Hillary on
Obama's record:
The reality is, since Sen. Obama joined the Senate (applying the same standard the email applies to Hillary) he has sponsored two bills that have become law:
Hillary introduced the talking point: Obama has no substance. Hillary, as usual, is being completely disingenuous. The MSM has gone from simply repeating Hillary's talking point to trying to prove that it's true using shameful tactics, as indicated by this rebuttal of Chris "Tweety" Matthews' stunt after the Wisconsin primary:
20 Feb 2008 06:21 pm
by hilzoy
Last night, Texas State Senator Kirk Watson, an Obama supporter, was
embarrassed on national TV when he couldn't name any of Obama's legislative achievements. (He wrote what I think is a pretty decent and disarming account of it
here.) David Kurtz, for whom I normally have enormous respect,
writes:
"I suspect this is a bit of a Rorschach test. Depending on your perspective, it's proof that Obama is a lightweight, just goes to show what a gasbag Matthews is, or appeals to the same voyeuristic instinct that makes you slow down and gawk at a car accident."
I think it's only a Rorschach test for people who don't bother to find whether or not Obama actually has any actual legislative achievements. If he does, then of course this just shows that this one supporter didn't know what they are. If he doesn't, it might show something more, e.g. that Obama is a lightweight. As it happens, Obama does have substantive legislative achievements. I have written more about them
here. A few highlights, all of which became law:
* Ethics Reform: Obama was the Senate's point person on ethics reform, and sponsored or co-sponsored the bills that made up what the Washington Post
called "the strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet." I'm also a fan of
this bill, which I think of as the Journalists, Bloggers, and Citizens' Muckraking Empowerment Act: it creates a searchable database of recipients of federal grants and contracts.
* The
Lugar-Obama initiative to strengthen the Nunn-Luger framework for securing loose nukes, and to extend it to securing and destroying stockpiles of conventional arms. (For instance, shoulder-fired missiles that could be used against passenger airlines, fired at our forces, or used to make any number of ongoing conflicts more deadly.)
* Various bills concerning the response to Hurricane Katrina, including an
amendment putting strict limits on the use of no-bid contracts after disasters,
requiring planning for the evacuation of people with special needs and senior citizens,
creating a National Emergency Family Locator System,
etc.
There are also a lot of good bills he worked on that did not make it, including the compromise immigration bill and a proposal to
create an independent Congressional Ethics Enforcement Commission, and some that are on the Senate calendar now, like a
bill to criminalize various deceptive election tactics, like deceptive robocalls, providing misleading information about where to vote or what conditions you have to meet to be eligible to vote, etc.
There's a lot more. Honestly, there is. I wrote a summary
here (and an earlier one
here), and provided lists (
1,
2,
3) of all the bills and amendments sponsored or co-sponsored by Clinton and Obama in the 109th and 110th Congresses, just so it would be as easy as possible for people to see for themselves. (Fun fact about each side's legislative records: during the 109th and 110th Congresses (which is to say, the time that both Obama and Clinton have been in the Senate), only one sponsored a substantive bill that became law. Guess who it was? Hint: the bill concerns the ongoing conflict in the Congo.) Which brings me to my larger point:
I did this because I had heard one too many people like Chris Matthews talking about Obama's alleged lack of substance, and I thought: I know that's not true, since I have read about Obama's work on non-proliferation, avian flu, and a few other issues. And if people are saying he lacks substance, then surely I, as a citizen, should try to find out whether I just hallucinated all this interesting legislation, or whether this talking point was, in fact, completely wrong. So I sat down with Google and
Thomas and tried to find out.
more Tweety set out to
“Stump the Chump", who turns out to be a pretty decent guy:
Meet
Kirk Watson.
He's a popular former mayor of Austin, Texas, and currently a Texas state senator.
He's considered by some to be an up-and-comer in Texas Democratic politics.
He's a Barack Obama supporter and surrogate.
He's also the guy that Chris Matthews may have
mortally wounded politically last night during MSNBC's primary night coverage. You can watch the brutal exchange here.
Watson has
posted a statement on his website which, I have to say, gets points for graciousness in the face of utter humiliation:
<…>
I guess Bill Clinton did recover from his disastrous speech at the 1988 Democratic convention.
linkTweety's stunt was shameful and ugly, but Kirk Watson will recover. Bill Clinton did:
Crowd cheers when Clinton finishes his speechupdated 7:03 p.m. ET, Tues., July. 20, 2004
The 1988 Democratic convention in Atlanta, Georgia was Bill Clinton’s debut on the national stage. Unfortunately, Clinton's speech nominating Michael Dukakis ended up being quite boring.
"He droned on and on, and droned on," remembers Tom Brokaw. "When he finally said 'In conclusion,' people began to cheer."
Clinton quickly realized he didn't give his best performance. "I saw him the next day and I literally slipped out of the way, I didn’t know what to say to him. He knew how he’d done," continues Brokaw. Clinton bounced right back and talked to the media, and even made an appearance on Johnny Carson's show.
"That should have told you something about Bill Clinton at that point. He would make the big mistake, but then he would crawl out of it in his own endearing fashion."
Hence the nickname, “Comeback Kid.”
Or -- heaven forbid -- the Bill Clinton of 1988, who gave a tedious stemwinder in 1988 that has gone down in the books as the worst nominating speech in recent memory?
linkArkansas governor Bill Clinton gave a widely jeered 32-minute long opening night address that some predicted would ruin his political career, a source of much satisfaction to him 4 years later.
linkFour years later, Bill ran for president.
Question: Did you expect Hillary to be gracious and avoid jumping into the gutter with Tweety?
"My good friend Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones from Ohio represented me on one of the TV programs in the last day or two— some of you may have seen her," Clinton said during a speech at Hunter College in New York City Wednesday. "And she was on against someone representing my opponent and for the first time, actually, the host, asked the representative of my opponent to name one accomplishment."
<...>
The Clinton campaign called the interview "Must See TV," and e-mailed a clip of it to reporters Wednesday morning — shortly before the New York Democrat mentioned it in her speech.
moreNah! That's not the kind of campaign is running. She's running a Jeanine Pirro-style campaign. When Hillary's Republican challenger for Senate Pirro criticized her for hosting a birthday party for Robert Byrd, her spokesperson lamented:
When your best attack is to criticize your opponnent for socializing with someone who apologized forty years ago for a mistake he made sixty years ago, you have no campaign. If Pirro actually had an issue to attack Clinton on, she might have the start of a campaign. Instead, her candidacy is a joke.
link Fast forward to 2008, and pathetic is the new standard for Hillary's campaign and her surrogates:
Obama says he is practicing a new kind of politics, but why has
his PAC sloshed $698,000 to the campaigns of the superdelegates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics? Is giving Robert Byrd’s campaign $10,000 the kind of change we can believe in?link"When your best attack is to criticize your opponent for (supporting Democrats for reelection), you have no campaign."
Get it?
Obama's record speaks for itself (the MSM can see the links above, hilzoy did most of the work).
Kirk will recover, in the same way Bill did.
The question is can a seasoned politician like Bill recover his reputation after the kind of campaign Hillary?
Not sure if there is any hope for Tweety!
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