In 2014, CNN's Erin Burnett has
hosted a conversation at the Clinton Global Initiative. She devoted last night's program to
CGI 2015, which wrapped up yesterday, and spent the hour
interviewing Bill Clinton.
It
is impossible for Bill Clinton to be before TV cameras without being
asked about Hillary and the 2016 campaign. That was the case last
night. He pointed out weaknesses in Republican debate and campaign
substance saying that so far all he has heard are claims of who hates
and blames Democrats more. He asked, "What would you actually do?"
Is there an Americans who has not heard Donald Trump claim that Hillary Clinton was the worst secretary of state ...
ever?
Burnett played that remark for Hillary's loving husband who nearly
spewed the water he was sipping and launched into a litany of Hillary's
accomplishments (
a host of which are listed here addressed to Carly Fiorina).
He mentioned the
New START treaty,
about which everyone on both sides of the aisle appears to have
developed amnesia. This was the exchange of instruments of
ratification.
He talked about her phenomenal success in exponentially
increasing PEPFAR's effectiveness without increasing costs. (
President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief began as a George W, Bush administration initiative.)
Directly
contradicting Trump's claim that Hillary lost friends for us, WJC said
that all of the countries that benefited from the PEPFAR efforts liked
us a lot after her work and that our approval rating was 20% higher when
she left office than when she arrived.
And there were the Iran
sanctions. He told Burnett and the audience that even people who do not
like the agreement liked the sanctions.
At the end of July,
Hillary was "Skimmed." That day, the newsletter mentioned that all of the candidates would be "Skimmed." Today it was
Marco Rubio's turn, and he said this.
THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL.
When
I'm president, we'll cancel it on my first day in office. We'll
reimpose the sanctions that are on the books. I'll ask Congress to
increase them on every sector of their economy. And it'll make it very
clear to Iran, if they want a peaceful nuclear program, they have to
pursue it the way South Korea does, the way Japan does, by importing the
enriched material. And if they try to build weapons, we're going to
destroy their weapons program.
Hillary
has called canceling the agreement reckless, but at least he liked the
sanctions. Clearly, once the Republicans really get into issues as
opposed to their sterling and stunning resumés, the Iran agreement will
be one of the hot-button issues.
I thought this might be a good juncture at which to share again a 2010 article from
Esquire by Tom Junod who has said more than once that
yes he would ... he certainly
would vote for her.
Apr 22, 2010
By Tom Junod
- Astrid Riecken/Getty Images
I felt better about myself as an American after spending time with Hillary Clinton for the profile of her that appears in the May issue of Esquire.
Seriously. It's not just the obvious — it's not just the fact that she
never appears so quintessentially American, as simultaneously
Daisy-Millerish and Tracy-Flickish, as when she
stands smiling on a stage with a bunch of European guys with permanent
five-o'clock shadows. It's not even that I wind up applauding my country
for producing a woman whose genius is for a kind of can-do
level-headedness that somehow manages to drive both enemies and admirers
around the bend. No, it's that after traveling to Montreal, London, and
Paris with the secretary of state — after listening to three of her
speeches and attending at least a dozen diplomatic ceremonies and then
interviewing her — I'm a little less concerned than I was about the
problem of American power. And because of Hillary Clinton, we should all
be a lot less concerned about the problem of a nuclear Iran (no matter the war games nor the cautious talk).
But
first, let's face it: The problem with American power is that there
seems to be less of it these days. We're fighting wars we can't win and
incurring debts we can't pay, and the upshot of all that is that we
can't tell other countries what to do. "You have to approach this
[diplomacy] with humility," Secretary Clinton told me. "Even if you
think we're right — and in fact I do believe we're right about the major
issues — you can't just assert it." Now, on the face of it that sounds
like a pretty standard, Obama-era formulation, right down to the encoded
reference to the Bush administration, whose policy of
diplomacy-by-assertion only wound up making us look at once decisive and ineffectual — decisively ineffectual, if you will. But the thing that makes it also a classic Hillary
formulation is the parenthetical insistence that she, and we, are
right. She has never been given to apology, and while this has caused
her some problems politically — think the Iraq war vote — it serves her
well as President Obama's secretary of state. She does not give you the
sense, as Obama sometimes does, that she's conducting foreign policy in
expiation of the sins of the previous administration, or for that matter
of the previous 234-odd years of American history. She's not guilty
about anything, least of all American power, and standing next to her is
like standing next to a Minuteman missile — you can have all sorts of
opinions about her, but ultimately you're glad that she's one of ours.
Absolutely! Read on >>>>
Going
forward into the debates and the next phase of the campaign, Junod's
articles are handy pieces for us all to keep in our back pockets.
I
see a lot of cheering. "Hillary 2016" "I will vote for her!" "She
will be our next president!" We need to arm ourselves for the battles.
Yesterday I shared
an article from HuffPo
explaining how doctored video footage was used to eradicate ACORN
(Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) in 2010 and is
being used do the same thing to Planned Parenthood now. That article
also explained how manufactured information is used against the
Clintons.
It time to move on from the sloganeering and find out
whence potential attacks might emanate and what the facts are. A great
many people who are supporting Hillary know very little about what she
has done. We welcome new teammates. Junod's article is a good place to
start getting proficient in Hillary Clinton foreign policy. Today is a
great day to begin.
When Republicans attack Planned Parenthood, they’re attacking women’s health. Proud to 
