Happy Birthday Hillary

In a fawning front-pager the Times gets all gooey about Hillary's many, many virtues as a leader and manager.  However, they do hit one spped bump:

Over the years, Mrs. Clinton has won a reputation as a good boss. She is diligent about remembering birthdays and doing things like calling her Senate scheduler, Lona Valmoro, to offer condolences after her dachshund, Largo, was run over by a car.

Mrs. Clinton has also become more willing to delegate responsibility. “I’m not second-guessing the people I entrust to manage because I think I make good decisions on personnel,” she said.

In return, Mrs. Clinton has won the loyalty of her Senate and campaign staffs, a point underscored by the rarity of leaks and absence of kiss-and-tell memoirs from her camp. Of the seven participants in the Clinton campaign’s 7:30 a.m. conference call, most go back at least a decade with her.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, began working as her scheduler in Little Rock, Ark., during Mr. Clinton’s first campaign for the presidency. Only one of the group — Mike Henry, deputy campaign manager — is a relative newcomer.

Now, who does that sound like?  Does anyone care to recall when Karen Hughes, Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett first fell in with George Bush?

To their credit the Times tackles this odious comparison head-on:

Mrs. Clinton’s orbit is known by the now-clichéd “Hillaryland,” suggesting a carefree atmosphere. In fact, she presides over an office of intense and focused workaholics, protective of their patron and wary of outsiders, a trait that has drawn comparisons to the leadership team of George W. Bush. The president surrounded himself with advisers who went back to his Texas days and were similarly lauded for loyalty and criticized for insularity.

“The Clinton campaign seems to be dominated by the same old people,” said William Mayer, a Northeastern University professor who is an expert on presidential campaigns.

Having a tight inner circle can cut both ways, Professor Mayer said. With Mr. Bush, he said, “it looked fine to have this group of loyal Texans in there, until his approval ratings went under 40 percent and there were no fresh eyes to see the mistakes.”

Mrs. Clinton, not surprisingly, bristles at such comparisons. She contrasts what she calls the “echo chamber” around the president with her own willingness to expand her own circle, hear disputes and solicit opposing views.

“I’m very interested in how you reach and implement decisions in a very efficient way,” she said.

Bush wrong, Hillary right - that was easy.

And let's reassure the critics who experienced Hillary's health care debacle first hand - she has grown since 1993:

Friends and advisers say Mrs. Clinton has been a diligent student of her own mistakes, and her style has evolved over the years from a tendency to micromanage to a greater willingness to delegate; from a bent toward perfectionism to one closer to pragmatism; from a go-for-broke mentality to one more willing to compromise.

Mrs. Clinton, for her part, draws a distinction between leadership and management, and her style and that of Mr. Clinton.

“My husband has extraordinary leadership ability,” Mrs. Clinton said in an interview. “But he was also not as interested in the day-to-day management. He was much more focused on our goals and objectives: how you do the politics, how you do the persuasion. I’m trying to meld leadership and management in a way that really suits me.”

It's all good in TimesWorld.

Comments

[Rick Ballard]

Emmett Tyrrell has some memories of yesterday, today and tomorrow, too.

Very little of this has escaped the notice of journalists and of Democratic leaders. Yet, after every scandal they forget their public denunciations of the Clintons. Here are some flavorous reminders. After the Clintons and their siblings were caught in the 42nd president's last-minute pardon scandal, Jimmy Carter called them "disgraceful." Robert Reich opined that "Clinton is utterly disgraced." Al Hunt called Clinton the "albatross" of his party who should "drop dead." Al Gore's campaign manager, Donna Brazile wrote in the New York Times, "It's time to let Bill Clinton go — go on and live the rest of his life and allow a new generation of Democratic leaders to renew their fight on behalf of working families in America." New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote: "Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing. It's time for the Democratic Party to wise up. Ostracism would be a good first step. Bill Clinton should be cut completely loose….some of Mr. Clinton's closest associates and supporters are acknowledging what his enemies have argued for years — the man is so thoroughly corrupt it is frightening."

