'Barack Obama Is My Candidate'
Clinton Urges Support, Calls for Party Unity
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 27, 2008; A01
DENVER, Aug. 26 -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton roused the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night with sharp criticism of Sen. John McCain and a full-throated endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama, her former rival for the party's nomination, urging Democrats to put the long and bitter battle behind them and unite to take back the White House in November.
"You haven't worked so hard over the last 18 months, or endured the last eight years, to suffer through more failed leadership," Clinton told an audience packed to overflowing at Denver's Pepsi Center. "No way. No how. No McCain. Barack Obama is my candidate. And he must be our president."
With some Clinton supporters still voicing reluctance to back the senator from Illinois, the former first lady's address was the most highly anticipated of the convention, short of Obama's acceptance speech on Thursday night. Her appearance was designed to signal the final transition from leader of her own historic campaign, which drew 18 million votes and pushed Obama to the limit, to unabashed supporter of the party's presumptive nominee.
Introduced as "my hero" by her daughter, Chelsea, Clinton received a thunderous welcome when she walked onstage to a sea of white placards with her familiar "Hillary" signature in blue. Before her entrance, delegates watched a video, narrated by her daughter, that not only paid tribute to her campaign but also gently mocked her well-known laugh and her inability to carry a tune.
Clinton described the passions that drove her to seek the presidency, including a desire to rebuild the economy, enact universal health care, end the war in Iraq and stand up for what she called "invisible" Americans. "Those are the reasons I ran for president. These are the reasons I support Barack Obama. And those are the reasons you should, too," she told an audience that included her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and Obama's running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.).
When she finished, the white placards that had greeted her gave way to narrow blue-and-white signs that said "Obama" on one side and "Unity" on the other, as well as signs that said "Hillary" and "Unity."
Clinton called McCain "a colleague and a friend who has served his country with honor." But she told the delegates, "We don't need four more years of the last eight years," and she drew a huge cheer when she described McCain as a virtual clone of President Bush who would continue the administration's policies.
"It makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities," she said, referring to the site of the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. "Because these days, they're awfully hard to tell apart."
Obama aides said he called Clinton after watching her speech at a house in Billings, Mont., and thanked her for her support. He also called Bill Clinton and congratulated him on his wife's performance.
Before Hillary Clinton arrived at the convention, former Virginia governor Mark Warner, delivering the keynote address, described Obama as the candidate best equipped to put the United States on course to win "the race for the future" in an increasingly competitive global economy.
Arguing that the status quo "just won't cut it," Warner said McCain would explode the deficit, ignore the nation's infrastructure needs and continue spending $10 billion a month on the Iraq war. "That's four more years that we just can't afford," he said to cheers. "Barack Obama has a different vision and a different plan."
The election, Warner said, is about not left vs. right but future vs. past. He said Obama would not govern as a partisan Democrat but would reach out to the opposition to get things done. "We need leaders who will appeal to us not as Republicans or Democrats but first and foremost as Americans," he said.
As convention delegates looked toward the evening program, top Democratic elected officials continued to raise questions about Obama's campaign strategy and worried aloud that he must do more to overcome the doubts that voters in their states have about his readiness to be president. Their concerns came as McCain blasted Obama in a speech to the American Legion convention in Phoenix.
Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a prominent Clinton supporter, said that Obama is still struggling to connect with working-class voters and that the presumptive nominee reminded him of Adlai Stevenson, the brainy Illinoisan who lost the presidential campaigns of 1952 and 1956.
"You ask him a question, and he gives you a six-minute answer," Rendell told Washington Post reporters and editors. "And the six-minute answer is smart as all get-out. It's intellectual. It's well framed. It takes care of all the contingencies. But it's a lousy sound bite."
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) said Obama's campaign must demonstrate its willingness to engage against a Republican Party that he said is well skilled in political combat.
"The only thing they're going to do is, in old Brooklyn terms, rabbit-punch every day, and Obama has to show the American people that he can rabbit-punch, that he can be in that street fight," he told The Post. "I think there was a reluctance initially in the Obama campaign to engage in that. I think they now realize they have to."
If Monday night's convention program lacked a fighting spirit, Obama brought his to the campaign trail on Tuesday -- fiercely laying out the case for his candidacy and the contrast with McCain. Obama even mentioned McCain's prisoner-of-war status in Vietnam in a way that suggested he will begin to challenge that as a credential for being president.
