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OUT OF LEFT FIELD |
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NOT An Endorsement?
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Political Fun and Games
At the New York Times
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
For all its warts
and carbuncles there is no doubt that The New York Times
is not only the greatest paper in the United States, but in the
world. Anybody who has traveled near and far and seen such as
the London Times and French and Australian newspapers should
acknowledge that no other paper can match the Times for detail
and breadth of news coverage.
That is an introduction to saying there were some lively doings at the Times recently. It started with a blockbuster media happening when the Times endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for President. (It also endorsed John McCain for the Republican slot, while burying Rudy Giuliani.)
The Hillary Clinton camp must have been dancing with glee reading these paragraphs among many:
“Hearing her talk about the presidency, her policies and answers for America’s big problems, we are hugely impressed by the depth of her knowledge, by the force of her intellect and by the breadth of her experience.”
It went on that she has used “her years in the Senate well to immerse herself in national security issues, and has won the respect of world leaders and many in the American military. She would be a strong commander in chief.” (They added that “Obama may also be capable of tackling” [the issues mentioned] “but we have not yet seen it.”)
The Times said, “Mrs. Clinton is more qualified right now to be president. We opposed President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and we disagree with Mrs. Clinton’s vote for the resolution on the use of force. That’s not the issue now: it is how the war will be ended. Mrs. Clinton seems not only more aware than Mr. Obama of the consequences of withdrawal, but is already thinking through the diplomatic and military steps that will be required to contain Iraq’s chaos after American troops leave.”
Pardon me if I detected a little bit of the old flim-flam in the statement that her vote in favor of the resolution on the use of force by this President is not the issue now.
The Times op-ed columnists obviously were of a different mind than the editorial board (management’s view). Bob Herbert and Frank Rich unloaded on the entity that has come to be known as “Billary.”
Herbert objected vehemently to Bill Clinton’s hatcheting of Obama once the Illinois Senator won the Iowa caucus. Herbert, who probably takes up the cause of the most put-upon people more than any other columnist, took aim at the Clintons.
He wrote: “Bill Clinton in his over-the-top advocacy of his wife’s candidacy, has at times sounded like a man who’s gone off his medication. And some of the Clinton surrogates have been flat-out reprehensible.”
He quoted a comment from Andrew Young, a former ambassador to the United Nations and a prominent Clinton supporter, that underscored the cliché, “With friends like him, who needs enemies?” Young said, “Bill is as every bit as black as Barack. He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack.”
Oy.
Herbert quoted Clinton supporter Bob Kerry, the former Nebraska senator. Kerry mentioned he likes that Obama’s middle name is Hussein. Who asked him? He denied that Obama ever attended a madrassa (anti-American schools in the middle east) but by saying this he was airing this slander for people who may never have heard it at all.
Herbert asked, “Are the Clintons capable of being anything but divisive? …It makes one wonder whether they have any understanding or regard for the corrosive long-term affects-on the party and their nation-of pitting people bitterly and unnecessarily against one another.”
And he finished with this salvo: “What kind of people are the Clintons? What role will Bill Clinton play in a new Clinton White House? Can they look beyond winning to a wounded nation’s need for healing and unifying?”
The worst was yet to come for the Clintons. In a column headed, “The Billary Road to Republican Victory,” Frank Rich was in effect answering the Times argument that “she would be a strong commander in chief” and that her vote supporting Bush’s drive toward war “was not the issue now.”
Rich wrote, “And can Mrs. Clinton presume to sell herself as best equipped to be commander in chief ‘on Day One’ when opposing an actual commander and war hero? [McCain] I don’t think so.
“Foreign policy issue No 1, withdrawal from Iraq, should be a slam-dunk for any Democrat….But Mrs. Clinton’s case is undermined by her record. She voted for the war, just as Mr. McCain did, in 2002, and was still defending it in February 20005, when she announced from the Green Zone that much of Iraq was ‘functioning well.’ Only in November 2005 did she express serious misgiving long pervasive in her own party. When Mr. McCain accuses her of now advocating ‘surrender’ out of political expediency, her flip-flopping will back him up.”
Even Bill Kristol, the Times’ sad-sack-of-a-far-right-columnist-new-hire, essentially repeated on Monday about Billary what Rich had written on Sunday. (Giving Kristol the best of it, I guess that he submitted his column on Saturday, the day before Rich’s piece ran).
The last indignity for the Clintons came on Tuesday when David Brooks, the more respectable occupant of the conservative chair at the Times, wrote an almost gushy column about the tumultuous rally in which Ted Kennedy and President John Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, anointed Obama as their choice for the nomination.
Brooks wrote, “The Kennedy endorsements will help among working-class Democrats, Catholics and the millions of women who have followed Caroline’s path to maturity. Furthermore, here was Senator Kennedy, the consummate legislative craftsman, vouching for the fact that Obama is ready to be president on Day One.”
Brooks called Kennedy the best of all the senators, and concluded, “…there was something important and memorable about the way the 75-year-old Kennedy communed and bonded with a rapturous crowd half a century his junior. The old guy stole the show.”
And the Billarys could worry about whether a nomination is being stolen out from under them.
©2008 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. Teh photos of Hillary were scavenged from the internet and have nothing to do with Hillary Clinton's treatment by The New York Times. This column first posted Feb. 4, 2008.
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