Gaining respect for Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney
One sad but salient fact about America’s current standing in the world is that lots of our old allies now dislike our country, and countries that used to mildly dislike us now openly hate us. Our next president had better be used to being hated and attacked and called names, and able to function competently in an international atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion. Hillary Clinton has been repeatedly attacked by right-wing nutjobs, left-wing wackos, and every single candidate for president in both parties, yet she keeps on keepin’ on. Whether you love Hillary Clinton or hate her and call her names, you’ve got to admit that her ability to withstand hatred is a necessary quality for a post-Bush president, and that she deserves our respect (and possibly our votes) on that basis alone. But another necessary quality for cleaning up the G.W. Bush mess is managerial competence, and this is an area where Mitt Romney is the only shining star in the current constellation of candidates.
Remember how Romney turned around a hopelessly inept (and corrupt) 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics Committee? That was a stunning management feat. He didn’t do badly as Massachusetts governor, either, or as the founder and managing partner of Bain Capital, where he ran (or hired people who ran) an impressive array of well-known companies.
Forget Romney’s religion and political positions for a moment. Think of the president not only as commander in chief of the world’s most potent military force, but also as CEO of our country’s most important “company” — one to which we pay large sums of money every year (in the form of taxes) and from which we expect high level of service in return. Romney is totally qualified to deliver good value for your tax dollars, and deserves your respect (and possibly your vote) for that reason alone.
Now back to Hillary Clinton. Use the search words I hate Hillary on Google and you get links to over 2.5 million pages. Some of them are as strident as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talking about the United States or Israel. Others sound more like North Korea’s crackpot “dear leader” Kim Yong-il.
Wow.
We need a president who can stand up to people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Yong-il and G.W. Bush’s good buddy and fellow torturer, Vladimir Putin.
Sen. McCain stood up to his N. Vietnamese captors, and deserves huge props for that (as well as extra “presidential qualification points” for being a veteran), but in recent years he’s shown a tendency toward irrationally angry responses to personal attacks. Much as I respect McCain, I do not want a president who might suddenly nuke another country because its leader calls him some of the same nasty names our more disgusting “Republicans” use to describe Hillary Clinton. I also don’t want a president who is (or whose core supporters are) comfortable using personal insults to describe a U.S. Senator and former first lady. People who would do that are likely to call Putin or Chinese premier Chang Chun-hsiung or someone else with a large nuclear arsenal a poo-poo head or some other insulting, childish nickname, thereby setting off a worldwide atomic war that would end civilization as we know it.
A hard choice…and some help making it
I am not overly impressed with this year’s crop of presidential wannabes. Huckabee would be a cool choice for some sort of ceremonial entertainment post, since he’s the best guitar player and singer of the bunch. Ron Paul is also suitable for a ceremonial post. If we had a cabinet-level Department of Doomsaying, he’d make a great head for it. But electing Ron Paul as president would be as stupid as hiring a strict vegetarian to run a meat-packing plant or a PETA leader to run a mink coat factory. Edwards is a lawyer who made a bunch of money on class-action suits and by taking 35% and 40% of poor people’s “pain and suffering” judgements. We can get dozens just like him by looking through the Yellow Pages. Bill Richardson seems like a nice guy, but doesn’t really stand out in a crowd. Rudy Giuliani would be a great head for the Department of Post-Distaster Speechifying but is otherwise problematical (corrupt friends, tendency to wear dresses, messed-up personal life, etc.), and as for the rest of the field…. if I can’t remember their names, neither can most other Americans, so they don’t stand a chance.
One cute thing I found online just a few moments ago (isn’t the internet fun?) was a quiz that supposedly helps you find the candidate whose stated positions on high-profile issues most closely match your own. It showed that my best “match” on the Democratic side was Joe Biden, and that my best Republican match was John McCain. It also showed that, based purely on ideology, I should support Ron Paul over Mitt Romney, and Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton.
The thing is, as I age, I find myself increasingly likely to base my personal voting choices less on ideology than on demonstrated competence. Compromise may be a dirty word to many partisan purists, but it is at the heart of the American system of government. Our Declaration of Independence and Constituion were both compromises, the result of protracted negotiations between northerners and southerners, big-state people and small-state people, federalists and states-righters, and so on.
