Actually, that’s untrue. Since time immemorial, presidents have had formal and informal advisors who were never confirmed by the Senate but who still recommend policy to those who actually make it. This is generally a good thing, since you want the people who will be affected by policy to have some input in formulating it (though it also invites the foxes into the henhouse sometimes). You can legitimately complain about Mrs. Clinton’s qualifications to lead the health care task force or whatever it was, but there’s nothing unusual about unelected, unconfirmed people recommending policy to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
I think you know what I mean obviously advisors are neither elected nor confirmed (otherwise the Reagan’s would have had a problem with that astrologer.)
Hillary’s position was a bit more formal, kinda like if Bush told had appointed his wife Director of Homeland Security (to hyperbolize slightly.)
Obviously the appointment of Hillary did not create a constitutional crises. To me though it is was uncomfortably close if not completely over the line.
That explains all their animosity to the current occupier of the White House, right?
Damn straight. Cold war was over. Everyone wanted to reduce the military’s budget.
An unsubtstantiated assertion that strikes me as complete nonsense, considering the many, many times he went out of his way to praise the members of the armed forces for their service to the country. Maybe you can whine that he should have showed “more” respect (whatever that means), but “no” respect? Come on.
Again, these are unsubstantiated, subjective observations that are more than likely to be tainted by pre-existing biases.
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Like Somalia? God, what a disaster that turned out to be. What an idiot the president was for sending them on that mission.
And you believed it when they told you how righteous and morally correct they are? Sucker! Allow me to offer my personal observation (gathered from growing up around the military during the Reagan era) that military spouses cheat on each other at least as often as civilian spouses. Absolutely commonplace.
But Scylla, what I’m telling you is that presidents appoint unelected, unconfirmed people to formal and informal commissions all the time. Here is just one example, where a Bush-appointed commission recommended private school vouchers as a great way to spend federal education money.
May I assume you are outraged at the existence of this commission?
Slightly. Yes. Indeed. In her position as Ultimate Czar of Health Care studies, she had a staff. She could fire them, most likely. That was the extent of her executive power. She could not impose her views on anyone, she could make no laws, she couldn’t subpoena any health insurance company records. She could gather intelligence, and make recommendations. Period.
You have a positive genius for understatement when speaking Spinish.
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Actually he was not a draft dodger- he took advantage of the deferments that were available to him, legally, at the time. He did speak out against the Vietnam war, however.
No. I wasn’t outraged at Hillary. I just thought it was wrong. Why should this confront me?
You seem to be arguing something other than my point. I recall the speech where Hillary received her appointment. It seemed to me that she was being imbued with policymaking power rather than a simple advisory post. She was “put in charge (I think the words were,”) of reforming healthcare.
It’s not like she was given the power to change the health care system by fiat. What she was put in charge of was a commission, exactly like untold numbers of other presidential commissions, that made policy recommendations to the president and Congress. As you may recall, those recommendations were continualy tweaked by the president and his staff, and were eventually soundly rejected by Congress. In other words, the system worked just fine. The only difference is that the policy wonk that time was married to the president.
I find the appointment extremely innapropriate because Hillary was unqualified for the position, was not a public representative, wielded considerable power already as the First Lady, and it was not presented as merely heading a commission. Bill Clinton, the President at the time made it clear that he was appointing his wife the job of reforming healthcare in a public speech.
I understand your point–I just think it’s incorrect and silly. Hillary was an accomplished attorney with decades of experience in politics and public policy. To the extent you think she was presented as Health-Care Dictator, that’s simply a matter of perception; in reality, she reported to the president and to the Congress, just like every other member of every other presidential commission. So I really don’t see a rational distinction between Hillary and, say Vernon Jordan, Dick Morris, or any other unelected, unconfirmed advisor.
All of ElJeffe’s statements are garbage. GWB was a draft dodger (and an AWOL, cokehead, drunk). Clinton was NOT. Bush senior was the one who began reducing the military and was also the one who sent troops to Somalia. Who gives a shit about a fucking salute? Adultery in the military is commonplace. I KNOW. I was IN military service overseas. Let me tell you, the whorehouses are FILLED with married GI’s on the week-ends.
Another problem that Hilary encountered was that the commission she headed was supposed to be meeting in public, and held meetings in private instead.
My memory is that she began by denying that any meetings were ever held in secret, although I believe later meetings were, in fact, held publicly. Am I mistaken on this?
I suspect 90% of Hilary’s image problems were caused by her association with her husband. Similar issues were encountered with other First Ladies and relatives of Presidents. Who would ever have cared how much money Billy Carter got from the Libyans if his brother were not President?
Nancy Reagan goes to an astrologer. Hilary has meetings where they are sort of channeling the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt.
In both cases, it gives the opposition a chance to laugh at their husbands, and their sympathizers to leap to their defense.
Hillary wasn’t really trying to “channel” Eleanor roosevelt. (although I do get your point) It was just an exercise where you PRETEND to talk to a dead person to try to guess what they might say. She didn’t actually BELIEVE she was talking to ER (unlike NR and the astrologer). I do agree that the exercise was silly and new-agey and didn’t make her look good.
Scylla: I understand and agree with the objection on the secrecy of the task force’s work, though that had nothing to do with Hillary’s marital status. As for the point that other advisers wouldn’t want to contradict the First Lady, that’s (a) an inherent risk of marriage and (b) unsupported by actual White House practice during the Clinton years. My recollection is that Hillary’s left-leaning advice was routinely contradicted by moderate to conservative advisers (Dick Morris, anyone?) and frequently rejected by the president.
In addition to the nepotism issue, her problem was that the position of First Lady has traditionally been associated with warm-and-fuzzy do-gooder activities. Sharp-elbowed political infighting and policy battles coming from that office were thus more harshly received than they would have been coming from a more traditional “political” office.
I think the extent to which she is hated is over-rated. A lot of politicans are hated; Jesse Helms, Ted Kennedy et al. She has been relatively prominent for the last 10 years or so, and I don’t know if the amount of antipathy she has provoked is all that far out of the ordinary.
Aside: It would seem to me that here record as senator has been unremarkable. She does not seem to be one of the leading Democrats on policy or political issues. And she strikes me as not having turned out to have been as liberal as had been thought. But I could be wrong on this - I haven’t been following it all that closely.
Quite right on all counts, Izzy. I’m no Hillary fan–generally too far to the left for my tastes, and I find her sense of entitlement to political power to be quite appalling–but that analysis seems spot-on to me.