In a February 2001 editorial the New York Times asserted that the former president "seemed to make a redoubled effort in the last moments of his presidency to plunge further and further beneath the already low expectations of his most cynical critics and most world-weary friends." And the newspaper lamented that it might "never understand the process by which a departing president and his wife come to put sofas and flatware ahead of the acute sense of propriety that ought to go with high office." The New York Observer assessed Hillary's election to the Senate as a "a terrible mistake," adding that "Hillary Rodham Clinton is unfit for elective office."

She really is the Marianas Trench of American politics.

AM Jmax rollcall

[Other Tom]

Just a hint of what we're going to be reading for the next five years, and let's hope it's not nine.

[TexasToast]

You folks are getting upset over a puff piece like this?

She can't possibly do worse than the current bunch, and lo and behold, she is probably the most "conservative" democrat running. You guys had your chance to run things, and the results are, well, somewhat less than stellar. Lets see - the military, the budget, the state department, the justice department....

What's not been mismanaged/damaged?

[MayBee]

Oh Heavens-
Look at this:

ctober 24, 2007

NOTICE OF FULL COMMITTEE HEARING

The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled a hearing on "FISA Amendments: How to Protect Americans’ Security and Privacy and Preserve the Rule of Law and Government Accountability" for Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 10:00 a.m. in Room 226 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building.

By order of the Chairman

Witness List

Hearing before the
Senate Judiciary Committee

on

"FISA Amendments: How to Protect Americans’ Security and Privacy and Preserve the Rule of Law and Government Accountability"

Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 226
10:00 a.m.

Panel I:

Kenneth L. Wainstein
Assistant Attorney General
National Security Division
U.S. Department of Justice

Panel II:

Edward Black
President and CEO
Computer & Communications Industry Association
Washington, DC

Morton H. Halperin
Director of U.S. Advocacy
Open Society Institute
Washington, DC

Too frightening even for Halloween.

[Rick Ballard]

"she is probably the most "conservative" democrat running"

Trotsky or Lenin? Menshevik or Bolshevik?

Tough choices for for Democrat progs. Which type of thief do you prefer, TT? If 'Big Sister' is too conservative for you will the ambulance chaser do? Or is Obambi the one?

[Sue]

TT,

LOL. You have such a way with words. Upset? Does anyone appear upset? Or merely amused that once again everyone has memory problems? I vote the latter.

[centralcal]

THE PLANK SPEAKS - posted today at noon. See my post in the Ignorance is Bliss thread.

Ignorance is bliss - highly appropriate!

[Other Tom]

Let's discuss, TToast: Budget's fine (deficit a trivial, and shrinking, percentage of GDP, while the Reagan boom continues); military's winning a war the Democrats declared lost six months ago; state department no longer burdened with the grotesque Madeleine Albright (how I miss her dancing a jig with Kim Il Song!); justice department no longer burdened with Janet Reno or Web Hubbell (wait, I forgot--he left early for the slammer).

[glasater]

A Birthday Present for Hilary

[LindaK]

And who could forget her predecessor, that dynamo Warren Christopher. Or Hazel O'Leary. And what about Sandy Berger and Henry Cisneros who faced federal charges of stealing documents and perjury, respectively (maybe both). And Ron Brown, who died in a mysterious plane crash. And Vince Foster, who died under mysterious cicumstances. Then there was the WH staff: remember ex-bouncer Craig Livingston? Or Clinton's best buddy Dan Lasater, convicted for cocaine distribution. All of the Clinton's antics were chronicled by former FBI agent Gary Aldrich.

[Other Tom]

Shame on you, LindaK--you're slighting such worthies as Kimba Wood, Lani Guinier, and of course the Fun Couple of the Decade, Marc and Denise Rich.

Juanita Broaddrick...Paula Jones...Johnny Chung...Lippo Group...Joycelyn Elders...Hugh Rodham...Roger Clinton...Tony Rodham...Fun Couple Runners-Up Jim and Linda McDougal...Sidney Blumenthal...

[Forbes]

Hey, OT, don't forget that other Lincoln bedroom fun couple, the Thomasons--Harry and Linda Bloodworth--of TV's "Designing Women" fame.

