Rubio's different face, same message not likely to fool Latino voters

In his populist-inspired State of the Union speech, President Obama talked about how government should work for the many rather than the few, called for sensible debt reduction, an end to rampant cupidity at the top at the expense of a healthy middle class, progressive climate and energy policies, improving infrastructure which will create jobs, immigration reform, meeting the challenges terrorism and rogue nations, and guaranteeing the right to vote—apparently in reference to the Voting Rights Act, which  now may be gutted by the time the right-wing extremists on the U.S. Supreme Court—responsible for the outrage that is the Citizen’s United ruling—are finished with the Shelby County v. Holder case. Naturally, given the current make-up of the House of Representatives—where most of the majority Republicans are as ossified as the people who voted them into office—I don’t expect much beyond the rhetoric, but at least things can’t get any worse than when Republicans controlled everything for the first six years of the Bush administration.

Then I listened to, or tried to, Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio’s response. It’s funny, but I was about as impressed (not) by Rubio as I was by last year’s attempt by Republicans to shoehorn “color” into their pallid landscape--Louisiana governor and Indian-American Bobby Jindal. Now, the Republicans seem to believe that Rubio is their “Obama”—except that they forget that most of their voters are in the party because they perceive it as the “white people’s party.” The only reason why people like Rubio, Clarence Thomas and Michelle Malkin are allowed in is because they are even more extreme than the common run. The Republican leadership seems to believe that Latino voters—who past the façade of immigration rhetoric have been targeted for years with negative press and demonizing for political gain—are so stupid they will be swayed by superficial appearances. The real Rubio in the past opposed immigration reform, supported Arizona’s fascist “show me your papers” law, and has done his best to distance himself from “them”—and riding the wave of Tea Party extremism into the U.S. Senate in 2010. Even John McCain found it too much to swallow that Rubio all of sudden was hailed as the “savior” on immigration reform. 

Of course, immigration isn’t the only issue of concern to Latinos, and it is hard to believe that a party that has gone out of its way to show you how much it hates you can possibly win you on other issues.  It should be mentioned that Rubio opposed the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, making the offensive claim that “Those of us of Hispanic descent don’t expect special treatment, only the same treatment and same opportunities afforded to all Americans.” That’s just like a racist Republican—defining equal opportunity as “special treatment,” and using it as an excuse to discriminate. He could better have pointed to his own position—as a Republican “token.” 

Naturally, Rubio dropped the ball last Tuesday, and he didn’t need a water break to make that “point” loud and clear.  How could he not?  The scripted response to Obama SOTU speech could have been read by anyone in the party to the same effect.  Rubio started out with the usual right-wing excuse not to do anything—no taxes, no spending, no regulations. He talks about government programs that hurt the middle class, without specifying what exactly those are. But he does support government welfare for corporations—which is a contradiction in terms, but who’s paying attention? He claims that tax increases on the wealthy have hurt the middle class; he neglects to mention that businesses have managed to salted away $2 trillion in unused profits that could have been used to create jobs and increase pay. They certainly were not hurt by too much tax. He talked about the Republican’s “credible” plans to save Medicare, except that he forgot to mention that the “plan” is still a work in progress—like the Republican “Page not Found” health care “reform.” He talks about how to “save” the bloated military budget without tax increases, mainly by gutting programs that help the children and the poor; the Republicans already have a “plan” to do this on the table—apparently in reference to the discredited Paul Ryan budget. 

Of course, Rubio did mention immigration reform; the Wall Street Journal claims that he is “riding to the rescue” to get something passed. Which is odd, because Rubio rode into the Senate in 2010 on the Tea Party and its anti-immigrant tide, and as has been noted before, Rubio never showed much concern for the Latino community—particularly immigrants. The reality is that any claim that Rubio has a line to Latinos outside the conservative Cuban community is delusional. His rhetoric—as shown last Tuesday, is nothing but the same tired extreme-right line, offering nothing in the way of “change” save that he doesn’t quite appear to be as Caucasoid as the other people  these words usually come out of (well, there is Filipino Michelle Malkin, the “First Lady of Hate”); if you just listen to the words and not look at the face, Rubio is no different than any other Tea Party fanatic like Rand Paul. 

