Friday, December 21, 2007

Other People Say Smart Stuff, Too Part X - Hillary

"Experience counts."

Sound familiar? Remind you of Hillary Clinton's slogan when comparing herself to Barack Obama?

"Experience counts" is what Richard Nixon used in his campaign against John F. Kennedy in 1960.

In his most recent column, "Retro Campaigning," George Will examines the two primary instances of Hillary Clinton's "experience":

The first instance was the selection of her husband's Attorney General. Hillary's criteria was based on chromosomes -- the AG had to be a woman. The first choice was Zoey Baird, who was eliminated when she was found to have hired illegal immigrants as servants and had not paid Social Security taxes on them. The second choice was Kimba Wood, who had also hired an illegal immigrant. The final choice was Janet Reno, whose career as AG is remembered for 1) the botched assault on the Davidian compound in Waco, resulting in 86 deaths, 17 of which were the children the assault was supposed to save; and 2) the extraction at gunpoint of six-year-old Elian Gonzales so he could be sent back to Castro's Cuba.

To quote Will: "The second of Hillary Clinton's important experiences was the drafting, in secret, of a national health care plan. It was so dauntingly baroque and ominously statist that a Congress controlled by her party would not bring it to a vote. "

Her experiences that should matter most to primary voters reveal consistently bad judgment. Her campaign's behavior radiates bad character."

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