in furthering the false flag attack scenario re the USS Liberty in the Mediterranean, and definitely played a major role in its coverup, which lasted for decades. But also extremely unlikely he was doing anything other than implementing a presidential order, the goal of which is still a bit of a puzzle*. As I recall, his discussion of the GoT phony attack in his memoirs was very limited and misleading by omission, and his comments, if any, on the Liberty even more so. So, McNamara was no liberal saint by any stretch, but more of a good loyal soldier carrying out orders from above, some of which, early in his tenure, were right for this country and all concerned, and others later which, if uncovered and properly investigated, could have landed him and his superior in prison.
As to McN about to leave the admin, I doubt if Johnson was much swayed by listening to McN, who might even have been fired by LBJ (i.e., told to take a different post elsewhere). LBJ was apparently far more impressed by a group of so-called Wise Men — older Establishment types, among them Dean Acheson, no antiwar hippies in the bunch — brought in at the suggestion of LBJ’s new SecDef Click Clarrford, who concluded that it would probably be best to stop escalating and trying to win militarily as the costs to our country would be too great.
As to the 68 election, some reasons why, other than his own too little/too late slight distancing from LBJ on VN, HHH failed to win: 1) the Paris Peace Talks stalled, due in no small part to Nixon’s interference behind the scenes; 2) Suddenly Wimpy Lyndon Johnson’s failure to call out this treason publicly, 3) the horrendous Dem convention and police riot and HHH’s failure to side with the antiwar protesters, 4) Gene McCarthy’s failure to endorse his fellow Minnesotan until just a few days before the election, causing many of his antiwar backers not to show up for Hubert; 5) the inability of HHH and Dems to call out Nixon for refusing to debate and their inability to make Nixon pay a political price for same.
* re the USS Liberty: I know an author who’s still researching her book on the subject, but who has suggested that it all involved a Johnson re-election false flag scheme to whip up his Jewish/liberal support by blaming the attack on Egypt, not the Israelis, causing us to massively attack Cairo. The plan was that the Liberty crew would all be killed, creating a huge causus belli for Americans to demand or justify a retaliatory attack. Unlike VN, this would be a “clean” “good” war where Lyndon would have no choice but to administer payback. That’s my understanding of the author’s theory anyway.
Sorry for the long post. I blame it on the fact that Ken Burns’ gets 18 hours to tell his (probably muddled, bothsiderist, nobody’s right) story about VN. I’m just taking my humble 15 minutes.
“Fog of War” so infuriated me that I haven’t bothered to go back and watch it again. McN wasn’t some innocent doing what was assigned to him. However, he was only one of the “best and brightest” and LBJ was always insecure about having only attended and having worked his way through a state college. A shame really because it’s the Ivies (plus Chicago, Stanford) that produce CIA nutters like Dulles, Meyer, and Angleton and nutters in general such as Bork, Scalia, and Thomas.
’68 was a mess in so many ways that it causes me to laugh at those that say 2016 was the most horrible ever.
Big leap from the cover-up of the bombing of the USS Liberty to a claim that it was a false flag to aid LBJ’s reelection. First, it happened June ’67 – too far from when the election cycle would begin. Second, Israel wouldn’t have paid restitution for a joint US-Israel false flag.
Well Johnson probably felt insecure socially, especially at the Kennedy era parties with all the “Harvards” in attendance presumably dazzling other party goers with their wit and wisdom and probably making joking comments about the rube Lyndon, but in terms of governing, decision making, LBJ felt far less insecure. And when he became president, he didn’t hesitate to fire some of them (the suddenly wavering Mac Bundy probably) albeit not face-to-face.
I never bought Johnson’s woe-is-me Nixonian attitude about not having attended an elite college. Just another cheap way for him to win sympathy points, and to persuade adversarial others to underestimate his abilities.
Also never believed in the “best and the brightest” argument, at least as enunciated by D Halberstam. Again I refer people to the Feb 1964 WH tape with lowly state college grad Lyndon interrupting and dictating terms to his loyal Berkeley grad aide McN. Johnson clearly was in charge of policy — the others learned to step lively in following his orders or risk getting canned for disloyalty.
Finally on the Liberty, best to leave too many more comments until when the book appears (hopefully in the next year — author told me she’s taken far longer than expected in the research phase). On the restitution, Israel, clearly in a junior position in 67, would have been told it’s a small price to pay for our destroying Egypt’s ability to wage war against you. And it would have been more than compensated after the next installment of US foreign aid, and wasn’t a huge restitution amount anyway, as I dimly recall. As to the timing, my speculation is that Johnson might have been thinking, two suspicious and unusual causus belli events in 4 yrs, both during an election year, would look a little too suspicious, so 1967 would have to do, and it wasn’t that far removed from Nov 68. But this is all my fwiw meager speculation from someone who’s not an expert in this area.
What’s with all the “probably.” That gang mocked LBJ — heavy handed and not subtle.
LBJ was sure-footed on domestic policy. FP reliant on the “best and brightest.” Not an excuse for LBJ’s horrendous decisions; just understanding the entire matrix. None of them are entitled to a pass.
Emotionally, LBJ was too small a man in many ways. As are many (most?) in DC. As was HHH. And Nixon. Not as small as Trump or GWB, but that’s a really low bar.
Some sell their soul to achieve temporary ownership of the Oval Office (or a dedicated seat in it) and some never had a soul to sell in the first place.
History is what it is and while we should all appreciate setting the record straight when it was distorted in real time, but I have no patience with those that engage in historical revisionism based on incorrect facts and over-reading/mis-reading unclear and contradictory source material to advance personal animosities, inflate the “goodness” and wipe out the “badness” of a person they admire by the subject him or herself, etc.
(Why the hell are we arguing about a man that had virtually no political power after he left office 1/69 and died a few years later? (Sillier is arguing over what JFK could have, might have, done if he hadn’t died. “Could have” and “might have” always contains a certain amount of hagiography.) Nixon expanded that war after peace negotiations were in process. Almost half of the US soldiers that died in that “big mistake,” did so after 1/69 and it’s likely that more than half of SE Asian casualties date from the period after 1/69.)
wth is Ken Burns doing interviewing Donald Gregg in his VN series? What did Gregg — who now admits it was a mistake — do in that war? He sure didn’t pay a price for Iran-Contra.
None of them have or do. The just get laundered into respectability after completing their stints doing very bad things. I’m not that forgiving. Not for the war criminals or economic destroyers or those that claim either as their BFFs.
Reliant only in a political sense: Johnson, largely because of his rigid cold warrior mindset, an unthinking simplistic proponent of the ridiculous Domino Theory in a manner common to many Texans of his time, had a fairly clear idea of what he intended to do in VN — not lose the war, not become the first president to lose a war, maybe achieve some war hero status previously lacking if things went well, also help his political benefactors in TX become rich. It was just a matter of filling in the details of how to achieve that. The “best and the brightest” and the generals were mere tools towards those ends.
HIs fancy advisers were there primarily as political cover — as invited leftovers from the Kennedy admin, they gave Johnson added intraparty bipartisan cred and a plausible way to argue that in Nam he was just continuing the liberal Kennedy’s policies, even as he knew this was false.