Republicans have learned nothing since they took a severe beating in the 1934 off-year elections; at the time, Senator William Borah of Idaho accused his party of political cowardice for not shedding its reactionary leadership, and of its failure to offer any sensible alternative to the New Deal—only the “Constitution,” which Borah pointed out could not be eaten by impoverished, hungry people. It doesn’t matter who is reading the script; it just makes it more hypocritical when a “minority” like Rubio is spreading the gospel of greed and white privilege. Who are Republicans fooling?

New report charges that Joe Paterno was unjustly demonized in Sandusky case

After reading the Freeh report on the Penn State child molestation case last year, I discovered that the evidence of a “cover-up” by three Penn State administrators and football coach Joe Paterno amounted to two or three pages worth of emails. We may presume that there were private discussions on handling what assistant coach Mike McQueary reported seeing in a campus shower room that were not recorded, but given the lack of evidence to judge what the accused knew of the exact nature Jerry Sandusky’s “activities”—none of his victims personally made an accusation against him until 2008—the Freeh report bases its conclusions on broad assumptions, understandable bias, and the “benefit” of hindsight. The report sought to put the worst possible spin on the administrators and Paterno, and there was clearly no effort at giving them a fair and impartial hearing. As for Sandusky, he has “defended” himself as being the “victim” of “troubled” kids looking for attention; only he and his wife continue to believe this. 

The Paterno family, angered about the how the Freeh report “unjustly” tarnished the late coach’s reputation, decided to hire the Washington D.C. law firm of King & Spalding to conduct their own “independent” report. This past weekend, their report, “The Rush to Injustice regarding Joe Paterno” was released. It is a scathing condemnation of the Freeh report and its influence on media reporting and NCAA sanctions against the school. Of course, it is natural that the “politically correct” thing to do is to insist that there was no “mitigating” factors in the way the Penn State Four handled the information they received, that we in the same situation would have acted differently. There is no doubt that in “hindsight” that is easy to say, but it is clear that given what was known,  Paterno—rather than being the all-powerful, all-knowing omnipotence on campus—seems to have been protected by an information cocoon, much the same way Ronald Reagan was from the details of the Iran-Contra scandal. As for the Penn State administrators, for right or wrong in their own minds, they apparently loathed to stir-up a media hornet’s nest, depending on other parties (like the Second Mile administrators) to “decide” for them what should be done based on the little information they allowed themselves to be privy to.

Unlike the Freeh report, the King & Spalding report did not rely on a literal or biased interpretation of the testimony that was presented to the grand jury. Three “prominent experts”—former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, Jim Clemente, a “former FBI profiler and child molestation and behavioral expert,” and Fred Berlin, a physician and psychologist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine—were consulted to examine and offer their conclusions on Paterno’s role in the scandal. What they found was perhaps predictably favorable to Paterno, at least in a legal sense given the current dearth of information about what he knew and when. This may change, of course, during the upcoming perjury trial of two of the administrators, although they would have little to gain by throwing Paterno under the bus at this point.

The report gets to the point right-off: That the experts “each carefully examined the July 12, 2012 report prepared by Louis Freeh, and have each determined that the report is deeply flawed and that key conclusions regarding Joe Paterno are unsubstantiated and unfair.” It makes the following charges:

(1) Joe Paterno never asked or told anyone not to investigate fully the allegations in 2001,

(2) Joe Paterno never asked or told anyone, including Dr. Spanier and Messrs. Curley and Schultz, not to report the 2001 incident, and 

(3) Joe Paterno never asked or told anyone not to discuss or to hide in any way the information reported by Mr. McQueary. Joe Paterno reported the information to his superior(s) pursuant to his understanding of University protocol and relied upon them to investigate and report as appropriate.

Furthermore,

“Perhaps most significantly, the findings in the Freeh Report about Mr. Paterno concerning his alleged knowledge of the 1998 incident and purported concealment of the 2001 incident were not properly supported…This lack of evidence supporting the Report’s most scathing findings and the serious flaws with respect to the process of the Special Investigative Counsel’s investigation cause me (Thornburgh) to conclude that the Report’s findings concerning Mr. Paterno are unjust and wrong.”