[Forbes]

Oh, and does anyone else think the government might be a little too large when a Senator (as Hillary does) has a staff of 55?

55!

[PeterUK]

"She can't possibly do worse than the current bunch,"

You really want your country to be run by the Hillary Land Foundation"?

[capitano]

Don't forget Bernie Schwartz -- Clinton's #1 campaign contributor -- whose Loral Corporation sold missile guidance technology to China in violation of U.S. law after Ron Brown took him on a trade mission to grease the skids.

[Ralph L]

has a staff of 55
Presumably, that includes those in NY.
Still ridiculous, but of course, None of them works toward a Senator's reelection.

[Forbes]

Well Ralph, somebody has to stay in the office to get the nation's work done while Hillary is out on the road campaigning. So, literally, they're not campaigning for her, but don't even a few of her Senate staffers travel with her while she's on the road campaigning?

I'd say that's working--not toward a Senator's reelection--but toward her Presidential candidacy.

[narciso]

Morton !@#!#@$Halperin, the former Johnson holdover in the NSC that was negotiating awy the US force's efforts in Saigon by forcing a Cong coalition govt, who quite, wrote a tell tale book of the period, denouncing the "Lawless Empire" stood for Agee, disclosing CIA officers names, and testified against the adoption of the Richard Welch bill, the IOIA. Supported
the Sandinistas and the FMLN. Ended up as
Clinton's peace keeping czar at the State
Department; now a VP at the Sorosian CAP.

[Other Tom]

Anyone mind if I import this quote, via the estimable Taranto, from one Brad DeLong, a liberal Democrat who had the honor of working in the Hillary Clinton Health Care Task Force during her first term as First Lady:

"My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly. . . .

"Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch--the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president."

[Barney Frank]

Since it's Hillary's birthday shouldn't we be celebrating her namesake Sir Edmund as well?

Oh wait I forgot Hill pawned that self inflicted fable off on her dead mother. What class; when caught in a lie toss your mom's corpse to the wolves.
The blue light special; buy one psychopath and get a pathological liar for free. Fielders choice as to which is which.

[clarice]

Her mother's not dead. She lives in Hillary's house in D.C. Although one wonders when she'll be pawned off on Betty Currie.

[Jane]

A couple of weeks ago Hill talked about her mother "living with us" present tense.

First I was wondering where, secondly I was wondering who the "us" was and now you are saying she is dead.

Hmmmm

[Ralph L]

Clarice!

Or run over like Buddy. Georgetown traffic is brutal.

[Barney Frank]

Thanks for the correction guys.

Let me rephrase it;
Hillary has passed her fantabulism about the origin of her name off on her mother who, whilst still apparently living, does so amongst the undead in Hill's DC batcave.

BTW TT, Hillary is not the most conservative Dem, she may very well be the most radical, but she is definitely the least principled. She affects moderation as it hoodwinks more voters and attracts more large donations from the numerous indigent Chinese vagrants who seem to frequent her social circle.

[maryrose]

As Bob Dole said in 1996-follow the money whenever a Clinton is running. Some would say Spitzer's rush to give illegals driver's licences is a way to help illegals vote in 08 for Hillary.Motor-voter takes over our electoral system. We all know how much the Clintons love to hang with the felons--Norman Hsu or Peter Paul anyone?

[Porchlight]

Some would say Spitzer's rush to give illegals driver's licences is a way to help illegals vote in 08 for Hillary.Motor-voter takes over our electoral system.

I wouldn't be surprised. But why would Hillary need any help in NY state? Unless there's something we don't know about. Maybe they really are that afraid of Rudy...

[reyrtdudri]

肺癌

href="http://www.aizhengw.com/aizheng/zhongliu/291522.htm">胃癌

href="http://www.aizhengw.com/aizheng/zhongliu/291714.htm">肝癌

href="http://www.aizhengw.com/aizheng/zhongliu/281617.htm">食道癌

[sophy]

Welcome to our game world, my friend asks me to buy some 12sky gold .