"John McCain has a great biography, has been a POW," Obama told a small group gathered at an aircraft maintenance facility in Kansas City, Mo. "I have a funny name." He said the Republicans are arguing "that you don't know whether I can be trusted to lead."
"But I'm just going to remind everyone here: This election is not about me," he said. "It's about you. It's about who's going to be fighting for you."
McCain, meanwhile, continued to pound away at Obama in his speech to the American Legion. He accused the senator from Illinois of failing to stand up to criticism of the United States elsewhere in the world and ridiculed his rival's words during a speech in Berlin last month, in which Obama said "the world stands as one" as it looks to the future.
"The Cold War ended not because the world stood 'as one' but because the great democracies came together, bound together by sustained and decisive American leadership," McCain said.
That Republican effort continued with a new McCain ad that uses Clinton's words about her rival during the Democratic primary campaign in an ad about a 3 a.m. phone call to the White House: "I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002." A narrator in the McCain ad continues: "Hillary's right. John McCain for president."
And even after Clinton's speech Tuesday night, McCain's campaign made it clear that it would not hesitate to continue invoking her rhetoric from the primary season.
"Senator Clinton ran her presidential campaign making clear that Barack Obama is not prepared to lead as commander in chief," McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said. "Nowhere tonight did she alter that assessment. Nowhere tonight did she say that Barack Obama is ready to lead. Millions of Hillary Clinton supporters and millions of Americans remain concerned about whether Barack Obama is ready to be president."
As Democrats looked to day two of their convention, they were still debating what had happened on opening night. An ailing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) electrified the crowd with a speech urging the party to rally behind Obama, and the candidate's wife, Michelle, in the final speech of the night, made a powerful case that her husband's biography and values are widely shared by the American people.
But the general absence of criticism of McCain or Bush left some Democrats wondering whether they had sacrificed an opportunity to fire back at Republicans at a moment when one of the largest audiences of the campaign may be tuning in.
Obama officials defended the scripting of Monday's program as necessary to begin filling in Obama's profile but said that as the week goes forward, the GOP will receive plenty of tough criticism.
In contrast to Monday's opening program, Tuesday's speakers criticized McCain and Bush. Democrats cast McCain as a clone of the president, out of touch with the lives of ordinary Americans and an advocate of economic policies that would widen the income gap between rich and poor.
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, in whose state Obama's mother was born, called McCain a candidate who "believes in country-club economics," who would privatize Social Security, and who has supported tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.
She also mocked McCain for the number of houses that he and his wife, Cindy, own. "Barack Obama has a plan to save the dream of homeownership for families who've lost their homes or fear they can never afford one -- unlike John McCain, who has so many he can't keep track of them all," she said.
Rendell, whose unscripted remarks earlier Tuesday may have created some heartburn for the Obama team, was fully on script when he appeared onstage in Denver, attacking McCain on energy policy.
"If you look past the speeches to his record, it's clear: John McCain has never believed in renewable energy, and he won't make it part of America's future," Rendell said. "For all his talk, here's the truth: John McCain voted against establishing a national renewable-energy standard. He voted against tax incentives for renewable-energy companies. And for all his talk of drilling, he refused to endorse a bipartisan effort to expand domestic oil production because that bipartisan proposal would end tax breaks for Big Oil."
The night's speakers also included Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (Pa.), a prominent Obama supporter during the Democratic primaries. Sixteen years ago, his father, then governor of Pennsylvania, was denied a speaking slot in part because he opposed abortion rights.
"Barack Obama and I have an honest disagreement over the issue of abortion," Casey said Tuesday night. "But the fact that I'm speaking here tonight is testament to Barack's ability to show respect for the views of people who may disagree with him."
Staff writers Shailagh Murray in Denver, Anne E. Kornblut with Obama and Michael D. Shear with McCain contributed to this report.
Shame, shame, shame Mr. McCain, on your use of Senator Clinton to try to divide the Democratic Party. A tireless warrior for average working Americans is being used against her will to forward a message that she obviously disdains. Is it because she is a woman that you feel so free to use her like a piece of bubble gum to try to stick together your broken message? You are a sad little old man with nothing to offer anyone who isn't as afraid of the world as you are.