And actually that “b and b” political cover has been used repeatedly over the years to excuse Johnson’s own horrendous policy decisions about that war — the lowly state college grad supposedly forced by circumstances to follow the bum advice from those overeducated fancy Kennedy Harvard Boys. Poor Lyndon, a mere small-school grad from the boonies of TX. The buck doesn’t stop here, but over there with them fancy lads.
As for history, as has been said before, it’s an argument without end, ideally constantly being re-evaluated and re-written as new facts emerge. And no doubt for most who read history and follow current events and hold strong opinions, it’s unlikely they will come to an important subject without holding strong biases and preferences. Especially so with such a controversial figure as LBJ, the man responsible for so many unnecessary deaths and for nearly tearing this country apart.
Re JFK, I try to stick to the known facts, and much has been uncovered (previously classified or misplaced docs) since the early 90s. Could have/might have was the old orthodoxy. There’s plenty of evidence now to revise that uncertainty assessment and put Kennedy squarely in the unconditional withdrawal category. But those who are strongly biased against him will bitterly resist this reading.
Finally on Johnson, he was the bully president before Trump, and also like Trump not very sophisticated in his policy thinking, especially FP. Both seemed to get a personal boost out of using American military might against far weaker opponents. Both didn’t read and both were overly concerned about public approval versus principle and doing the right thing. For both personal loyalty was of paramount concern, and so a strong preference for surrounding themselves with Yes men.
Yet you seem so forgiving with Lyndon.
But, no, we are unlikely to agree on much wrt LBJ, so this will probably be one of my last posts on this subject here. Meanwhile I need to get caught up on the Burns doc.
Comment from that linked Intercept thread:
Add Robert Gates to that very recent/current bipartisan swamp that get to continuously hang around as VIPs.
The election of 1968 was the most volatile in modern history. I have no personal memory of it: but HHH made up 10 points in 9 days near the end. As late as the end of September HHH was down 15.
I offer no opinion one way or another regarding JFK and LBJ and Vietnam. In his book on ’68 White compares RFK’s and Nixon’s positions on Vietnam and argues the difference was more rhetorical than real. White was an establishment guy so take it for what it is worth.
I saw the documentary the Fog of War and on overnight flight shortly before the Iraq War. McNamara comes across as a tortured soul.
In his book on the 60’s Todd Gitlan describes taking part in a protest the day after the election in teh Bay area. He noted that not one speaker even mentioned the election.
I don’t know that Americans today are tough enough to endure all of what happened in ’68.
Up until ’68, the NH primary was inconsequential — often joked about. It was held on March 12th, and LBJ won it but only with 49%. At that point, McCarthy was in a position not dissimilar to Sanders when Sanders entered the 2016 race. One difference was that a high percentage of McCarthy’s support was from people not yet old enough to vote. On the 16th, RFF withdrew his support for LBJ and entered the race. March 31, LBJ withdrew and the VP, HHH entered it.
April 4, MLK, Jr. assassinated.
Only fifteen states held primary elections in ’68. HHH didn’t run in any of them. RFJ’s entry was resented by those McCarthy and those that had worked hard to get him through NH. It was a unique twist in modern politics. Imagine if Sanders had challenged Obama in ’12 and almost beat him in IA and NH and then Hillary jumped in an appropriated Sanders’ critique and half the DP officials jumped on her bandwagon, many with the rationale that Sanders can’t win the general election and Clinton can. (McCarthy won the April 30 MA primary.) That’s what it was like.
June 4 – CA primary – RFK 46% and McCarthy 42%.
June 5 – RFK shot and June 6 RFK died.
How much unity would have developed by the time of the DNC convention had RFK lived can’t even be speculated on because there were simply too many variables in play. But anti-war and McCarthy supporters were very angry that democracy was being trashed for the nomination. Daley and his goons threw gasoline on the glowing embers and the media reported it straight enough.
It took the better part of sixty days for the passions, anger, hurt to be set aside and face the choice HHH or Nixon. (Discounting the south that Wallace swept, it appears that Wallace hurt HHH in a number of states, but not possible to calculate if it was enough to change the outcome.)
iirc HHH was bitter (albeit without a blame book and tour) and his bitterness didn’t serve him or the party. The good HHH, the man Democrats and liberals cast their ’68 votes for (and if I’d have been old enough would have also done), was not so much in evidence after that.
wrt McNamara, I saw a man trying the rationalize away his contribution to a human right disaster almost forty years after the fact. He lived long and well and doubt he lost any sleep over Vietnam in all those decades. Okay — maybe he lost a few more winks than Kissinger who has lost none.
As Johnson once boasted, “I’ve got Hubert’s pecker in my pocket.” Well if not quite that, at least one testicle as of 1968. He was in a tough bind — disengage too much from Lyndon’s War, and he risked LBJ quietly taking action against him behind the scenes to harm him politically. Resign the VPcy and run from a more seeming independent position, and Johnson would have considered that the ultimate act of betrayal, with dire consequences to follow. And HHH knew Johnson still had influence over important elements in the pro-war wing of the party.
Re McN, see my further comments in response to fladem. Also to his credit, in his final years he worked to sound the alarm about the urgent need to reduce nuclear arms. For sure, a partial makeup endeavor that he figured probably would help him sleep better at night in his last years. Kissinger, and other realpolitik/hardcore neocons/crazy warmongering generals like LeMay and Lemnitzer — unlike McN, they never showed any sense of humanity or regret for thousands/millions of innocent lives lost because of their actions.
Pardon my interruption your hate all things LBJ moments, but LBJ halted the bombing of N. Vietnam at the end of March and
We now know of the October ’68 interference by team Nixon, but Thieu had been recalcitrant from the beginning; so, entirely possible that the interference began much earlier. The mole, Kissinger, had been regularly feeding reports to Thieu and Nixon (through John Mitchell).
Lyndon began his disengagement from his war shortly after opting out of the ’68 election. So, HHH wasn’t in much of a bind on this issue.
Yes, good that he finally did something different and it led to peace talks, but at least a couple of partial, temporary bombing halts in 68 — hardly enough disengagement from the overall warmaking to call it a major disengagement in the sense of reversing his policy. And even in his withdrawal announcement, he also announced he would be sending thousands more troops over there. Some disengagement. And mixed signals sent to the public, not that his withdrawal from the race statement didn’t get 95% of the media coverage.
So I don’t think a temporary partial bombing halt adequately solved Hubert’s dilemma, and the war albatross continued to hurt his polling, thus his need to at least moderately distance himself with his Sept 30 news making speech in SLC, which Johnson was not happy about but which began Hubert’s comeback from far behind.
How much did that grudging admission cost you?
If one doesn’t factor in the bios and times of those that made the post-WWII US military decisions, they end up looking no different than those that subsequently replicated “mistakes.” Those that came later had the advantage of history to guide them and they ignored it. Thus, there are no excuses for Nixon (Kissinger etal.) and GWB and all the similarly ignorant people in the country.