The King report further criticizes the Freeh report as having “missed a critical opportunity to educate the public on the identification of child sexual victimization, and instead used the platform created by this scandal to sensationalize the blaming of Joe Paterno. The Freeh report ignored decades of expert research and behavioral analysis regarding the appropriate way to understand and investigate a child sexual victimization case… Mr. Jim Clemente is one of the leading former FBI profilers of child sex offenders, and himself a survivor of childhood sexual victimization. As Mr. Clemente bluntly put it: ‘The SIC failed to properly factor the dynamics of acquaintance child sexual victimization cases into their investigation. Consequently, the SIC misinterpreted evidence and behavior and reached erroneous conclusions. Any investigation will reach the wrong result by using the wrong approach and by interpreting the facts through the wrong filter.’”

In examining what the accused knew of Sandusky’s activities, the report’s “expert analysis” of Sandusky revealed a “skilled and masterful manipulator, who deceived an entire community to obscure the signs of child abuse, using a variety of proven techniques. Those techniques included: perpetuating an image as a playful ‘nice guy’ who was a foster and adoptive parent with kids around him at all hours in all types of capacities, leveraging his position as a respected member of the community, and creating a children’s charity to legitimize his credibility in interacting with kids…Expert analysis shows that Jerry Sandusky fooled qualified child welfare professionals and law enforcement, as well as laymen inexperienced and untrained in child sexual victimization like Joe Paterno. Sandusky’s techniques as a pillar of the community created a proven psychological and cognitive impediment for them to recognize the red flags and other signs that Sandusky was a child molester. Joe Paterno himself knew very little about Jerry Sandusky’s personal life and did not know private details about Sandusky or his victims. 

“For decades, Joe Paterno respected Sandusky’s talent as a coach and professional colleague and recognized Sandusky’s widely-stated passion for helping kids, but the Freeh report missed that they disliked each other personally, had very little in common outside work, and did not interact much if at all socially…Expert analysis shows that while signs of Jerry Sandusky’s child molestation existed with the benefit of hindsight, at the time of the 2001 shower incident reported by graduate assistant Mike McQueary, information was conveyed to Joe Paterno in terms that were too general and vague for him to disregard decades of contrary experience with Sandusky and to conclude that Sandusky was a child predator.”

The former FBI profiler Clemente concluded that Paterno actions were like many people who are confronted with even the suggestion that someone they thought they knew was engaged in an activity beyond their own comprehension: ‘Given my 30 years of education, training and experience working, evaluating and assessing child sex crimes investigations around the world, it is my expert opinion that Paterno did not know, or even believe in the possibility, that Sandusky was capable of sexually assaulting boys. At worst, he believed that Sandusky was a touchy-feely guy who had boundary issues. This fact is clear from his repeated statements before he died…

“[Paterno] did what he believed was reasonable and necessary to address the situation based on his understanding of the facts, and his position at the time. Paterno did what most people who cared about children would have done in the same situation. More than a decade later, and in hindsight, Paterno showed his concern for the victims when he stated he, ‘wished [he] had done more…

“Paterno, like everyone else who knew Sandusky, simply fell victim to effective ‘grooming.’ [Grooming is a dynamic process of seemingly innocent, positive public behaviors by the offender, aimed at gaining the trust of the targeted child, parents and the community.] As an expert behavioral analyst and based on my review of the evidence, Paterno did not believe that the information he received from McQueary amounted to Sandusky being a predatory child sex offender.”

Clemente describes a man who “like many others, was fooled by Sandusky’s nice-guy, goofy image. In Mr. Clemente’s expert judgment as an FBI profiler who specializes in child sexual victimization investigations, Joe Paterno was not equipped to process and recognize a preferential ‘nice-guy’ child molester under the circumstances of this case. Mr. Clemente analyzed the 2001 report of a Sandusky shower incident from graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, to Joe Paterno. Mr. Clemente concluded that the report was couched in too vague and general terms for Joe Paterno, as a 72-year-old football coach who was untrained in the complicated, counterintuitive dynamics of child sexual victimization and who came from a traditional background where even consensual sex was not discussed, to conclude that Sandusky was a child molester…“Given my 30 years of education, training and experience working, evaluating and assessing child sex crimes investigations around the world, it is my expert opinion that Paterno did not know, or even believe in the possibility, that Sandusky was capable of sexually assaulting boys. At worst, he believed that Sandusky was a touchy-feely guy who had boundary issues. This fact is clear from his repeated statements before he died.”