Since John McCain and the republican party have such a friendly relationship with the Clintons lately; he should put Hillary on his ticket!
The GOP have become very good at manipulating the gullible people of this country, and so far, their campaign exploiting Hillary is working. If McCain can get all of those "18 million" voters on his side that voted for Hillary; he can win easily, right? Since all of her followers say they'll vote for McCain; he could 'seal the deal' by naming her as his VP!!!!! She still has a chance!!! Show your support for Hillary!
Let John McCain know; go to johnmccain.com
(oh that's right, he doesn't know how to use a computer, sorry.........)
It happens all the time, people have their favorites; like on American Idol, as soon as their pick loses; they come up with some kind of controversy as the reason why their pick lost; it's never "fair and square" to the loser.
So now what? Do we stop watching? Stop following the game? Stop participating?
NO! Because this presidential election is NOT a GAME; it is our future and we have to choose our next leader.
Do we want more of the same from the War hero that left his first wife for the (almost half his age) millionaire Cindy, the one who saber rattles ANY country that's in the news?
McCain & the Republican party are USING Hillary; her along with her "die-hards" have become enablers and are doing NOTHING to stop it!!!!!!!
..........Don't be an enabler~ don't allow yourself to be used!
Published on Saturday, July 28, 2007 by the McClatchy Newspapers
Hillary Clinton: Right-Wing Darling?
WASHINGTON -- Since when is Hillary Clinton the pin-up gal of conservative pundits?
After Clinton delivered a foreign-policy cold-cock to Barack Obama's head during a Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday:
- Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard, a neo-conservative weekly, wrote that she delivered her answer to the now-famous "would-you-meet-with-despots" question "firmly and coolly."
- Rich Lowry of National Review, a conservative weekly, gushed like a schoolboy with a new crush: "She excels . . . Clinton has run a nearly flawless campaign and has done more than any other Democrat to show she's ready to be president."
- David Brooks, the conservative columnist at The New York Times, wrote that Clinton "seems to offer the perfect combination of experience and change" and said she's changing perceptions in a way that may persuade voters to give her a second look.
- Charles Krauthammer, the conservative columnist of The Washington Post, summed up the Clinton-Obama smackdown: "The grizzled veteran showed up the clueless rookie."
All this from members of a crowd that's spent the better part of two decades demonizing Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
Is the conservative chattering class just hedging its bets, wary that Clinton might win the White House and banish them all?
Or is it a set-up: The vast right-wing conspiracy pumping up the polarizing candidate they really want to face in the general election?
Naturally, no one in politics wants to talk about that with their names attached, lest they alienate people whose favor they need. But here's what some political strategists said when given anonymity:
"Absolutely," said one Democrat, citing Clinton's high unfavorable ratings (42 percent in a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, twice Obama's 21 percent). "Look at Fox News. They play her up all the time. Image-wise, they think she's the one Democrat they can beat right now."
"A plausible theory," said a Republican strategist with a top-tier GOP candidate. "Hillary Clinton is our best shot to win the White House. That's pretty much consensus by Republican insiders. It's a really crappy environment for us right now. What she does, and what Obama doesn't do yet, is single-handedly solve our base problems. Because of who she is."
Others laugh off the "set up Hillary" theory.
"The vast conspiracy is not that well organized," said John Hinderaker, co-founder of Power Line, a popular conservative blog. "We couldn't pull that off if we tried."
Conservative admiration for Clinton - on the foreign-policy debate question specifically and the way she's running her campaign generally - is real, said Hinderaker, who added that he thought she'd be a tougher opponent for Republicans than the less-experienced Obama or the smooth former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.
Could the plaudits of the right hurt Clinton with the left-ish voters who dominate the Democratic primaries? That's clearly what Obama thinks, as he mocks Clinton's position as "Bush-Cheney lite."
The question, briefly, was whether a new president should meet with anti-American leaders without pre-conditions in his or her first year in office.
Obama said sure. Hillary said not without preliminary diplomacy to avoid getting used in a propaganda trap. They've been sniping at each other about it ever since. She said he's naive. He said her position of not talking to bad guys sounds like Bush, and of course he'd do some preliminary diplomacy, too.
This 60-second sound bite's not much of a way to choose a president, to be sure, but it's the closest the two Democratic frontrunners have come so far to taking each other on frontally, so politicos are feasting on it.
