Not sure I can agree. I’d say being a top flight lawyer is pretty clearly a more intellectually demanding threshold than scraping by near the bottom of Naval academy, when you are inured from failure by your family name and the conservative nature of the institution. Hillary’s mastery of detail is as good as anyone in modern politics - certainly better than McCain’s.
I don’t think Hillary ran a shockingly bad campaign either. She started with an insular group who didn’t appreciate the true threat of Obama, and by the time she fixed the team Obama had already accumulated a significant lead in the caucuses and started to break away. There was no “fundamentals of the economy are strong” or “I’m suspending my campaign moment” though. Ultimately, she was caught on the wrong side of the electorate’s desire for a true agency of change candidate. I don’t think you can really locate that in her personally, except insofar that her Iraq vote marred her as an authentic progressive.
Does McCain have better character? Well, his concession speech was impressive. Hillary was never so gracious in defeat. Similarly, the McCain of 2000 and the man who once spoke out against “agents of intolerance” is appealing. But what happened to that man during the primaries and the general? He compromised every position and ran to the far right in a centrist election.
So I struggle to see how you can overlook some of these obvious gaps. The so-called torture credit he gets is almost entirely undermined by him exempting the CIA. The cynicism of the Palin pick was astonishing. He was never classy enough to fully repudiate race-baiting from his surrogates and crowds. Indeed, he showed ostentatious outrage that because he had decided he wouldn’t touch Wright, that every other Schmidt smear was somehow fair play above the board. There were really ugly moments in the campaign, and the great concession speech is only the beginning of McCain’s redemption.
I thought he meant change in structure and procedure, not necessarily change in personnel. You can’t make any substantive changes if you’re gonna run everybody out of your administration who has any experience.
I would hardly call a patent infringement and intellectual property lawyer in an Arkansas law firm for which she did little courtroom work being a ‘top flight lawyer’, and I’d hardly think being named the first woman partner in the law firm after her husband had been elected governor to be particularly noteworthy if you want to denigrate people for family connections.
Wiki has this to say about McCain’s training:
*Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, McCain entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. There, he was a friend and informal leader for many of his classmates,[10] and sometimes stood up for targets of bullying.[5] He also became a lightweight boxer.[11] McCain came into conflict with higher-ranking personnel, he did not always obey the rules, and that contributed to a low class rank (894 of 899), despite a high IQ.[10][12] He did well in academic subjects that interested him, such as literature and history, but studied only enough to pass subjects he struggled with, such as mathematics.[5][13] McCain graduated in 1958.[10]
John McCain’s early military career began when he was commissioned an ensign and started two and a half years of training at Pensacola to become a naval aviator.[14] While there, he earned a reputation as a partying man.[7] He completed flight school in 1960, and became a naval pilot of ground-attack aircraft, assigned to A-1 Skyraider squadrons[15] aboard the aircraft carriers USS Intrepid and USS Enterprise[16] in the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas.[17] McCain began as a sub-par flier[17] who was at times careless and reckless;[18] during the early-to-mid 1960s, the planes he was flying crashed twice and once collided with power lines, but he received no major injuries.[18] His aviation skills improved over time,[17] and he was seen as a good pilot, albeit one who tended to “push the envelope” in his flying.[18]*
So he was a somewhat rebellious and hard partying student with a high I.Q. but whose behavior impacted negatively upon his grades. He then went on to become a jet fighter pilot doing the dangerous job of ground support attack pilot and flew 22 successful missions before being shot down, whereupon he showed a toughness, grit and discipline that none of us is ever likely to be called upon to show.
I get tired of this meme that Bush and McCain are dumb and only became pilots because of their daddys’ importance.
Glad I was between sips of coffee when I read that. That was almost as good as Michael Gerson’s “The Decency of George W. Bush” column.
What it has to do is, the same arguments you brought against Hillary for SoS seem to apply in spades to McCain. And yet, you surely supported McCain for President, and the President is the SoS’ boss.
Oh, bullshit. You can do a lot of things that require some basic smarts - in fact, you can do things that require some pretty sophisticated smarts - and still be stupid in very important ways, quite possibly all the ways that count outside that limited area.
It shouldn’t take a Bobby Fischer to figure that out.
Just like McCain’s demonstration of honor and integrity in Vietnam 35-40 years ago doesn’t mean that he’s had a lick of either characteristic since, no credential indicating intelligence in one area demonstrates that you’re smart, period. I don’t wave my Ph.D. in math around and say, “see, I’m smart,” because my having been that smart once in that narrow-band way, doesn’t prove anything now, in some other area of endeavor. I’m only as smart as I am today, and how smart I am might vary greatly depending on just what I’m trying to do.