There was an assumption by Freeh and the media that Paterno and Sandusky were “friends,” and this was a motive to “protect” Sandusky.” But the King report found that while the two coaches respected each other, they were not friends and had “clashed” for years. According to a 2012 biography of Paterno by Joe Posnanski, “The two men despised each other from the start. This was well-known among those who knew Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky, but at the end it seemed like nobody wanted to mention it. The news reports would assume they were the best of friends or, at the very least, colleagues who respected each other. . .Sandusky, in the words of Penn State’s marketing guru and many others, was ‘a knucklehead.’ He liked practical jokes and messing around, knocking a guy’s hat off his head, making prank calls, sneaking up behind people to startle them. . . At one of the first practices before the season, Sandusky was supposed to be on the field but was instead joking around with some players. . . Later, when Paterno watched film of the practice, he saw Sandusky running onto the field waving his arms like a bird and shouting, ‘The breakdown coach is on the way! The breakdown coach was on the way!’ It was ridiculous. Paterno called in Sandusky, screamed at him at length, called him a complete goofball. . . Over time, for all of their personal differences, Paterno did come to admire Sandusky’s coaching on the field. . . When he was focused, Sandusky was a force of nature around the players; he connected to them in ways Paterno never could. He joked with them, hugged them, taunted them, and often inspired them. The players, most of them, loved him for that. . . He was like a big brother teasing them, pushing them, grabbing them, reminding them that they could be great.”

Thus it was “easy” for Penn State officials to believe Sandusky’s explanation that he was just “horsing around” with the kids.

The King report pointed out that Paterno and the Penn State administrators were not the only people who made a mistake in their interpretation of Sandusky’s activities. “Between 1998 and 2001 alone, the following trained experts were fooled by Sandusky’s deceptions: a detective, a police officer, a caseworker for the Department of Public Welfare, a caseworker for the Centre County Children and Youth Services, an outside counselor who did contract work for Children and Youth Services, and apparently everyone at a kids charity, The Second Mile, including its executive director, Jack Raykovitz, who is a licensed psychologist.”  Furthermore, the fact that Sandusky was able to adopt six children demonstrated that he “was evaluated by state officials and a Pennsylvania judge for fitness to adopt; and six times Sandusky passed that expert scrutiny.”

The report noted that during the years that Sandusky was victimizing boys, none had come forward with an allegation until 2008. It was also noted that the Freeh report supplied not a single written communication from Paterno “reflecting any knowledge of Sandusky and sexual misconduct allegations in 1998. In the 2001 incident reported to him by McQueary, the report claims although McQueary’s story didn’t make sense to Paterno—McQueary himself testified he was vague about details, “out of respect” for the 75-year-old Joe Paterno,  and due to his own embarrassment, “did not provide him with specific and graphic details of the 2001 incident.” However, because of the emotional state he was, Paterno did feel obligated to report the incident to his superiors.

The report did not address the culpability of or defend former Penn State president Graham Spanier, athletic director Timothy Curley and senior vice president Gary Schultz, although it was suggested that they were as likely fooled by Sandusky’s “goofy” and “nice guy” persona as they suggested Paterno was. On the other hand, they likely allowed themselves to be fooled, because the information they had—even from McQueary to them or even in his grand jury testimony—did bring up the subject of sodomy. Male-on-male pedophilia—particularly when it involves sodomy which was at one time was considered not only a criminal offense in this country, but a capital offense in many parts of Europe; as late as 1835 two Englishmen were hanged for “buggery.” Perhaps the Penn State administrators—and certainly the devout Roman Catholic Paterno—could not imagine something that was so far beyond their comprehension, that they clung to any rationalization to the contrary; it is certainly easy to condemn them for not wanting to know more than the facts as were presented to them. 