If Teddy White said that, he was barely scratching the surface. RFK had gone on the senate floor in 65 essentially calling for a bombing halt, iirc, and also a negotiated settlement, much to the great annoyance of hypersensitive Lyndon, who just continued to massively escalate. RFK learned — given the extremely toxic relationship between the two — that it might actually be counterproductive for him to be too vocal too often in his antiwar stance as it caused Bobby-hating Lyndon to do just the opposite. Yet often enough he did speak out, consistently calling for a diplomatic solution.
I think RFK nailed it on the money on his reading of Lyndon.
And who knew what previously pro-war Nixon, now in 68 running on a Secret Plan to End the War, was going to do. Would it have meant a further massive troop escalation to end the war, accompanied by even more massive bombing up north, hitting their major ports and population centers — no holds barred? White didn’t know, nor did anyone else, so to equate the two candidates’ positions — one far more known and antiwar and the other a mystery — is ridiculous.
TW — pretty good popular historian, definitely a good writer, not always so sharp in the analysis part.
It’s been said more than once that if the election had been held 10-14 days later, Hubert would have won, such was his late in the game momentum.
Definitely one of my major takeaways from that film. The way director Errol Morris has things set up, the interviewee is not looking at the questioner (Morris is probably deliberately hidden behind the scenes, only his voice heard) and is forced to answer by looking directly into the camera, a sort of mirror reflecting back himself. I seem to recall Morris stating he found that method the best way to get subjects to loosen up, look into themselves and reveal the truth and the emotion.
McN comes off not, as I mentioned above, as a saint or innocent (he did acknowledge what he and Gen LeMay did in carpetbombing Japan, killing however many thousands of Japanese civilians, probably was a major war crime) but as a real human being, someone who knew full well what he had done or participated in, and who was feeling some guilt. Not sufficiently brave enough to acknowledge everything fully, but at least he showed some signs of humanity with his partial disclosure. Contrast with LeMay and Kissinger.
The other takeaway was the very interesting WH tape I cited above from early 1964. Thank goodness for dvd’s and their extras section. Not likely however to make it into Burns’ 18 hours — it’s too damning an indictment against Lyndon, too clear that someone previously in power was right, and someone now in power was wrong. But we’ll soon see….
TW’s point was that no one was for a unilateral withdrawal and no one was for expanding the war. In the end everyone’s position depended on the North being willing to negotiate.
HHH tied Nixon the weekend before the election. TW speculates that a controversy over a proposed bombing halt actually swung the race back to Nixon at the end. This is also why the alleged back channel from Nixon to the South was so important as it may have played a role in the South’s bargaining position.
’68 was a defining year in American politics. It was where the gap between labor and liberals was opened on race and the war – a breach arguably not healed today. It was the year the southern racists left the Party (though this started in ’64).
I agree completely on McN – it was pretty clear he was bothered. People don’t admit mistakes (see Clinton’s book) – but he was willing to examine his – which is not something most people do not have the strength to do.
Will try to remember to look up the old TW book in the library. But as you know he’s hardly the only source for what happened that election year.
RFK, as I understand it, sort of implied in his Feb 8, 1968 and subsequent VN remarks that he would be in favor of a unilateral withdrawal w/no conditions –a position he’d previously rejected publicly– by failing to include language in 68 remarks specifically rejecting that approach. In private, he was explicitly in favor of unilateral withdrawal — he talked to some about getting out w/n 6 months if elected. Some inner circle and reporter friends were aware of this. TW apparently wasn’t on Bobby’s list of reporter friends.
No doubt too, Bobby was aware of what a political hot button it was to come out in favor of unilateral withdrawal — too easily caricatured back then as “cut and run”. He joked privately that he favored cutting and running. But he didn’t deem it politically wise to openly articulate that, and probably for good reason. The public already perceived he held an antiwar position.
Strength of character is revealed in these moments. McN had at least some measurable amount if not quite as much as we would prefer. Weaker, petty people, those with small consciences find it hard to admit mistakes. Nixon and Kissinger come to mind.
Johnson too. Did he ever admit fault with his VN War and the disastrous outcome? In his memoirs perhaps? Not to my knowledge — no admission of error. In his post-presidency sit down with Walter Cronkite? Not any major personal admissions of fault over Nam that I am aware of (though I haven’t seen clips of that interview in many yrs). Probably more of his highly personal type of blame-shifting regrets — that not enough of his fancy advisers were loyal to him, like Dean Rusk, while the traitors gave him lousy advice.
How about the days-long sit downs and bed-ins with young author Doris Kearns (later DK Goodwin)? Again, just more griping about being surrounded too much by a certain disloyal faction. And Bobby Kennedy sniping at him in public. Lots of self-pity as I recall.
I think LBJ had some self-pity that his accomplishments were recognized.
Now, 50 years, later they seem immense. Larger than the mistake that was Vietnam.
But I haven’t read the Caro books on LBJ – I can’t claim to be an expert on him.
Johnson was always nervously concerned about his place in history — to the point of obsession — following the very popular JFK, whose achievements if anything have been underestimated and misunderstood, imo, by too many mainstream green-eyeshade bean-counter historians. (Both Jack and Jackie also expressed dismay at the state of establishment historians in that era, Jackie thinking them small-minded and narrow, Jack wondering at one time whether a biographer was writing about the same person he had met and knew years before.)
However, there’s been considerable rosy revisionism about Lyndon in the last couple decades, much too far imo in the direction of over-crediting (similar to how Truman’s place in history was revised dramatically upward in the decades after his death; ditto Ronald Reagan. Is George W. Bush next for canonization?).
For instance I’ve always felt any reasonably competent and mostly sober Dem president politically this side of the Dixiecrats would have sought to pass JFK’s CR bill, which passed after a long filibuster and with a great deal of mostly uncredited assistance from some skilled and clever legislators, namely Mike Mansfield and HHH, who were the ones most responsible. (LBJ’s idea was to stick with the traditional committee route, which would not have been successful had not Mansfield stepped in.) No president succeeding JFK under those tragic circumstances could do other than aggressively seek to pass Kennedy’s most important unfinished legislation. Especially a president from TX who still was viewed suspiciously by many in the country, probably including members of Congress.
Then following the 64 landslide, with a nearly 2-1 Dem majority in Congress, liberals in charge finally, was Johnson going to start a war with his liberal wing (he was already being viewed suspiciously about the sudden escalation in VN) by not going for the VR bill and other legislation on the liberal agenda? Would any Dem president in 1965 have done differently and would the outcomes for each bill have been different? Very unlikely. But some of the usual writers of official history almost want to make a place for him on Mt Rushmore. My take is that on those bills, he did his job and what was expected of him, as the RW had just been badly defeated and a period of liberal governance seemed about to begin. He struck while the iron was hot. A liberal advantage like that hadn’t been seen in 30 yrs. Doesn’t take a genius to do that.
As for Caro, he isn’t the only one whose written extensively about Lyndon, just the one who’s written the most. He’s been accused of overly praising him in one paragraph then suddenly in the next he jumps to shining a harsh light on a very dark corner of Lyndon’s political past, then back to fulsome praise — good-evil-good-evil …. Caro is a highly skilled writer of history but also ultimately a mainstreamer who isn’t interested in rocking the boat too much (or learned not to after his first volume). Still hasn’t covered LBJ and VN in full yet, nor most of his presidency and 1968. Will we all live long enough to see him complete his project?
