Did Hillary Clinton run Bill's administration ?

"I am happy to compare my experience to hers when it comes to the economy," US Senator and Presidential aspirant Barack Obama said according to this report. "My understanding was she wasn't Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. I don't know exactly what experience she's claiming."

Obama was responding to the Hillary Clinton campaign’s repeated line that Obama does not measure up to Hillary Clinton in experience. He is right. Clinton can by rights claim no more experience in running government than her predecessor as first lady, Barbara Bush, and her successor, Laura Bush.

By my understanding of US politics, the wife of the President is required to play the role of a very traditional wife – redecorate the White House, host parties, finalize the guest list and the sitting arrangements, and generally look pretty and presentable.

If Hillary wants to suggest that she got experience running the government while she was First Lady, that appears to confirm what a lot of people say about her – that she was poking her nose in affairs of state while husband Bill chased other affairs.

Unless Hillary Clinton wants to suggest that she enjoyed power and profile beyond normally recommended for a President’s spouse, the only superior experience Hillary Clinton can talk about is knowing better stuff like the layout of the White House, which curtains go well with which carpets, and yes how to keep a check on an irrepressibly errant husband.

Perhaps Clinton is not referring to her years at the White House, but as a Senator from New York. One of Clinton’s best known decisions as Senator was to have signed an authorization of war against Iraq, and again signing the dotted line on Iran. If that is experience, Obama is head and shoulders above Hillary Clinton.

Among the Democratic front-runners Obama is campaigning on an anti-Washington anti-Establishment platform, while Clinton is campaigning as the “insider”, the person from within the Establishment, who got her experience as part of the Establishment.

Neither however shows great leadership, neither “ has a dream”, neither inspires confidence. One for being too naïve to want to overthrow the establishment at one go, the other because she is establishment, not by experience, but by affectation, by her belief that she is pre-destined to occupy the White House.

Unfortunately, at a time when Democrats seem to be best poised to win the White House, the party seems to only throw up a modern-day Don Quixote and a Lady Macbeth.

House vote on Iraq is naïve, irresponsible

The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a war-funding bill with a timeline for troop withdrawal from Iraq and substantially less funds to conduct the war than President Bush has requested, according to this report from CNN.

To be sure US President George Bush will veto the vote, as threatened. The vote which went mainly along party lines cites December 15 next year as the date for US combat troops to be out of Iraq.

The Democrats have once again acted naïve and irresponsible. America has to know that it just can’t go and shake up the institutions of a country, including its army, impose new ones of its own, and then say, “ Nice knowing you guys. Try and manage”.

The war was ill-conceived from the start, but the US cannot pull out from Iraq just because things didn’t turn out to the advantage of Americans.

There is a civil war going on in Iraq, with Sunnis and Shias battling each other, and with the prospect of the Kurds trying to find their own independent solution to the problem. If Americans pull out prematurely, there will be terrible bloodshed in Iraq. This is not the point in time when the US can say, “let us live it to the Iraqis to solve their problems”.

It is the responsibility of the US to now help move the country politically towards a solution, which as some suggest could be a loose federal system where each ethnic and religious group have control over autonomous regions. The US has to also work with the Kurds, Sunnis and Shias to pass in the Iraq Parliament a formula for the management and sharing of oil revenue.

A number of Democrats including Hillary Clinton voted authorizing the war. They now have to live with the consequences of the war, rather than scamper when the going gets hot.

It makes for great political posturing for the Democrats to vote for a withdrawal within a time-line. Their constituents will love it. But the Democrats, including Clinton, have yet to come forward with a proposal for the resolution of the Iraq problem. The Democrats are at this point not conveying to the US, Iraq, and the rest of the world that they have a grip on the Iraq problem, that they have the capacity to think beyond their vote banks.

Related article:
Why the US should stay in Iraq