Remember the post-Katrina mess in New Orleans? I’m sure that even the most partisan supporters of both (Democratic) Louisiana (now former) governor Kathleen Blanco and (Republican) U.S. (soon to be former) president George W. Bush were sickened by how poorly these two elected offiicials handled hurricane relief efforts. I was disgusted by both of them, too, and I don’t recall worrying about their positions on stem cell research or homosexual marriage while I watched the way-too-late evacuation of the New Orleans Superdome on TV.
We need a government that, more than anything else, is capable of handling disasters and even — when possible — preventing them.
This is why I make my voting choices the way I do, and why a general election choice between Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney would be a hard one for me to make, while choosing either one of this pair over any of the other (current) potential nominees would not cause me to lose a minute’s worth of sleep, even though I disagree with both of them on many hot-button political issues.
November 4th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Well, just to tip the scales, lets think about what Romney had to say about Clinton in the last debate - that she hasn’t run a state or a city, let alone a corner store. She is not experienced at running things. She is a high profile woman who has certainly done a lot - but she does not have the same kind of leadership experience as Romney. And he’s right that she would be starting out the Presidency as an intern, in a way. At this time in the world, we need someone who is truly qualified to run the largest enterprise in the world - Hillary is not nearly as qualified, and I also don’t like the idea of her acting as President but having to turn to Bill behind closed doors for direction.
November 6th, 2007 at 9:11 am
When you’re president, though, what you need is vision and direction - Hillary would appoint the truly most competent people to her cabinet who could help her accomplish things. You don’t think Bush is smart enough to get anything done, do you? His peeps do it for him. Romney is unelectable in my opinion. We didn’t elect Ross Perot based on his success as a businessman, and we aren’t going to elect Romney on his either.
I think it’s very cool that you’re considering support for Hillary, Robin. I think I will be supporting her also. I just don’t think Barack has what it takes. Besides, there is poetic justice in a Clinton fixing all the damage that was done by the idiot that this country elected to try to “fix” what they thought Bill had done to the “morality” of the country. Because it’s not amoral to go to war for no reason. No way.
November 10th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Wow, if your political ‘reasoning’ is an indication of the thought process of INTELLIGENT people, we are well and truly hosed.
Hillary Clinton hasn’t evinced even the faintest trace of moral integrity. Her entire career in the Senate is pathetic. What distinguishes her from any other sellout? The fact that the media decided she is a ‘front runner’? Horse crap. Think for yourself instead of substituting the tube for a brain Robin.
As for the Republicans EN BLOCK, to a person they disqualify themselves. No human being with even one ounce of moral integrity could possibly sit on that side of the isle. They betrayed us, they lied to us, they either ARE corrupt or they place their own careers ahead of any moral consideration. Future generations will spit on their graves.
What we REQUIRE of the next President of the United States is a person with real actual demonstrated INTEGRITY. We need leadership which respects the law. A person who WILL speak the truth. One who is not afraid to do what needs to be done and isn’t bought and paid for.
Frankly the only major candidate I’ve seen who actually has any claim to that level of integrity is Dennis Kucinich. Maybe he isn’t the man to choose for President, but think about it this way. He certainly has as much claim to proven ability as Clinton. Oh, but of course the TUBE says ‘he’s unelectable’. So we can’t have that… No, we have to have a CELEBRITY President! Another TV President. Yeah, that’s the answer!
Feh!
November 20th, 2007 at 12:43 am
As much as I’d like to see a woman president, I don’t trust Hillary as far as I can throw her.
January 2nd, 2008 at 1:47 am
It is COMPULSORY for all Mormons to accept that the word of their prophet (President of the LDS church) is the word of God. Despite his well-crafted squirming to the contrary, Mitt Romney is obligated to follow his Prophet’s council, or renounce his beliefs. I know this from spending 28 years as a mormon, including 2 as a missionary. The Romney camp has worked hard to spin Mormonism, but Mitt is either a fraud (in terms of his true beliefs) or he believes that God continues to reveal his will for the world, and thereby the American people, through his living Prophet: Gordon B. Hinckley.
February 25th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Romneyhas the tools to solve probelms and not the connections, Clinton is nothing but connecttions with nothing but a personal agenda. Shes just not likeable in any way.