I think it comes down to the extent to which you attribute the passage of Civil Rights and the Great Society to Johnson’s undeniable ability to put together congressional majorities.
I remember reading FDR liked Johnson. I think Johnson came from the generation that thought that you became great by enacting great progressive legislation.
Would that we had more of him.
One can compare Johnson to Obama. In the longer view Obama will be criticized for not taking advantage of the majority he had. You cannot make the same argument against Johnson.
The 1964 CR bill passed primarily because of Mansfield’s superior legislating skill — yes I said that — compared to LBJ. Then Humphrey helped tremendously working some wavering senators while both he and Mansfield buttered up Dirksen. Imo, Johnson’s unduly high rep as a great legislative genius came largely from his illicit procurement of huge amounts of cash which he used as great leverage against his congressional colleagues.
FDR – Johnson: the record shows Johnson the sycophantic young congressman trying very hard to ingratiate himself with the popular FDR. It was wise for a politician, and oh so advantageous come election time, to be in the Democratic camp, if one were a Southerner. Less ideology for Johnson than pure politics. And what better, and more obvious, political move to make for a young Dem extremely ambitious pol than to suck up mightily to the very popular prez? Otherwise, generally Johnson was from the corporate conservative wing of the party. His primary financial backers, the Brown & Root founders, were a primary concern of his to keep happy and they hardly held liberal views, especially on union matters and taxation of corps.
(Caro covers in extensive detail the many instances of Johnson, from at least his college yrs, polishing the apple for those at the top in order to make his way quickly up the ladder.)
Re LBJ, Obama: A bit unfair to the latter, who “enjoyed” only a very brief and slight party (not ideological) majority, quite unlike Johnson who had a working progressive majority to enact legislation after the 64 election.
Further note on the 64 CR bill: the evidence is clear that Johnson didn’t actually want to get too out front on that one as its champion. That’s because he feared it might not pass, and didn’t want to have a major legislative defeat against his name so early in his presidency. So he left it largely to leader Mansfield and HHH to do the heavy lifting and be the public face for the bill.
He surely reckoned that if it passed, he Johnson would automatically get all or at least the lion’s share of the credit. If it didn’t, he would get all the blame.
Forgot to mention RFK’s strong public role in trying to get the 64 bill passed. Again, Johnson actually preferred this, as insurance in case the bill failed, but if it prevailed, he knew he would get nearly all the credit.
Now I recall what incensed me about “Fog of War” (in addition to the fact that McN’s mea culpa was thirty odd years too late), his “we didn’t understand that it was a civil war.” BS (and there was plenty of quality material available by at least 1968 to understand the real situation) and after over thirty years to study and think about the matter. Unbelievably lame.
wrt Ken Burns’ VN — when Newsweek calls it out for historical omissions that completely distort the subsequent history, Vietnam War: New Ken Burns Documentary Dismisses the Origins of the Futile, Disastrous Conflict, it’s a giant clue that Burns got it wrong.
Well, civil war or maybe more accurately anti-colonialist insurgency, I suspect what McN was getting at was the lack of quality expert advice from other quarters of govt such as State, people who knew SE Asia, had worked and lived there. I recall reading that during the long dark McCarthy period of the 50s, the State Dept experienced a serious depletion in its Asia/SE Asia expert ranks.
Late it was, but McN’s partial mea culpas were still better than nothing.
Newsweek piece is a bit unexpected and unusually critical for the MSM. I was misinformed last night by my local cable tv guide, so missed the first part, only caught the last half as they began the Kennedy years. It looks like Burns is going to kinda hammer Kennedy, then, probably, maintain he left an uncertain policy over there to his successor. As I’ve stated earlier, the docs released in past 25 yrs seriously undercut that narrative. Interesting too to read that Hanoi doesn’t seem to find his film does much to heal war wounds.
I’ll try to suck it up and watch a few hours, but have little enthusiasm for wading through too many melancholy story-telling hours as Burns overlooks the truth for a safe feel-good presentation worthy of his corporate sponsors.
McN said “civil war.” A debate where one person modifies or rejects what was said or written in favor of what she/her prefers to believe was really in the mind of the speaker is rather pointless. Historical records are, of course, always incomplete, but that’s no reason to distort what does exist with what you want to believe existed.
wrt your claim that LBJ was exceptionally concerned with his legacy, doesn’t seem to me anymore so than that of most presidents since Ike. JFK wasn’t in office long enough to determine that for him, but right up there with LBJ IMO would be Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama. The Bushes were too privileged to consider that their legacies would be other than exceptional. On domestic policy, LBJ’s legacy is superior compared to the rest.
On domestic policy LBJ was the second greatest president of the 20th century. I guess an argument can be made he was the second greatest president on domestic politics from 1870 to now.
His achievements may be accidents. But no one else but FDR really comes close.
No accident that he chose his economic team and Frances Perkins, who he had to beg to move to DC and accept the Dept of Labor cabinet post. (First woman cabinet member.)
As long as we don’t consider in that category his role in heightened domestic surveillance of war dissenters, including antiwar types in the media, via his friend Edgar Hoover at the FBI and also military intel.
Otherwise, I know what you’re saying, but no other president in the 20th C enjoyed such a partisan congressional advantage. If as head coach I come to the Super Bowl with twice the number of players as the opponent and twice the talent, and we win, does the coach deserve to be singled out as the major difference in the game and nominated for a place in Canton?
Belichick has had Brady for over 15 years. With him he has won 5 Super Bowels.
Without him he was a losing head coach.
Belichick is going to Canton.
It was not a foregone conclusion that the ’64 majority would produce Medicare, Medicaid and the War on Poverty.
Clinton had a solid majority for one Congress – he failed on HCR and his major accomplishments were NAFTA and the ’93 Budget Act.
Obama did better, and his majority was not as large as LBJ’s. But Obama failed on global warming, blew the size of the stimulus package, and Obamacare while an achievement was a disaster politically.
LBJ did blow the Fortas nomination, which cost the Democrats a Supreme Court Appointment.
Again, LBJ enjoyed a working liberal majority in Congress, for at least 3 years; neither Clinton nor Obama, dealing with conservative majority congresses, had such an overwhelming advantage.
Prior to the 64 election, powerful congressman Wilbur Mills, as good a reader of the House as any, told Johnson, who wanted a weak Medicare bill passed to show voters before the election, to hold off, that he could get much better in a new congress. He was of course right, and the normally stingy Mills was then able to turn Lyndon’s thin layer of cake of 1964 into a triple-layer cake in 1965. Not a foregone conclusion? In the liberal ascendancy atmosphere of the time, with the conservative right weakened, discredited and on the defensive, bold liberal legislation was inevitable; they had the votes, they just needed not to show up stumbling drunk and screw up.
Johnson on Fortas didn’t just cost Dems a SupCt position: since CJ Earl Warren had announced his retirement earlier in 68, LBJ’s plan was to elevate the already sitting Fortas into Warren’s CJ spot, then add another crony, Judge Homer Thornberry from TX to replace Fortas as associate justice. A bold twofer. But Repubs on the committee in an election year were not eager to help move things along and liked their chances of winning in the fall, and so the inevitable damaging info about Fortas was produced. As a result the nom stalled and it was left to Nixon to replace Warren with Burger.
