Hilary Must Say She Regrets Her Vote

Wonder how long Hilary Clinton's Senate vote in favor of war against Iraq back in 2003 will continue to haunt her presidential campaign unless she speaks up and in a genuine way says she's sorry for that vote and the disasters that have followed it. One would like to think a year from now American forces will be out of Iraq and when the election takes place in November 2008 her vote won't be a crucial issue. By all accounts Clinton is doing a sterling job as New York State Senator and is well qualified in other respects. If she doesn't win, how long will it be before another woman appears to run for the office in subsequent elections? Too long. That being so, Hilary must lighten her baggage to run all the way to the winning post.

Some would say this is no time for "dissing" the only woman running for President. But I would say the primary season is the right time. As we move up to the primary elections, Democrats not only have the right to criticize their primary candidates but to hold their feet to the fire, to put them in the crucible, so that the outcome will produce the best woman or man to oppose the other party's contender. If Hilary does become our candidate, then we will back her with all our might--because the thought of another Republican presidency is anathema to us. In the meantime, she must speak out honestly to the American people. Recently Paul Krugman expressed concerns about Clinton's refusal to admit that her vote was wrong: Following are excerpts:

"Many people are perplexed by the uproar over Senator Hillary Clinton’s refusal to say, as former Senator John Edwards has, that she was wrong to vote for the Iraq war resolution. Why is it so important to admit past error? And yes, it was an error — she may not have intended to cast a vote for war, but the fact is the resolution did lead to war; she may not have believed that President Bush would abuse the power he was granted, but the fact is he did.

The answer can be summed up in two words: heckuva job.
/snip
"For the last six years we have been ruled by men who are pathologically incapable of owning up to mistakes. And this pathology has had real, disastrous consequences.

/snip
"The experience of Bush-style governance, together with revulsion at the way Karl Rove turned refusal to admit error into a political principle, is the main reason those now-famous three words from Mr. Edwards — “I was wrong” — matter so much to the Democratic base.

"Many people are perplexed by the uproar over Senator Hillary Clinton’s refusal to say, as former Senator John Edwards has, that she was wrong to vote for the Iraq war resolution. Why is it so important to admit past error? And yes, it was an error — she may not have intended to cast a vote for war, but the fact is the resolution did lead to war; she may not have believed that President Bush would abuse the power he was granted, but the fact is he did.
/Snip

"The answer can be summed up in two words: heckuva job. Or, if you want a longer version: Medals of Freedom to George Tenet, who said Saddam had W.M.D., Tommy Franks, who failed to secure Iraq, and Paul Bremer, who botched the occupation.

Snip/
For the last six years we have been ruled by men who are pathologically incapable of owning up to mistakes. And this pathology has had real, disastrous consequences. The situation in Iraq might not be quite so dire — and we might even have succeeded in stabilizing Afghanistan — if Mr. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney had been willing to admit early on that things weren’t going well or that their handpicked appointees weren’t the right people for the job.

/Snip
"The experience of Bush-style governance, together with revulsion at the way Karl Rove turned refusal to admit error into a political principle, is the main reason those now-famous three words from Mr. Edwards — “I was wrong” — matter so much to the Democratic base.

"The base is remarkably forgiving toward Democrats who supported the war. But the base and, I believe, the country want someone in the White House who doesn’t sound like another George Bush. That is, they want someone who doesn’t suffer from an infallibility complex, who can admit mistakes and learn from them.

/Snip
"And there’s another reason the admission by Mr. Edwards that he was wrong is important. If we want to avoid future quagmires, we need a president who is willing to fight the inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom on foreign policy, which still — in spite of all that has happened — equates hawkishness with seriousness about national security, and treats those who got Iraq right as somehow unsound. By admitting his own error, Mr. Edwards makes it more credible that he would listen to a wider range of views.

Snip/
" Although she’s smart and sensible, she’s very much the candidate of the Beltway establishment — an establishment that has yet to come to terms with its own failure of nerve and judgment over Iraq. Still, she’s at worst a triangulator, not a megalomaniac; she’s not another Dick Cheney.

/snip
" For some reason Mrs. Clinton and her advisers have failed to grasp just how fed up the country is with arrogant politicians who can do no wrong. I don’t think she falls in that category; but her campaign somehow thought it was still a good idea to follow Karl Rove’s playbook, which says that you should never, ever admit to a mistake. And that playbook has led them into a political trap."

We have yet to hear from many in the media their apologies for backing the war with unseemly enthusiasm back in 2003. That's a subject for another blog.

For Krugman's entire and lengthy column go to Welcome to Pottersville blog, Jurassicpork


posted by jurassicpork @ 7:21 AM 7 comments links to this post