Does the King report exonerate Joe Paterno, who by all accounts was a person who had been known for his upstanding moral character? The Freeh report, it is true, overturns this impression—but in a way that seems more self-congratulatory and self-righteous than based on the knowable facts.  Given the state of the evidence, it does provide ample proof that it is unlikely that it would be sufficient to convict Paterno of being an accessory to a cover-up. After all, he was obligated to and did contact his superiors when he was informed by McQueary admittedly vague report. Should he have simply gone to the police—who had declined to cite Sandusky in 1998? It is easy enough to say that he should have; but then again, without anything other than an emotional state to go on, it was only natural to “pass the buck” to his superiors who would have had a better understanding of how to proceed with a potentially explosive accusation.   

Passing moral judgment on drone attacks by the right more partisan hipocrisy

There has been some more talk recently in regard in the legality of the use of armed-drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan—as if deploying bombers, helicopter gunships, fighter jets and artillery-propelled cluster bombs are more “palatable” to tender sensitivities. Drones are just a little too “sneaky.” Those on the left engage in peace-not-war platitudes, but coming from the right, I find the hypocrisy of their complaints considerably more difficult to swallow.  Take, for instance, that of Fox News “analyst” and former judge Andrew Napolitano, who wrote an op-ed in a recent edition of  right-wing Washington Times entitled “Obama demands unquestioning acceptance of his ability to kill.” You don’t actually have to read any further, because Napolitano has just shot his credibility on whatever the topic is, but we’ll humor him for the moment.

It seems that 10 years’ worth of war and thousands of U.S. service member fatalities and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq have not aroused questions of legality and culpability from certain political demographics.  But the use of drones instead of soldiers in at least one respect has given some on the right a rationalization to pass kind of “moral” judgment on Barack Obama; they don’t care about the millions of people in this country who are paid poverty wages by companies that make billions in profits, but Napolitano lets us know that at least one one person cares about the “constitutional rights” of an al-Qaeda leader—if only because he is a useful tool to attack the president with.  

Napolitano appears to believe that Obama is sitting there in the Oval Office, calling generals and telling them to launch drones and kill people with the same ease that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld sent real live people to do, perhaps get killed themselves in the process. We are not allowed to demonize the soldiers sent to do that; they were just "following orders." Of course, it isn’t Obama telling commanders in the field where and when to use drones, any more than he tells anyone when and where to shoot their guns. They have their objectives, and use the best available means. You’re being fired on by the enemy? Oh, wait, we have to call the president and find out it if it’s OK to fire back.  Commanders in the field, with the assistance of intelligence services, identify enemy targets and engage them. That’s what they do. Go ask them. If you didn’t want them to do it, they shouldn’t have been sent there in the first place. As I have enunciated before, we should never have started a war in Iraq, and we should have “cleaned-up” Afghanistan with all available force and speed early, instead of giving the Taliban and al-Qaeda time to regroup. 

“Legal experts” like Napolitano for years have had no problem at all finding “legal” justification for torture and lying that led to thousands of dead Americans, so long as it was someone from his political perspective who was finding it. Now, Napolitano laughably talks about the Constitution, conveniently forgetting the times it was repeatedly violated when Republicans are in office (i.e. Nixon, Reagan, Bush, etc.). He now demands to know what “legal authority” Obama has to deploy drones, and makes incendiary comments like “President Obama (is) killing Americans and refusing to divulge the legal basis for claiming the right to do so” and asking who gave him “the power to decide when to suspend constitutional protections guaranteed to all persons and kill them without any due process whatsoever. This is the power claimed by kings and tyrants. It is the power most repugnant to American values. It is the power we have arguably fought countless wars to prevent from arriving here. Now, under Mr. Obama, it is here.”

Of course you could ask this guy where he was when much worse was happening under the tyrannical reign of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, who—as the new book The Untold History of the United States makes abundantly clear—were so single-mindedly intent on war with Iraq that they ignored overtures from Saddam Hussein that would have met their “demands,” repeatedly pressured the CIA to make false claims about WMDs and al-Qaeda links, and having failed to do so, simply made-up their own “evidence.”   The result was the deaths of over 4,000 Americans and the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians—which was on American hands, not Hussein’s. If this was Obama’s doing, no doubt Napolitano would be calling him a mass murderer. But for the present, he will just call Obama someone who “murdered” Americans—al-Qaeda members Anwar al-Awlaki, his son and his “American friend,” killed in drone attacks in Yemen.