Johnson also deceptively maneuvered to remove one of the Court’s best liberals and best legal minds — a Kennedy appointee from 1962 — when in 65 he asked sitting Justice Arthur Goldberg to move over to become the US ambassador at the UN, allegedly on a tantalizing private promise by Johnson that he would name AG as the country’s first Jewish VP in the 1968 race. In reality, it was just a ruse so LBJ could put his long-time crony Abe Fortas on the bench. And of course 68 didn’t happen for LBJ. A double screwing for Fortas and a huge loss for liberal jurisprudence on the Court.
That’s two Court seats lost because of Johnson. Some political genius.
As for Bell Billacheck, his teams are more than just Tim Bardy at QB — the Ps have consistently been one of the best teams in the league on defense and special teams. That’s because of Billacheck’s undoubted abilities as coach, not Bardy’s ability to stand in the pocket untouched and throw accurately. Billacheck is also known for his uncanny ability to get the absolute upmost from his players, even the middling ones, versus lesser teams whose coaches may actually have as much talent overall. So Bell is doing far more than just riding Bardy’s coattails.
But enough with the football analogies for now. I’ll be watching a little less this year and in part to see whether those knuckleheads on the field have learned not to go crashing into each other with their helmets.
utmost. ut ut …
Say what??? I was only referencing the civil war vs anti-colonialist insurgency distinction noted in the very Newsweek piece you cited. No distortion intended, as you and McN seemed to consider it a cw.
As to legacy, no, as was usual with the outsized figure Johnson, he was overly concerned only more so than other presidents. See also: Ambition-presidential, Politician-machiavellian, etc. And perhaps, not only because he was following a very popular president (unlike Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Obama), but because he was fearful of what historians might later uncover in the dirty deeds category.
McN and other apologists for the Vietnam War consider it a civil war. I don’t and never did; hence my disgust with McN in “Fog of War.”
For a summary primer on VN, see Stanley Karnow’s The Vietnam debacle. The revisionists who believe that the war was just — and winnable — are rewriting a history they don’t understand. Note that Karnow was there as a reporter before JFK and LBJ were president. This was published after McN’s faux apologia book (which was before it was turned into “Fog of War.”
Also note:
The FP continuity from one administration to another (often punctuated by increased or new FP adventures by an administration) since the end of WWII confounds the US public and leads to denials by partisans that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Seems an odd thing — calling it a cw — to so violently object to when it’s really only a way of more accurately describing what was going on there. Sure better than the War of Communist Aggression. In any case, using the cw term was fairly commonly used in the immediate post-war decades, including or especially among VN War doves.
I think you object to Morris’ outstanding doc because he actually succeeded in getting McN to fess up, at least in part, and because he got McN to show some human emotion and regret, which goes against your cartoon narrative of McN the unrepentant cold-blooded warmonger who failed to take full responsibility for the debacle.
I think you might save your ire for someone like Lyndon Johnson, who never admitted wrongdoing nor showed any comparable regret over the thousands/millions of lives unnecessarily lost, and who seemed to hint that he was poorly counseled by the liberal Harvards. Or at least that blame-shifting is what his admirers try to sell the public to this day.
Karnow: still stuck (as of 2000) in the old Establishment paradigm about Kennedy and his VN policy, which were superseded post-1990 with the release of long-suppressed govt docs. Also more insider memoirs came out in the 90s and after, confirming JFK’s withdrawal plan as policy, not conjecture. Apparently Stanley isn’t quite up to speed (if he’s still around?) or chooses, like the priests with Galileo, not to look. He produced his film and book — early 80s — and so has a strong professional investment in his conclusions, now become hardened beliefs, and generally it’s hard to shake a person’s core beliefs nor get him to admit he was wrong.
Further re JFK, he might at one time have expressed a “belief” in the DT, but only for public political purposes. At the time — 50s especially — it was the dominant theory, and those who dissented got grief as communist appeasers. Karnow probably is guilty of failing to understand the political game, taking public quotes and making rather too much of them. We know LBJ believed in that simplistic theory as he was using it in private to justify not withdrawing. See, e.g., his chat on the phone in Fog of War with McN (Mar 64?) where he repeatedly worries about dominoes falling. No such private recording of Kennedy invoking the DT favorably that I’m aware of. But a purely political quote is too tempting for the likes of Karnow to not run with.
Actually the record shows JFK tried to stop all that, the cold war (post-Missile Crisis), the US military’s pax americana attitude, the backing of RW military dictatorships in Latin America, the colonialist attitude. And the record shows that when LBJ took over, all that was reversed, back to status quo auntie of US belligerence and world policeman/commie hunters.
Further re McN: I recall he’s heard on the phone late in 65 trying to express his lack of enthusiasm to Johnson about sending in more troops as a solution to a stalemated situation. But LBJ jumps in and clearly wants to direct the conversation towards how many not whether. If I’m correct, this would jibe with McN’s previous statement in his memoirs where he contends he began doubting the wisdom of the escalation policy as of late 65. But loyal soldier that he was, he decided to stay on, until fired in 67.
Re Nixon: he might have been the first major US pol to publicly express a preference for sending in US troops. That was in April 1954.
Not only not accurate but historically inaccurate. IOW bs PR.
In “Fog of War” McN was only advancing the fictional excuse that the laid out in his book.
Was it a “civil war” when Ho and his armed supporters fought against the Japanese occupier. Was it a civil war when the French returned (with US support) to reclaim their colony? Nobody uses the term “civil war” to describe either of those period of armed conflict. And it’s similarly inappropriate to describe the twenty year period after France exited.
I said more accurate as compared to usual terms of the time, roughly War of Communist Aggression. Never said it was the right term, as I suggested above (citing your Newsweek cite) another term was still more accurate. But note that as the cw term began to be used (this is my recollection of the post-war skeptical period of VN analysis), that term at least implied an attitude of “this is their war, we should have stayed out and let them settle it”.
If I get time, I suspect I could cite a number of instances where good antiwar people used the cw term routinely.
We were talking past each other on cw term, as I had (not entirely unreasonably) taken your initial comment about McN using the cw as your meaning it took him 30 yrs to finally embrace the proper description, which I thought u concurred with.
The Fog of War is not just about McN fessing up somewhat and expressing regret somewhat, for all to see. It’s also about bringing to the public some important decision points in the war, the Oct 2, 1963 Kennedy decision to formally announce a withdrawal policy, and the several LBJ WH tapes w/McN and Bundy clearly showing Johnson in charge of driving policy, and the muddled thinking process he brought to bear. Those things in addition to showing clearly some of McN’s morally dubious actions assisting warmonger Gen LeMay as the two engineered the carpet bombing of Japanese cities. Just brutally direct. Far more civilians killed than by the 2 atomic bombs.
Despite your harsh carping, on rather thin grounds, Fog of War was and remains a landmark documentary on war making and VN. More relevant facts and harsh truth and honesty in its 90 minutes than we’re likely to see in 18 hrs of Ken Burns’ bothsiderist revisionism.
Thanks for that link.
I believe someone here noted that she sounded like she had voice coaching. Appears to be right.