So yeah, stupid people can fly jet planes, can get doctorates in math, can be world chess champion, and whatever. The fact remains that, in 2008, John McCain was indistinguishable from a person who was not particularly intelligent or knowledgeable with respect to the political issues of the day.
If he was ‘not-stupid,’ he was hiding it quite well.
Yeah, I can see how you might confuse Hillary Clinton with Condaleezza Rice.
Personally, I’d rather see Richardson get the job, just because I like him better and he’s not a shrieking hill beast. But the point here is that Obama represents, among many other things, an end to the days of cronyism in the White House. Here he is, strongly considering giving his highest-ranking cabinet post to a bitter rival. Can you see Bush doing that?
That said, I really don’t understand why such a polarizing and unlikeable figure should be in charge of our diplomacy.
Do Obama and Biden have some beef with Pelosi that I don’t know about?
Emphasis Mine. You probably do it with a little less hard work and dedication if daddy keeps you from being court martialed when you crash five or six planes through sheer ineptitude.
I’m thinking Barney, the First Dog, leaves more character and integrity in tightly-coiled piles on the White House lawn than John McCain has had in years.
Hillary as SOS = Colin Powell as SOS. Both are appointments made to neutralize the threat offered by someone in your own party. Just as Bush and his cohorts emasculated Powell bit by bit, Obama and his cohorts will do the same to Hillary.
That must be why he crashed so many of them…
I think Hillary will likely do a better job than she is being credited for here. She’s very well liked and admired by the international community. She participated in peace talks in Ireland and Kosovo. She understands the job better than most of the other people I can think of off the top of my head. And it gets the good will of the Hill supporters who felt disenfranchised after the primaries. Overall it’s a smart pick.
You sure as hell can fly jet planes if you are a lazy and inattentive student, just as long as your pappy/grandpappy are both Admirals.
Or, do you REALLY think that the Navy brass said to themselves “Sure McCain was the bottom of his class, a drinker and partier, didn’t study or apply himself, but he’s actually a really smart guy and we should trust him with one of the most difficult jobs in the Navy, and keep him doing that job even after he crashes a few times.”
I don’t know whether Obama is seriously considering it, but for a long time I’ve heard floated the idea of Bill Clinton as U.S. ambassador to the UN. His wife as Secretary of State would dovetail neatly with that. (Then she would be his boss – so what else is new? )
I’m trying to figure out what John McCain and Bush have to do with Clinton’s potential as a Secretary of State, but I’m stumped.
Clinton may or may not be a genius, but I think she’s a capable diplomat and experienced political operator. She’s an inveterate politician, it’s true. She also seems to love policy and does her homework. What’s interesting to me is that she tried to make so much hay out of the “sit down with hostile leaders” thing, and if she really has a problem with that, it interferes with the Secretary of State post. You’d think that conflict would keep her from consideration, but maybe not.
And Bush did not, according to any source I’ve seen, appoint Powell to neutralize a rival. Powell was not active in politics at that point, since he’d decided not to run. He appointed Powell because he very well respected and lent Bush additional star power and credibility on foreign policy. I agree that they immediately kept him in the dark after that, though.
Appointments of Clinton figures is going to be a continuing issue for Obama, I guess. It only makes sense that he choose some of them, since Bill Clinton was the only Democratic president in the last 25-plus years. But at some point, if you get Hillary or Bill Richardson at the State Dept., Lawrence Summers at Treasury, Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff and so on, people will wonder if there’s any change happening here.
No, but I would put Obama, George W Bush, the Pope and Lindsey Lohan on the same plane with only three parachutes, a talking penguin and a three foot salami.
Unfortunately, I just can’t remember the punch line.
Yeah, that about sums up my feelings, too. Still, it smacks of politics rather than “let’s find the best person for the job”. SecState is going to be tremendously important in the Obama administration. He’s going to need the best for State, Treasury and Defense. Don’t make any compromises, Barack.
The Clintons have an enormous amount of prestige internationally. Bill was very well regarded. I don’t think that Hillary is just a political choice, but actually pretty reasonable.
If anything, it’s a counter-political choice because it undermines his change mantra a bit, and ties his administration even more closely to Clinton’s. I see nothing he has to GAIN by it politically. I think it’s more about re-establishing the US’s pre-Bush international image.
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