Hillary Clinton Stumbles

Democrats may be getting a little anxious.  Hillary Clinton is stumbling into the starting gate.  Since she became the prohibitive favorite for her party's nomination she has made some mistakes.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has yet to explain why she used a personal email account during her entire tenure at State (2009-2013) instead of using an official government email account.  On the face of it, this makes no sense and calls in to question her judgment.   Putting aside whether she complied with regulations, a private email server does not have the same level of security against hacking that a government managed server does.  

The Russians, Chinese and Iranians very likely could have gotten access to Secretary Clinton's email traffic.  And there was plenty of traffic, especially considering the 55,000 pages of emails she turned over to the State Department are only a portion of those she wrote while in office.  

While Clinton has not talked about the controversy, her aides are fighting back by attacking the media.  Her supporters also point out that she complied with the regulations (maybe), and that former Secretary of State Colin Powell also used a private email account.  But that was five years earlier, when the State Department system wasn't as robust.  

Leading Democrats are pressing for an explanation.  Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-CA, said on NBC's Meet the Press, "From this point on...the silence is going to hurt her...She is the leading candidate, whether it be Republican or Democrat, to be the next president."  Republicans have seized the issue with gusto.   Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-SC, is chairman for the House Select Committee on Benghazi.  He told CBS's Face the Nation, his committee doesn't have all of Clinton's emails.  "It's not up to Secretary Clinton to decide what is a public record and what is not," he said, adding: "I don't want everything. I just want everything related to Libya and Benghazi."

President Barack Obama, in an interview about the 50th anniversary of the historic march in Selma, Alabama, had to address the subject in an interview with CBS News.  He said the policy of his administration was to encourage transparency.  “My emails, the Blackberry I carry around, all those records are available and archived,” Mr. Obama said. “I’m glad that Hillary’s instructed that those emails about official business need to be disclosed.”  President Obama was referring to a post on Twitter by Clinton Wednesday night in which she wrote, “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible."   Really, that's it?  How long will it take for State to sift through 55,000 pages of email?  

Secretary Clinton's email-capade has opened up speculation as to her motive.  The conservative National Journal reasons, "its greatest relevancy is what the emails might reveal about any nexus between Clinton's work at State and donations to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation from U.S. corporations and foreign nations."  Did the ultimate power couple leverage their positions of power for donations?  Even Saturday Night Live got into the act.  Cast member Kate McKinnon, doing an impression of Clinton, said, "Those emails are clean as a whistle. This is not how Hillary Clinton goes down." 


Senator Chuck Schumer found himself defending Secretary Clinton on CBS's Face the Nation.  "The bottom line is she's a national figure, a potential presidential candidate. People are going to shoot at her," he said calling it a “slight bump in the road six months from now.”  

Hillary Clinton is rumored to be putting her campaign team together, and she may announce her intention to run for president sooner rather than later.  However, her handling of the controversy over her use of private emails while at the State Department has exposed one of her great weaknesses: transparency.  This may well be her Achilles heel.

W's Iraq War

Ten years ago today the United States invaded Iraq with the goals of toppling its tyrannical ruler Saddam Hussein, destroying its weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and freeing its people to establish a democratic government.  Now, a decade later, Saddam Hussein is dead, but no WMDs were ever found, and the country has devolved into a de facto civil war.

In February 2003 polls showed Americans overwhelmingly favored an invasion of Iraq.  The Bush government had linked Hussein to al Qaeda, the terrorist group that launched a series of terrorists attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 Americans.   The administration had made the case to the world that Hussein was arming Iraq with WMDs, and that he was conspiring with al Qaeda to launch further attacks on the United States and the western world. 

In October 2002 the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002" easily passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support.   The resolution authorized President Bush to use the U.S. military to, "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq."

In February 2003 I traveled with a Telemundo news team to the White House to interview President Bush, one month before the Iraq invasion. War fever had built to a crescendo in Washington, and the White House wanted to make its case to Hispanic Americans.

President Bush entered our interview location, a room on the ground floor of the White House, with a swagger and a smile. He was imperious and proud. During the interview he went through his justifications for an invasion, but said that no final decision had been made.

Following the interview President Bush chatted with our group. I raised the issue of opposition to the pending war from the French, asking him, "What about President Jacques Chirac?" President Bush slapped me across my upper right arm with the back of his hand, cocked his head and said, "Don't worry, he'll come around." With that, he quickly said his goodbyes and confidently departed.

I turned to my team and said, "We're going to war!"

On March 20, 2003, American forces invaded Iraq and defeated Hussein's army.  But U.S. forces were not greeted as "liberators", as Vice President Dick Cheney had predicted on NBC's Meet The Press prior to the war.  The Bush administration failed to grasp how difficult, how complicated it would be to establish a unified government and a lasting peace in Iraq.  In 2007, former CIA Director George Tenet, the man who once called the evidence justifying an Iraq invasion a "slam dunk", told CBS's 60 Minutes, "We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period."

To date, nearly 4,500 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq, and more than 30,000 have been injured.  The Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated to be well over 100,000.  Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies estimates that the Iraq War has cost more than $1.7 trillion to date, not counting an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans.

