A Clinton Distancing Act: "Triangulating her husband"

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: A Clinton Distancing Act
Peter Baker


Even as Bill Clinton campaigns for his wife, she's distancing herself from some of his policies. (AP).

.... Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's slow-motion repudiation of one of her husband's signature achievements, culminating in her statement last week that NAFTA had been a "mistake," signals both the changing political environment and a different style of Clinton campaign. Forget the Third Way. Maybe the First and Second Ways weren't so bad after all.

This was not the first time Hillary Clinton has distanced herself from Bill Clinton's policies or governance philosophy. She has vowed to scrap the "don't ask, don't tell" rules her husband put in place allowing gays to serve in the military but only if they do not admit to being gay. She has called for repealing part of the Defense of Marriage Act, which tried to limit the spread of same-sex marriage and which her husband signed, albeit reluctantly. And she disagreed with her husband's statement that there should be a presidential exception to a torture ban in case of imminent terrorist threat. Republican strategists are quietly happy that she has not gone Bill Clinton's way. "She lacks her husband's political gifts and rejects much of the centrism he championed," Karl Rove, President Bush's former chief strategist, wrote in his inaugural Newsweek column, headlined "How to Beat Hillary."

On some level, of course, it's not all that surprising that Hillary Clinton would feel it necessary to take different positions than her husband in discrete situations. She needs to demonstrate that she is her own person and circumstances have certainly changed since the 1990s. The Democratic base always opposed NAFTA but today some strategists believe the party more broadly has turned against free trade, or at least free trade as it has been practiced. Don't ask, don't tell may have been a step forward for gays in 1993 but all these years later has become a symbol of discrimination.

At the same time, it's an extraordinary thing that she would renounce one of the central legacies of her husband's presidency. NAFTA was not just a passing policy, it helped define Bill Clinton as a new kind of Democrat....

***

By rejecting NAFTA, don't ask don't tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, she has signaled that she does not plan to take the same tack her husband did in trying to find a middle path, the so-called Third Way, between liberal and conservative orthodoxies. While she has been more hawkish than her top Democratic rivals on foreign policy matters, she has otherwise steered a more traditionally liberal course through the primaries.

It's not that she's against triangulating. It's just that she seems to be triangulating her husband.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/11/20/post_204.html?hpid=sec-politics

[MethuenProgressive]

1. "She lacks her husband's political gifts and rejects much of the centrism he championed," Karl Rove

Another blogger enthralled by Rove....

[dsc]

2. Don't Ask Don't Tell wasn't Clinton's policy

he was forced to adopt it. Let to his own devices gays would be serving openly today.

[MADem]

3. As someone who was in on those early 'negotiations' over that issue, I have to tell you that

you are absolutely CORRECT in that statement. He would have put us in the same place as Holland and the UK and other countries that don't really give a shit what you do on your own time.

[dsc]

5. I am convinced that Clinton felt he could just pull a Truman and change the policy

when he gave that answer in the MTV debate. It is too bad he wasn't better informed things might have turned out differently.

[MADem]

6. There was a large cadre WITHIN the military that wanted to make it happen.

This is not well known but it's the truth. The people who wanted it to happen weren't terribly "pro-gay" (if there's such a thing). In fact, some of them were homophobic-ish, in their daily lives with the snarky 'faggot' jokes and so forth.

Here's what many of the senior leaders who supported the change had in common--the loss of one (often more) of their best workers due to someone 'outing' them or the worker outing him or herself. Many, too, had memories of looking at their PCS funds outlay and their manning documents and gapped billets, noting that a stupid amount of money was spent getting rid of 'those people' and a bunch of billets were gapped, and work was done less efficiently, as a result.

It was a bunch of fucking "manly" GOP freaks in the Congress who really hardassed the whole business; some of the staffers were absolutely rabid. And the DADT WAS the best we could get, though there was a push at the outset to just flat-out change the rule and that would be that. We realized that was a non-starter, pretty fast, though, so we proposed starting out with DADT, see how it played, and then go to a "You can tell if you want, but don't be making a big deal out of it--be professional at work and don't be going on and on about your private life, no matter what your orientation."

Unfortunately, we are still stuck on DADT, and it's just a stupid rule. It continues to waste personnel and resources, and it puts gay service personnel in a quandry, trapped between a life that's bullshit on the one hand, an insistence on integrity on the other. It's a schizo existence for them, and unfair.

[dsc]

7. I have to admit that surprises me

I would have thought the problem was the upper levels of the military so I guess the senario I thought would work, wouldn't have. I thought if Clinton had waited to name his own Joint Chief things would have been different.

[MADem]

9. We military folk weren't stupid--it's all about the money.

Ka-ching, ka-ching.

Discriminating against gays was costing the services two things: Talent and Cash.

If there was a way to insist that people just do their damn job, and not worry about who does what to whom, that would have been hunky dory. There was no small amount of discussion (to be blunt, 'concern') about "professional conduct" (i.e. Don't talk about who you're schtupping) and the fact that this would have to apply accross the board (so guys couldn't come in and talk about their conquests with the ladies anymore, awww).

Subsequent to DADT, we had all those scandals in the training arenas and elsewhere, where instructors were hitting on young, female trainees, and there were other instances of predatory misconduct by seniors against subordinates. As a consequence, 'professional conduct' has become more of an issue in the last decade. It shouldn't be too hard NOW, in this environment, to both lift the ban AND insist upon 'professional conduct' ... we just need a Democrat in the White House.

[dsc]

10. I am glad to hear that

I think eliminating that discrimination would help lead to passage of ENDA.

[Inspired]

12. Please tell me how he was forced?

We had a Democratic a majority in Congress.

Please tell me how he was forced?

[dsc]

13. People like Sam Nunn

In case you don't know he was the DEMOCRATIC chair of the Senate Armed Forces Committee and he was adamantly, unalterably opposed to letting gays and lesbians serve in the military. Ike Skelton, while not the chair of the House Armed Forces Committee was highly placed and is still opposed. John Murtha, another well placed House opponent. He needed 60 votes in the Senate, to beat a filibuster, and he didn't have 50 votes. That is what is called being forced. It was made abondently clear that the Congress would pass a law banning gays entirely if DADT weren't accepted.

[Demeter]

4. Isn't That What Brought On the Monica Snafu?

[cali]

8. huh? n/t

[Dr Fate]

11. But I thought that her tenure as First Lady added up to experience?

How can she DISAGREE with what Bill did on one hand, but chalk up what he did right as her own "experience" on the other?

Seems more accurate if she takes the bad with the good.