I did but I’m sure others have as well. The problem with her natural voice is that it’s flat and lacks rhythm and modulation. The speech coaches over the decades and the linguist have helped her. Slowed her down when excited (which is when she used to screech) and given her more range on loudness settings. But I suspect that she’s literally tone-deaf; a serious handicap for vocal coaching/instruction.
No question a bit flat and all the rest, but not quite in off-putting territory as I see it. And the speaking voice turned out to be the least of her problems.
Most folks would have not noticed, or tolerated the voice and some other personal matters, if she had been a lot progressively bolder in her DP proposals and a lot less hawkish in the FP dept, and if she had been so positioned well before the campaign got underway.
I will leave it to some of you to buy and read her book. I already have enough negative things I’ve committed to slog through, such as the new Ken Burns doc coming up this weekend.
Smoothing out what people once described as her cackles and the screeches took it out of that off-putting territory.
Agree. Yet, it’s still a voice that doesn’t draw people in and has a ring of inauthenticity. Neither assets for an actor or politician.
I watched the second debate live, with a large group at Drinking Liberally. Many members of the group noticed and reacted to Trump’s “stalking” behavior. It was a subject of conversation for quite some time after that. Saturday Night Live did a parody of the second debate in the cold open. http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/donald-trump-vs-hillary-clinton-town-hall-debate-cold-o
pen/3116438?snl=1. An exaggerated version of Trump’s coming up behind Hillary and looming over her begins around 4.30 on the SNL video I linked to. My experience of living through the debate and its aftermath is that many viewers saw exactly what Hillary describes in her book. I do wish she had called him on it then and there.
Take it that you didn’t compare my analysis with the source material.
She couldn’t have called him on it because what viewers saw was a perceptual distortion and not what Clinton experienced on that stage. As I pointed out in the above comment, even if she had prepped for such a call out moment and had someone in the audience that she could see to prompt her to go now, a cut to the camera in front of the stage would have revealed that Trump wasn’t close to her or in “her space.”
Yes, I did view the sections of the video that you cited and compared it to your analysis. I noticed that you left out a lot of the context. I realize you watched it with the sounds off, but not only Trump’s ugly statements to the moderators, his interrupting but also his facial expressions and gestures were plainly an effort to be threatening and distract the audience from Clinton’s statements by standing behind her and glowering at the audience and into the camera. He knew what he was doing. (And when has Trump ever not tried to be physically intimidating? See Katy Tur’s recent account.) You exaggerate how far behind Clinton Trump was standing. I understand that research shows that one’s safe personal space varies with the tension in the environment, and Trump was certainly doing all he could to create tension. His body language showed that he was projecting every negative and hostile emotion he could. Regardless of that, I can’t remember ever watching another debate in which the opposing party stood right behind the party whose turn it was to speak and made faces at the audiencee. Clinton sat down when she wasn’t speaking.
And … gracious? You’ve gotta be kidding. It is strange to see, on a progressive blog, an account that seeks to normalize a particularly ugly performance by Trump in that debate.
This is exactly the sort of argument that I didn’t want to engage in. You’re reading your biases into Trump’s words, facial expressions, and gestures. (ie ” His body language showed that he was projecting every negative and hostile emotion he could.” that’s your projection or interpretation with no citation of standard physical measures of those internal states.) So, what if he and HRC sparred and he sparred with the moderators? HRC has sparred with all of her debate opponents and usually she dishes out more than she receives.
What you call Trump’s glowering is his normal and formal “serious face.” Exactly the same expression used by honor guards when on duty. Suggests that Trump adopted it when he was at that military academy. I’ve only encountered it once in my life — a colleague and for a short period of time my boss. While I didn’t find it threatening, neither was it attractive. But it was an automatic facial expression for him whenever he was serious. Later he revealed (and unlike Trump) that his draft lottery number had been 011. He did his time as a WH honor guard (and decades later still had nightmares about that time).
Hillary made an accusation in her book about a few minutes in the second debate. Those are the only minutes in the debate relevant to her accusation and this diary. With one exception, dragging whatever else you saw or heard or thought you saw or heard or interpreted from the other minutes in the debate aren’t relevant to this diary. That exception was comparing both Clinton’s and Trump’s physical composure and body movements during those minutes with theirs in the other parts of the debate.
As I said in the diary, Clinton was stationary, mostly on her chair, except for when she addressed questions from stage right. She chose to plant herself near Trump’s podium when she did so. Where was Trump supposed to go? He had been using his podium the way Clinton had been using her chair. It was his designated personal space. In the first sequence (the one that is the basis for Clinton’s allegation), Trump was more stationary as she talked than at almost any other time in the debate. Did she perceive that he’d taken a position five feet behind her as she was talking? Who knows. He didn’t take even one more step towards her or gesticulate and as she doesn’t have eyes in the back of her head, he could have stuck out his tongue at her and she would have been none the wiser. (Technically, his facial expression didn’t change in that segment.)
Now go near the end of the debate when stage left audience questions were posed. Clinton got off her chair and moved stage left to address the question. Same thing Trump had done when he addressed questions from stage right. When Clinton completed her answer and it was Trump’s turn for the same question, she returned to her chair. Trump could have planted himself as far stage left as she had been (they both used nearly the same spot or mark when answering stage right questions) and that would have put him in closer physical proximity to Clinton than they had been during her time stage right. And if he had done so, you’d have to junk, “I can’t remember ever watching another debate in which the opposing party stood right behind the party whose turn it was to speak…” because it would have happened twice except Clinton would have been seated behind Trump. He chose not to do that and addressed stage left questions from stage right. (If he’d wanted to be a real asshole, he could have appropriated her stage left speaking spot (as she had appropriated his stage right speaking spot) and blocked her view of a good chunk of the stage left audience.)
Just to be clear, I’m not criticizing either candidate for their movements on the stage or the speaking spots they chose when answering a question. And I carefully noted that neither invaded the other candidate’s designated personal space. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that in answering the first stage right question, Clinton wasn’t much outside the boundary of Trump’s space.
Can you read? Trump was under the impression that the first stage right question was for him and he began to answer it. Cooper interrupted him and said that Clinton would go first on the question. What I said about what followed was:
I’ll stand by that. So would anyone not deaf, dumb, and blind if they’d seen and heard those few seconds. How does one go about “normalizing” a normal civil interaction?
You’re wrong. His gestures were a strategy with intent. Not to threaten, but to avoid the difficulty others (Obama and Sanders come to mind) have had in debating her. Everybody knows that she filibusters and runs way over her time limit and moderators mostly let her get away with it. When Sanders dared to object to this, he lost points. Throughout the debate, Trump watched the clock. As she neared her time limit, he prepared to motion to the moderators. His first gesture towards the mods was when her time was up. When it was ignored (usually) and some seconds later his second gesture was larger and when that was ignored, his third gesture was even larger.
I don’t know (and I’m not about to go through the thing with the sound on to find out) how diligent Cooper and Raddatz were in holding Trump to the time limit. (iirc he was allowed to run over in the early GOP primary debates, but that’s when the MSM was either in pump Trump for the eyeballs and kaching or pump Trump for the nomination mode.) Did his clock watching strategy rattle Clinton? As she’s always managed to blow off time objections from other debate opponents, perhaps it didn’t. But it may have deprived her of those extra seconds that she’s been used to getting.