The last U.S. combat troops left Iraq in December 2011. But thousands of veterans are struggling with the after effects of war, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.  Meanwhile, a recent Gallup poll shows that 52% of Americans think the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, while 42% still support the war. 

In Iraq, American influence is low, while violence continues daily, and tensions among the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds are at an all time high.  One day, maybe, they'll come around.    

Romney Stumbles

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”  By his definition, were he alive today, Groucho Marx could point to Mitt Romney as a perfect example!   But, no doubt many Republicans wish they could Etch A Sketch away the past six weeks of the Romney campaign.

Today many political observers characterize Romney's campaign as desperate, disoriented, erratic and lacking a budget plan.  Yet, it was suppose to be so easy.  Having won a bitterly contested Republican primary, Romney would be able to position himself as a successful "Mr. Fixit" businessman who could save the U.S. economy.  His approach was to make the 2012 presidential race a referendum on President Barack Obama's handling of the economy.  But before Romney could get out of the starting gate, the Obama campaign went after Mr. Fixit.  

Romney was co-founder and once head of Bain Capital, one of the world's leading private asset management firms.  It turns out that they succeeded in saving some businesses.  But Bain also closed several companies down, took out millions of dollars and left thousands of people without jobs, all facts that the Obama campaign relentlessly pointed out. Of course, Bain Capital's main goal is to make big profits for its investors, not to create jobs.  At the Democratic Convention, Vice President Joe Biden put it this way, “Folks, the Bain way may bring your firm the highest profits. But it’s not the way to lead your country from its highest office.”

Romney said he was a successful governor of Massachusetts.   But his single biggest achievement was "Romneycare", the state's near universal health care law that was the blueprint for "Obamacare," which Romney has vowed to repeal on his first day if he is elected president.  But last week Romney said, on NBC's Meet the Press, ”Of course, there are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place.  One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage."  This set off a firestorm among conservative Republicans.  Later that day, Romney's campaign again reconfirmed he was against covering people with pre-existing conditions who have not had continuous health coverage. 

At the Republican Convention, Romney was upstaged by an embarrassing endorsement from actor Clint Eastwood, who crudely spoke to an empty chair that represented President Obama.  In his tepid acceptance speech, Romney focused on biography and talking points, but offered no specifics on how he would save the economy.  And, in an inexplicable omission, Romney failed to mention the American soldiers serving in Afghanistan and around the world.

The Republican candidate, looking to further mobilize his conservative base and add some spice to the ticket, brought Representative Paul Ryan on as his running mate.  Ryan is a favorite of the right, and author of the Ryan Budget Plan.  But that plan, which was has widespread support among Congressional Republicans, calls for deep cuts in entitlements.  Under Ryan's plan, Medicare would be voucherized and Medicaid would be converted to block grants to states.  As a result, recipients would be left to personally pay for some of the quickly increasing medical costs they will face in the future.

If he embraced Ryan's plan, Romney would risk alienating many seniors, a critical demographic in many swing states.  So Romney has been distancing himself from the Ryan plan.  In an interview with CBS News, he was asked, "Are you running on [Ryan's] budget or on your budget?" Romney responded, "My budget, of course, I'm the one running for president."  Yet, Romney has failed to offer specifics for about his budget.

Romney has also failed to explain why he has parked so many of his investments in off shore accounts.  He found himself on the defensive on his personal taxes.  He has adamantly said he will release only two years of federal returns.  In his 2010 return he paid an effective rate of 13.8 percent in taxes on an income of $21.7 million.  He has not yet released his final 2011 returns, but he has estimated he will pay an effective rate of 15.4 percent on income of $20.9 million.  His taxes are certain to remain an issue heading into the election.

Romney and Ryan have little foreign policy experience, and it shows.  Candidate Romney has blustered about the Russians and the Chinese as if, to use the president's description, he is "stuck in some cold-war tie warp."  So it is no wonder he was poised to seize an opportunity to criticize the president on foreign policy.  While terrorists were attacking the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which left four Americans dead, Romney was attacking the White House for a statement released by a middle level consulate official. 

Romney's statement read, in part, "It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks."  Very few facts were known at this point.  In response to Romney's attack, the White House put out a statement, "We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack." 

While many Republicans were questioning Romney's judgment, the candidate was doubling down at a news conference the next day.  Republican columnist Peggy Noonan said, ""Romney looked weak today I feel, I'm still kind of absorbing it myself, at one point, he had a certain slight grimace on his face when he was taking tough questions from the reporters, and I thought, 'He looks like Richard Nixon.'"

President Obama, in an interview with 60 Minutes, said that Romney tends to "shoot first and aim later."  He continued, “And as president, one of the things I’ve learned is you can’t do that, that, you know, it’s important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts. And that you’ve thought through the ramifications before you make ‘em.”

The past few weeks have been very difficult for candidate Romney.  A just released Fox News national presidential poll shows President Obama with a 48% to 43% lead over Mitt Romney.  Perhaps Romney's actions have had an adverse impact on his campaign.  After all, you learn a lot about a person in a time of crisis.