PROW: The Mishandling of Bush and Clinton

by Duane N. Burghard
© 2015

Like many of you, I was hoping to avoid this level of involvement in NEXT YEAR'S Presidential Election as an issue for at least 5 or 6 more months, but apparently our national need for goofy political theater has overtaken our desire for peace and quiet, so at the risk of adding my voice to an already annoying chorus, I will again step in to the fray this week with my "Political Rant Of the Week." And in this week's episode, I'm going to focus my attention squarely on the expected nominees; former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and former Secretary of State (and First Lady) Hillary Clinton. Each of these candidates has had a fairly major "wow, they really stepped in it" moment in recent days, and both moments exposed a really serious problem for them. Let's let Jeb go first.

Just last night, the former Florida Governor gave a "major foreign policy speech" at the Ronald Reagan library in California. The locale has often been the backdrop for major policy addresses in which a candidate or office holder lays out a "grand vision" of some kind or another. To be clear, the reviews of Bush's speech from the left and the right were not kind. The speech was labeled "vague" and "shallow" and "a hodgepodge" by critics on both sides, and was certainly not short on revisionist history concerning his brother's administration.

And then came the gaffe.

Bush was blistering in his criticism of President Obama and Secretary Clinton regarding their "fatal" error in Iraq. He criticized what he called the "premature withdrawal" of forces from the area. He said that the Obama Administration "stood by" as our "hard won victory" was "thrown away" in a "blind haste" to leave Iraq. It was a finely crafted, carefully worded, harsh and devastating attack ... with only one teeny tiny problem.

The "Status of Forces Agreement" to which Bush was referring, was signed on November 18, 2008 ... and while President Obama had already won the Presidential election at that point (and was President Elect Obama), the agreement was actually negotiated by, agreed to and signed by his brother, then President George W. Bush. Even worse, the only way the Obama Administration could have legally altered the agreement and stayed in Iraq, would have required a vote of the Iraqi Parliament to allow the troops to stay. And just to put that last little fact cherry on top of this awful sundae, President Obama did in fact send emissaries to Iraq (including members of President George W. Bush's Administration) to request that the agreement be altered so that more troops would be allowed to stay (a request that was turned down). Needless to say, the media has descended on this part of Bush's speech like a school of blunder starved piranha (ironic in a campaign season that includes Donald Trump, who is quite literally a one man blunder machine), but before we talk more about what I consider to be the key underlying problem here, let's check in across the hall at Clinton headquarters.


Just a few days ago, Secretary Clinton was asked to say whether or not she supported the Keystone XL pipeline expansion. Now, in fairness, not getting a yes or a no answer from a politician when they're asked a question that most of us would consider to be yes or no in nature isn't exactly new. Further, asking a politician whether or not they support something has frequently failed to receive a clear answer, and sometimes that's even fair and logical (for example, the candidate might say, "I support this part but not that," or "I can't support it until it includes this"), but even in those cases the candidate's relative position on the topic is generally pretty obvious based on their response.

Clinton flat out refused to answer the question,

The former Secretary of State later "clarified" her non-answer by saying that it was inappropriate to comment or "second guess" President Obama while he was still in office. Now that is very thoughtful of her, but here again is the teeny tiny problem with that answer: to date, Secretary Clinton has had NO problem either commenting on or second guessing a variety of other positions and issues where she and the President both agree and disagree. As a result, that response seems, well, maybe just a bit hypocritical and like she's completely trying to dodge an issue that is important to some of her larger campaign donors (a major image problem for Clinton within her own party).


Now, let's put these two moments together and see why they both have me so annoyed. These two candidates are, statistically, very likely to be the nominees of their respective parties next year ... and that, to me, is highly distressing at this point, and not because I care whether the brother of a former President and the wife of another are running. I want the best candidates that the parties can deliver, regardless of who they're related to (and BTW I am most emphatically NOT either stating or implying that's what we'd have, only that the arguments for not nominating them based solely on who they're related to seem silly to me). No, I'm highly distressed because they are the likely nominees. Further, in many ways, very credible and strong arguments can be made that they are in fact the two most qualified individuals running as well. But given those facts, in my opinion, they should both be way better than to be caught in moments like these. Governor Bush looks like a flat out idiot this morning because of this speech. He should immediately clean house. He should fire the idiot who wrote the speech, fire the idiot who didn't fact check it, and maybe go back to the mirror and have a long talk with himself about what the heck it is that HE actually thinks as opposed to what his handlers are telling him to say. Similarly, Secretary Clinton (who, let's face it, already has credibility issues with a good portion of the electorate) looks like she couldn't be honest with people if her life depended on it. She has simply GOT to learn how to, as they say, "ATFQ," and that's not going to happen until she jettisons whoever it is inside her campaign who is encouraging her to be so careful that it's impossible to be seen as even remotely honest or genuine.

What this comes down to, in my opinion, is that both of these candidates are very obviously allowing themselves to be "handled" by "political professionals" who are not only failing to correctly "handle" them, but are in fact instead making them look like stupid, weak and frightened doofuses. The American people are pretty clear about what they like and don't like, and one thing that they consistently really, really don't like, is a candidate who appears to be packaged and handled and controlled. They like it when they feel like a candidate is being honest with them ... even when that person is an blowhard media-hound buffoon ... and if you need to ask me who I'm referring to there, please don't, I'm already depressed).

Now, for those of you who don't know this about me, I know former Vice President Al Gore. We're not "buddies" and we don't talk on the phone, but we've had several opportunities over the years (via his Climate Project organization) to speak one on one, face to face, and I'm comfortable that he could probably pick my face out of a lineup. Here's why I told you that: Mr. Gore has a public perception issue. Most people who don't know him personally think he is dry, humorless, stolid, robotic, etc. This was a HUGE problem for him during the 2000 election campaign (a campaign during which I was horrified by the degree to which he was "handled"). The frustrating part for people who know him is that he's actually NOTHING like that public persona. In all of my interactions with him, I have found him to be warm, thoughtful, animated and funny. Because of my life experiences (mostly running for Congress a couple of times), I know a number of current and former national politicians, and NONE of them are as completely opposite from the public perception of them as Mr Gore.


My point this week is that the "macro" issue behind the challenges facing the Bush and Clinton campaigns is that they seem to be following the "Al Gore 2000" campaign playbook ... which is to say that they're going way too far in "handling" their candidates. They're so afraid of saying the wrong thing that they're not saying anything of substance. And they're not answering questions in a way that gives their audience a sense of their integrity or clarity on any issue. The end result of this approach is that they are endangering their candidates chances and making it harder for the electorate to make an informed choice. They are, in a sentence, accomplishing the very opposite of their intentions ... and that's bad for my country.