I’m going to add one other thing. An inability to objectively observe two actors in a video — with the advantage of stopping, rewinding, and replaying — and making the necessary mental corrections to the perceptual distortions of the cameras is depriving yourself of the reality of what took place.
Before Trump entered the 2016 race, I’d never seen or heard him in any capacity on TV or radio. Back in the late eighties when a friend told me that he was reading Trump’s book, I rolled my eyes. He added, “No, it’s really good” to which I said that I still wouldn’t waste my time reading it. That was my bias because few property developers aren’t sleazy, and by then I knew enough about his casino operations (probably from the WSJ) that put him lower than Nevada casino operators and other property developers. The only thing objectively positive I can say about him is that he’s developed a keen huckster marketing skill. As I dislike hucksters (and no their schtick doesn’t work on me), liars, sneaks, thieves, and willful ignorance, my personal opinion of Trump is that he’s a loathsome creature. But hardly in a class of his own in this country.
However, I don’t use special or hypocritical standards when evaluating sleazebags. No need to make up crap to fling at them (that would make me no better than them); they ooze plenty of crap all on their own. Unfortunately far too many people in this country are suckers and it takes them a long time to recognize that they’ve been had. Longer if fake crap, or real but inconsequential to their marks, is flung at the sleazebag. Trump appears to get that. Partisan Democrats and Clinton don’t.
Wonder who she borrowed this bizarre take on “1984” from? She misreads an awful lot for a supposedly smart person.
Really? The comment is about a passage from Ms. Clinton’s book that begins, “Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism.” The rest of the passage derives from that sentence. The claim that “@HillaryClinton thinks the lesson of Orwell’s 1984 is that you should trust experts, leaders and the press” is bizarre and a pretty serious misreading of what Clinton actually wrote.
Suggestion: Read the cited passage; don’t just assume that the Twitter comments about it are sensible.
The Guardian
You should try to be as accurate.
For someone who warns another community member upthread against “…reading your biases into Trump’s words, facial expressions, and gestures”, I’d think you might reconsider your own extreme biases against all things Clinton.
Instead, your reply to Joel here literally refuses his suggestion while simultaneously pretending you’ve taken his suggestion. It’s quite deceptive and insulting from someone who effectively claims to be The Last Honest Frog Ponder.
Instead, we get a diary post which is almost nothing but obsessive claims about non-salient stuff. The hours upon hours it must have taken you to stop-start the video and compose this post…is not the best way to spend your time if you’re trying to bring about a True Progressive Movement during the Trump era. You’re hurting, not helping.
You have your 2.5 community supporters, though. You’re speaking to your base here with posts like this, I will give you that. They love this stuff.
The comment says that the project of authoritarianism is to define reality and cites Stalin and 1984 as examples. It then says that authoritarianism makes you mistrust the established authorities you need to trust. This is indeed what is going on with Trump, but in 1984, and in the Soviet Union for that matter, the established authorities are the authoritarian figures. What you must do is mistrust. It is the established authority that is telling you to see five fingers.
This was interesting to check out the relevant video moments Marie cited, and it does seem to confirm less than stalking by Donald and less than a creeped out reaction from Hillary. She doesn’t even seem to have registered a Rupert Sheldrake being stared at from behind moment.
Not that it was a huge deal at the time or after, as I recall. Lazio’s weird overly aggressive moment clearly got far more attention. And Gore walking over to invade Bush’s space in 2000 — handing Junior some unearned, non substantive debate points, a pre-meditated stunt his advisers strongly warned Gore not to do — definitely was the subject of harsh media discussion for days afterward.
But, I too had been under the impression then that Donald had creeped up much more than the video shows, but apparently that was influenced by camera angle distortion. Had I been in her position, and going on record writing a book that included strong negative recollections about one debate moment, I’d like to think I would have bothered to spend two minutes in the film room reviewing the tape.
Not quite a Bosnia recollection moment, but it still doesn’t exactly add to her credibility.
As I stated in the diary, in the days after this debate, I hadn’t heard about this alleged creepiness from Trump. (Not that he isn’t always a bit creepy but less so than Ted Cruz.) Including it in her book is what prompted me to look at it. (And it ended up being a much larger task than I’d initially expected — had to dust off my old psych lessons in perception.)
She probably did spend two minutes looking at the still shots from that portion of the debate. They are strong evidence that Trump was menacing. However, it requires a deceptive mind to then concoct an internal monologue that transpired in those same moments while also addressing an audience question in a presidential debate. That should have been a big clue that maybe the pictures were lying. But like many VIPs, she surrounds herself with sycophants that even if they intend to, are incapable of having her back (emails between Tanden and Podesta reveal that and apparently Cheryl Mills had advised, and with good reasons, that Clinton not run in ’16).
Yeah, not quite Bosnia, but much of what she does feeds into established negative perceptions of her. Her email server went right into her need not to be transparent. She’ll never disclose (if she could accurately remember at all) the calculation on the server. Who was she protecting them from? (And if she’s half as brilliant as her team claims, she could damn well have managed to keep her public work communications separate from her personal communications.
Here’s the Al Gore cringeworthy moment. GWB is a total doofus, but Gore was too eager and let him get away
Good Grief!
WTH is she talking about? Was she “the progressive” in the 2008 primaries? (That would be a surprise to the left/liberal Democratic Party base.) Or the white woman running against the black man?
Clinton 2008 & 2016 Democratic primaries
OH: 1,259,620 (53.49%) and 696,681 (56.12%)
PA: 1,273,764 (54.59%) and 935,107 (55.61%)
Having captured Obama’s institutional AA base, shouldn’t she have been adding voters to her ’08 tally? Of the much smaller number of those that voted in ’16, she did improve her percentages.
This is what was seen in primary after primary. Clinton’s campaign wasn’t exciting the potential Democratic primary voters enough for a large portion of them to show up. (And yes, I noted it in real time and pointed out that it wasn’t a positive for the Democratic nominee in the general election, and more so for Clinton than Sanders because she was far better known at primary election time.)
MA: 705,185 (56.1%) and 606,822 (49.73)
But WTH does Sanders have to do with Clinton losing OH and PA in the general election? (Obama lost the primary in all three of these states and went on to carry them in the general election.)
The facts don’t seem to get in the way of whatever fiction Clinton wants to sell.
Comparing her percentages in OH and PA as you did is REALLY interesting.
No she makes no sense here.
She blames losing the Michigan primary on her focus on Flint, and suggests as a result there was white backlash.
It is a REALLY strange argument.
She spends a good deal of time arguing the Russians cost her the election. Which makes little sense. Comey? Maybe. The Russians? Well the wikileaks certainly caused problems at the convention, but as I noted the bounce out of Philly was consistent with, and actually better than the typical bounce a candidate gets out of the convention.
I would have thought a Wellesley grad and Yale LS grad, and someone who’d personally been through the Clinton pseudoscandal wars of the 90s would have learned by now to be a little more skeptical of media reports, no matter how often repeated across the media landscape, and also would have thought someone who went to one of the top law schools in the land may have developed a greater appreciation for showing actual evidence as opposed to making unsubstantiated bald assertions, especially when serious charges are being leveled against a major foreign power with WMDs.