The Clinton camp believes it won the weeklong spat. Her supporters aren't concerned about liberals being upset by conservatives' praise for Clinton, pointing out that many - though not all - on the left also say that Clinton's debate answer was better than Obama's.
Edwards, running to the populist left of both Clinton and Obama, said at the debate that he agreed with Clinton. And in The Nation, a liberal weekly, David Corn wrote that, "this moment illustrated perhaps the top peril for the Obama campaign: with this post-9/11 presidential contest, to a large degree, a question of who should be the next commander in chief, any misstep related to foreign policy is a big deal for a candidate who has little experience in national security matters."
If Clinton can get the National Review and The Nation to agree that she won a debate, maybe diplomacy is her strengthA Chronology: Key Moments In The Clinton-Lewinsky Saga
Myth: Ken Starr's investigation was ethical and fair.Fact: Ken Starr's investigation was filled with conflicts of interests, illegalities and improprieties.
Summary
Ken Starr's investigation was not independent, but heavily based in right-wing politics, replete with conflicts of interest, illegal leaks, perjury traps, overzealous prosecution, and ties to Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire funding the scandals.
Below are 68 reasons why you should not trust Kenneth Starr or his investigation: (1)
Improprieties in gaining the office of independent counsel:
1. Starr was appointed by conservative judge David Sentelle's panel immediately after Sentelle had a lunch with Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth, North Carolina's right-wing, Clinton-hating senators.
2. Judge Sentelle's wife went to work for Senator Faircloth's office five months after Starr's appointment.
3. When the Justice Department considered Ken Starr for Independent Prosecutor, Starr failed to admit numerous conflicts of interest.
Conflicts of interest:
4. Before his appointment, Starr wrote a friend-of-the-court brief about Paula Jones for the Supreme Court.
5. Starr wrote a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the Republican National Committee for Bush attorney general Richard Thornborough.
6. Starr maintained his million-dollar-a-year private law practice while working as independent counsel.
7. Starr represented Big Tobacco while working as independent counsel; Bill Clinton is Big Tobacco's number one enemy.
8. Starr's law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, was being sued by the Resolution Trust Corporation while Starr investigated the RTC.
9. Starr represented International Paper, which had sold land to the Whitewater Development Company.
10. Starr sits on the board of the conservative Washington Legal Foundation, funded by Big Tobacco.
11. Starr sought out a book deal with Newt Gingrich's agent, Lunn Chu.
12. Starr has ties to right-wingers James Moody and George Conway, the Jones/Tripp lawyers.
13. Starr was forced by Associate Attorney General Webb Hubbell to stop representing Bell Atlantic; later, Starr got even by prosecuting Hubbell into oblivion.
Illegalities and ethical lapses in the investigation:
14. Starr leaks like a sieve, contrary to the law preventing him from disclosing information to the press.
15. Starr contributed to a New York Times Magazine article to promote his investigation.
16. Starr wired Linda Tripp before asking for authority to pursue those allegations.
17. Starr pressured Lewinsky to wear a wire before asking for authority to pursue further allegations.
18. Starr's only key Whitewater witness, David Hale, is reported to have been paid by Richard Mellon Scaife, who is funding the Clinton scandals.
19. Starr's only key Whitewater witness, David Hale, is a proven liar.
20. Starr's own investigation gave David Hale more than $60,000 for living expenses.
21. Starr's Whitewater state trooper witnesses were paid by Jerry Falwell.
22. Someone at Starr's private law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, faxed an affidavit from the Jones case to the Chicago Tribune before it was filed in court.
23. Starr's star "witness," Linda Tripp, worked simultaneously with Starr's and Jones's lawyers.
24. Starr had gained detailed knowledge of Monica Lewinsky's sealed deposition in the Jones suit within hours of its completion.
25. Starr appears to have set a "perjury trap" for Clinton.
26. Apparently for political reasons, Starr withheld his report clearing Clinton on Vince Foster's suicide until after the 1996 elections.
27. Apparently for political reasons, Starr withheld his exoneration of Clinton on Travelgate, Filegate and Whitewater until after the 1998 elections.
28. Apparently for political reasons, the Starr Report, complete with pornographic details, was released to Congress and the public just a month before the 1998 elections.
Overzealousness of prosecution:
29. Starr held Monica Lewinsky without a lawyer for eight or nine hours. (She was technically free to go, but coerced psychologically with threats of 27-year prison sentences.)
