It’s difficult for us idle retirees to imagine how anyone’s itinerary for any period of time could run to over 11,000 pages, but Hillary Clinton has just released one, finally.
My first thought was of the old lawyer’s trick of drowning the opponents in paper when they insist you produce such-and-such document. “Okay, you win. Here it is, somewhere in these 11,000 pages.”
Then I wondered how long it would take reporters to go through all that paper and come up with something they deemed newsworthy. It didn’t take long. Already we know that a lot of the text has been redacted. Hmm. Okay, you wouldn’t want to release private phone numbers or something like that. But come on, it’s an itinerary! How damning could it be? You don’t put state secrets in a schedule. Do you?
And then, voila! Over at The Nation, John Nichols finds that Hillary never opposed NAFTA. Never. Not ever. And yet she has insisted throughout her campaign that she has always been a critic of NAFTA.
Oh, snap! Who’d have guessed? Who’d have believed a candidate for president would … as Nichols so delicately puts it … lie?
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Being a critic of NAFTA is not the same as opposing it. I am not trying to parse or make excuses here. There was a lot of pressure to pass NAFTA and Bill Clinton had a solidly Republican Congress that wanted it. It was clear they could override a veto. NAFTA also looked promising to a lot of Democrats (and to liberals around the world who were embracing the free market, such as New Zealand). Scholars thought it offered hope of economic development for women in poor countries. It didn’t work out that way, and it did have plenty of opponents at the time, but I can well believe Sen. Hillary Clinton both had doubts and did support it. For a wonderful plan that would have made NAFTA a completely different vehicle, see Alexandra Maravel’s article from 1995 in the Northwest Law Review.
Sorry, Northwestern Univ.
I also think that to be critical of something is not the same as opposing it. In fact, a critical attitude often means a rather intense participation, even a hopeful participation.
I do not think she is much of a liar. She does not have enough imagination, and she hasa technocrat’s prefab language. Also, she seems to have an excellent memory for data and numbers. Liars often have a bad memory and think other people won’t remember either.
The best that I have heard against her came from the extreme right and was that she is an ideologist, somebody who will try to change the world according to a basic moralistic conviction which in theory would entail dangers of despotism.
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huntingtondonpost and cantueso, you’re both right about the definition of “critic,” “criticize,” etc. My internal editor went to sleep or something. 🙁
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To “Huntingtondonpost”
Where is your blog? You should look up your profile at WordPress and fill out the URL so that your user name becomes linked to your blog and readers can find you.
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To -30-
Don’t worry, your avatar changed back to red (referring to your comment about the Alamillo bridge on my blog)..
Cantueso, I did as you suggested. Thanks.
Interesting point you had about memory and lying. My dad was a cop and made a similar observation once.
To huntingdonpost
The problem is that the “interesting point” about lying is not mine. It is not by Shakespeare either, but by somebody whose PRs are in a similar plight. He wrote a few hundred pages about his great love who was beautiful, but dumb, and always lied. He terrified her by using his wits to unveil her lies one by one, making her stumble and contradict herself and asking her to swear on the medal of the Virgin. She never understood why her lies did not work with him.
Hey 30,
you’re not really surprised by any of this, are you? I’m not. We’ve seen plenty of Hillary and her shenanigans, no reason to believe we’d see anything other than that.
Though I really had to laugh when you said 11,000 pages – my God, where the heck did she go?
WC
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I didn’t make up that number; that’s what our trusted media reported. Pretty incredible isn’t it?
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Hillary’s been lying all her adult life. Kind of reminds me of…. George W Bush and Dick Cheney.
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You would doubt the word of the POTUS?! 😉
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This began about NAFTA, but I would like to point out something that I think shows principle. It’s certainly fair to have disagreements about who is the better candidate. But with all the mudslinging (and I don’t say either Dem campaign has been without this) I think it is important to note that Hillary Clinton took the time out of this race to introduce into the Senate the bill to support UNFPA. Neither Sen. Obama nor Sen. McCain, as far as I know, introduced any legislation while on the campaign trail, and this particular legislation demonstrates her genuine commitment to motherhood, to safe health care for everyone (not just in the U.S.), and foreign affairs at the level of real people’s lives.
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Thanks for noting this. (I confess I didn’t know what UNFPA was.) Just last week I was griping to my son about the candidates spending what will have been almost two years campaigning instead of being in Washington doing their jobs as senators. They continue to collect their salaries while their constituents go without a senator. Our election system definitely needs an overhaul.
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