I never went to fancy Wellesley or Yale (our family could only afford lowly nearby Whittier College) nor have I ever been the target of dubious public allegations, yet somehow through the years I’ve managed to develop a much keener sense of skepticism about some of our institutions and their ability to disseminate false news in order to whip up hostility to our latest enemy.
Of course the anti-Putin hysteria isn’t just about Hillary but much of the DP these days. Normally intelligent and critical-thinking types have lost their bearings. Dissenters are still in a small minority, and usually under attack from the conformity enforcers. There is a sickening madness taking over the DemPty. Don’t get me started …
So what you say is interesting in a number ways.
At the top of the profession it is all about attention to detail if you are not a litigator (one guess which type I am). So the mistakes that were made were REALLY shocking.
The simple truth is the Clinton campaign was not very thoughtful. It did not understand the environment, and showed no attention to detail.
A lot of what we are seeing is an attempt to resurrect some very damaged reputations. But beyond a narrow group of insiders, the attack on the left is pretty limited.
Very few in the Party want Bernie and his people outside the tent. Bernie himself is enormously popular within the Party.
Booman accused Sanders people of being bitter. But in truth that is not where the real bitterness lies. The real bitterness is within a narrow group of people around the Clintons. They have a voice larger than their actual influence.
The rest of the Party wants to, and is, moving on from Clinton.
Question: right not who is the national face of the Democratic Party? And who wants it?
Bernie is enormously popular with a large slice of the electorate that generally votes Democratic, but within the Party (the movers/shakers/money guys) not so much. The Party wants to appropriate Sanders-speak, but retain neoliberalism and militarism.
Indeed.
I’m enjoying the Jimmy Dore’s and Peter Douch’s pushback of Peter Daou’s “Verrit” (aka Hillary Clinton still walks on water). From the Politico review:
and this:
Will everybody get the allusion is this tweet:
Analyze this (stipulation that Hillary’s report is true):
Actually, yes. Being gracious means making others feel better. And this one would have cost Hillary nothing because:
After the election, where has she been out and about? NY, NYC, CT. So, some random young woman in one of those places who didn’t vote for Clinton wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the election if she had voted for Clinton. Even if she had been active in campaigning for Clinton, odds are slim to none that she would have done so outside of NY, NYC, and CT. If she had had the financial means and time to do so, odds are slim to none that she would have worked for Hillary in MI, PA, or WI and even if she’d somehow gotten to MI, PA, or WI, out of state volunteers aren’t effective and Hillary needed all three of those states and not just one that this random young woman could possibly have effected.
Side note on Douche’s comment — the book written by Hillary’s minister/spiritual adviser was pulled by the publisher due to massive amounts of plagiarism. Is her minister/spiritual advisor as much fair game as Hillary in ’08 made Obama’s minister, Rev Wright?
I believe that had it been known that the election was as close as it was Clinton might have won.
I have no doubt there are some Democrats who did not vote who would have had they known the race was close in MI and WI, and I believe it is more probable than not that she would have won both states.
I am less sure about PA, Florida and NC which were hard fought. But the PA margin was so close I think she would have won there as well.
In the end, as awful a candidate as she was, it really wasn’t a hard choice.
So yea, people who didn’t vote for her should feel bad.
I voted for Hillary in the general but not in the primary, so I am not the greatest supporter of her. But I saw that debate and you can call it some sort of optical illusion but Trump was most definitely threatening. It was ugly, end of story.
Are your first impressions always accurate? And I did not address the debate, only those few moments that Clinton has highlighted in her book. Were the first and third debates in your opinion less ugly? Wouldn’t be difficult to describe the ’15 GOP debates as ugly, particularly for those that favored Bush, Rubio, Walker, Christie.
Would a more objective viewing of the 1984 VP debate lead me to a different assessment? (A good enough question for myself that I’ll put watching it for the second time on my to do list.) My strongest recollection is that I was surprised that GWHB was so ignorant/dumb and that Ferraro basically wiped the floor with him. Was my take on the debate colored by GHWB’s subsequent “kicked a little ass” comment about the debate? Possibly contributing the the level of sexism I thought I saw during the debate? Don’t know.
Was your viewing the the ’16 second debate colored by the release of the Access Hollywood tape that was played for the two days leading up to the debate?
It was difficult to be a feminist in the 70s-80s because women (with some able assist from more enlightened men) had to call out unconscious, creepy behavior and words by men that were like Trump. And there were a lot of such men. Call them out in such a way that they changed their behavior which over time would change their thinking.
Just wondering if you also did a detailed analysis of all the time Hillary Clinton spent lurking behind Donald Trump so as to be clearly visible to the camera (and thus debate watchers).
Did someone accuse Clinton of lurking behind Trump to intimidate him?
I did spend a lot of time going over all the GOP and rightwinger Benghazi allegations. And concluded not only that they had nothing but also that she had done nothing wrong before, during, and after that event.
Generally I don’t waste time looking into rightwing/GOP unsupported allegations at Democrats or either Clinton. It’s all a bunch of BS/propaganda to feed the rabid, irrational anti-liberals when they get hungry. Plus most of it can be dismissed as stupid with a few moments of thought. It’s gutter politics for the lowest common denominator of eligible voters. Believers, not rational, thinking persons. And I judge it harshly regardless of which party engages in it.
What I try not to do — and it’s often very difficult — is give those on the left side of the aisle passes that wouldn’t pass if it came from the right side. But partisans never seem able to smell the stench from their own shit.
because I think this is important and the libDems here brush this sort of thing aside as irrelevant:
Ah, but that was different because those Clinton to McCain voters were free to either vote for the ticket with a nincompoop woman on a ticket or just couldn’t stomach voting for a black man because Obama was expected to win. No such freedom existed for Sanders’ voters because nobody told them that Clinton might not win.
Ungracious is hard to take, but the falsification of history — her own and Bernie’s — is intolerable.
I am OK with the attitude. Losing an election is HARD.
Primaries that precede a lost election linger in really bad ways.
But to lost to Trump. And for the polling to suggest Bernie would have been a better candidate is just adds fuel to the fire.
With this book what she has undermined is how history will perceive her. She isn’t really pointing the way forward and she isn’t trying to heal the divisions in the Party.
In time she will regard this book as a mistake.
There are always losers in presidential elections. A gracious loser scores points. A sore loser — assuming no obvious fraud on the part of the opposition — just makes the loser look smaller than she/he did on election day. Clinton supporters that are okay with or applauding her attitude need to get outside their bubble and recognize how it makes all of them look bad to the majority.
However, as I said, the egregious aspect of her blame everybody else book and tour is her historical revisionism. This is a good review from Borosage at The Nation – Hillary Clinton Tries to Explain `What Happened’
An addition to the Comey, Putin/Russia, BernieBros, etc. list of malefactors that denied Clinton her proper place in history:
“Those self-identified Socialists in Iowa”.
Who knew there were folks in Iowa (of all places) that weren’t as enamored of GOP laissez-faire with some regulations as Clinton is?
I’ll throw this in here from Stepehn Kinzer — America’s slow-motion military coup