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.

Theatre of the absurd in Pakistan

In an eventful day, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf appointed his successor as army chief, even as Pakistan’s opposition quit Parliament for his seeking re-election as President while holding the post of chief of army staff.

In yet another move the Pakistan government has dropped various corruption charges against former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, according to this report.

Gen. Ashfaq Kiani, a former intelligence chief, will become vice chief of the army on Monday but will take the top job of chief of the army only after Musharraf vacates it, according to a report by the Associated Press.

This may be a tactical move by Musharraf ahead of his re-election bid on October 6. By indicating his successor, he hopes to deflect criticism from the opposition about his holding two posts, and makes it easier for him to do a deal with Bhutto. However his opponents want him to quit his army post ahead of the election.

Bhutto may also be doing a terrible political mistake in cutting a deal with Musharraf. For one, Musharraf is seeking re-election from a parliament and provincial councils that are due for re-election this year, and are packed with Musharraf’s cronies. The opposition has been demanding that the election of the President should be after the Parliament election.

Also by leaving another Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif out of the new dispensation, Musharraf is confirming that his new avatar is not genuine, but only reflects his aim to continue cling to power. Sharif is currently in political exile in Saudi Arabia.

Being exonerated of corruption charges by a President who took over in a coup will not also help Bhutto’s image. She may prefer to fight it out in court instead, rather than be seen to be in debt to Musharraf.


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Who rules in Iraq today ?

The U.S. military has arrested in Iraq an Iranian who it says is a member of an elite Iranian unit, called Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force, involved in training and equipping insurgents in Iraq. Yet the country’s President Jalal Talabani has blasted the U.S. for the arrest and called for his immediate release, according to a report in CNN.

Talabani said he is a civil servant who was on an official trade mission in Iraq's Kurdistan region, according to the report.

Talabani may be mistaken, but he is the elected President of Iraq. The appropriate course of action for the U.S. would hence be to release the Iranian detainee, out of deference to the Iraqi government.

The U.S., according to the administration in Washington, wants the elected government to take more responsibilities in Iraq, including reconciling rival groups.

By implicitly acting as if the elected government is a “puppet”, whose opinions are to be disregarded, the U.S. is contributing to the government’s falling credibility, and undermining democracy in Iraq.

Iran has meanwhile closed the border with the Kurdistan part of Iraq until the Iranian detainee is released. The border closure will likely impact economic activity in the Kurdistan region.