30. Starr tried to force Marcia Lewis, Lewinksy's mother, to testify against her. (She became ill as a result.)
31. Starr's investigators were bearing guns when they interrogated Lewinksy's brother.
32. Starr tried to pressure Whitewater witness Steve Smith to testify falsely, according to Smith.
33. Starr threatened Whitewater witness Sarah Hawkins with indictment without any evidence of wrong-doing.
34. Starr subpoenaed a sixteen-year old boy at his school to intimidate him.
35. Starr subpoenaed Robert Weiner for making a phone call from his home.
36. Starr kept Susan McDougal locked in jail for eighteen months and tried to get her to testify to an imaginary affair.
37. Starr subpoenaed White House aide Sidney Blumenthal for talking with the press about his investigation.
38. Starr subpoenaed a Little Rock home decorating store where Webster Hubbell shopped.
39. Starr subpoenaed bookstores where Monica Lewinsky shopped, trying to learn her reading habits.
40. Starr has subpoenaed Secret Service agents to testify against the president.
41. Starr tried to dig up dirt on the president's sex life long before the Monica Lewinsky allegations.
42. Starr's investigators harrassed White House Interior Department liaison Bob Hattoy about recruiting gay people to work in the Clinton Administration.
43. Starr's lieutenant Michael Emmick is a notoriously vicious prosecutor.
44. Starr's lieutenant Hickman Ewing is also a notoriously vicious prosecutor.
45. Starr's lieutenant Bruce Udolf violated someone's civil rights with his prosecutorial excess.
46. Starr's lieutenant Jackie Bennett says he "didn't know" Mickey Kantor was the President's personal attorney.
47. Starr has maintained both Washington D.C. and Virginia Grand Juries, so that he can berate black witnesses in front of a white jury.
48. Starr has tried to breach the attorney-client privilege of Vince Foster, Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton.
Starr's far-right activism and bias (which prevent him from being an independent counsel, unlike his predecessor, the moderate and ideal Robert Fiske):
49. Starr considered running for a Republican Senate nomination in Virginia.
50. Starr was co-chairman of an unsuccessful Republican congressional campaign (Kyle McSlarrow, 1994).
51. Starr pushed a Whitewater story as a member of the ABA Journal editorial board.
52. Starr contributed $5,475 to Republican political candidates in the 1993-94 election cycle.
53. Starr contributed $1,750 to a political action committee gave money to 1995-96 GOP presidential candidates.
54. Starr, according to journalist David Brock, is a mainstay at right-wing parties.
55. Starr appeared on radio programs to speak in support of Paula Jones's case against the president.
Starr's connections to Richard Mellon Scaife and other Clinton-haters financing the scandals:
56. Star accepted a Scaife-funded tenured chair at Pepperdine University. (The ensuing scandal caused him to reject it.)
57. Starr sits on the board of the Scaife-funded Washington Legal Foundation.
58. Starr has done work for the Scaife-founded Landmark Legal Foundation, which has done work for Paula Jones.
59. Starr prepared a legal brief for Paula Jones on behalf of the Independent Women’s Forum, which is Scaife-financed.
60. Starr spoke at the Richard Mellon Scaife-funded Property Rights Group while working as independent counsel.
61. Starr spoke at right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson's Regent University while working as independent counsel.
62. Starr performed legal work for the conservative Bradley Foundation.
Other Starr fumbles:
63. Starr has spent nearly $40 million to smear the president and has found no evidence of wrong-doing anywhere, except for the cover-up of a sexual affair.
64. Starr has described no fewer than ten "critical stages" of his Whitewater investigation that never amounted to anything.
65. Starr resigned before completion of his Whitewater probe, only to come back after intense right-wing pressure.
66. Starr himself has admitted that he has exercised bad judgment.
67. Starr has been accused of shielding perjury in a General Motors case.
68. When Starr appeared before the House Judicial committee, he answered at least 30 times with statements like "I can't recall…" "I don't remember…" even for momentous events like when he learned about the Tripp tapes.
Return to OverviewEndnotes:
1. Sixty of these points are taken from James Carville, "Sixty Reasons Why I Don't Trust Ken Starr's Investigation," ...And the Horse He Rode In On (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), pp. 143-147.
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