Napolitano claims that “we” have reached the “boiling point”—not for the detaining and torturing without charge for years U.S. citizen Jose Padilla  by the Bush administration—but with Obama’s “flouting” of the law and the Constitution in regard to a man who resided for years in Yemen’s al-Qaeda-controlled backcountry,  preaching jihad and the killing of Americans and other foreigners. The “we” that Napolitano  is talking about are apparently  those on the fringes of the political left but mostly on right. It must be remembered that al-Awlaki was considered to have terrorist predilections long before Obama became president. Long considered a top al-Qaeda recruiter and anti-American jihad propagandist, he was implicated in the 9-11 terrorist attacks, with Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, and with the “underwear bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab;  he went as far as to claim credit for the latter two attackers as their “teacher.” 

Britain had al-Awlaki on its terrorist watch list, and a Yemen court sought to try him in absentia after the killing of a Frenchman, declaring that “al-Awlaki today has become the catalyst for shedding the blood of foreigners and security forces. He was chosen by al-Qaeda to be the lead in many of their criminal operations in Yemen. al-Awlaki is a figure prone to evil devoid of any conscience, religion, or law.” In 2010, Republican Rep. Charlie Dent called on the U.S. State Department to issue a “certificate of loss of nationality” to al-Awlaki for “effectively renouncing his citizenship by engaging in treasonous acts.”

Napolitano seems unaware of any of these factors. He hypocritically opines “The president cannot lawfully order the killing of anyone, except according to the Constitution and federal law. Under the Constitution, he can only order killing using the military when the United States has been attacked, or when an attack is so imminent that delay would cost innocent lives.” Like, people who have proven records of engaging in terrorist activities and tell you so—but don’t give you the exact time or place—should be allowed to carry out their murderous deeds in the name of the Constitution? The U.S. was not under attack or threatened with “imminent attack” by Iraq, and there never any evidence that Saddam Hussein was planning on anything of the sort or supporting those who did; the evidence actually showed that he was more concerned with internal security and with Iran. The rationalizations in the 2002 congressional resolution authorizing military action was mostly fiction. 4,000 American servicemen and women, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed due this “oversight” of the Constitution and the laws of war. Yet Bush and company are not murderers a thousands of times over than Obama? Or is it the bigger the crime, the more we have to deny its existence?

Napolitano goes on “Unless Mr. Obama knows that an attack from Yemen on our shores is imminent, he’d be hard-pressed to argue that a guy in a car in the desert 10,000 miles from here — no matter his intentions — poses a threat so imminent to the United States that he needs to be killed on the spot in order to save the lives of Americans who would surely die during the time it would take to declare war on the country that harbors him, or during the time it would take to arrest him.”  Why does he limit such attacks on U.S. shores? The USS Cole bombing that killed 17 Americans occurred in a non-combat zone in Sudan, and I don’t believe the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are located in this country. 

Again and again Napolitano applies a moral standard that he didn’t seem to think was important to adhere to during the previous administration; he doesn’t seem to realize that applying a double standard for partisan political reasons does nothing to enhance the credibility of his message. Was not the purpose of the so-called “war on terror” to “anticipate” attacks and stop them before they occurred? The first two directives of Bush’s “war on terror” were “Defeat terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and destroy their organizations” and “Identify, locate and destroy terrorists along with their organizations.” I think most people understand what was meant here. During Bush’s final year in office, 122 CIA drones were launched into Pakistan, killing eight al-Qaeda leaders; 10 were killed in 72 drone strikes in 2011, according to the Pakistan-based The International News.

With al-Qaeda and its Taliban supporters continuing to make threats and carry-out suicide attacks, al-Awlaki was long considered to warrant being on this list; the only fig leaf Napolitano has left is if it mattered if he was an American citizen who should not be deprived of his “due process” rights (of course, police in this country don’t always take into consideration “due process” when they shoot unarmed citizens, but that is another story). The truth was that he had so long been radicalized in Islamic jihad ideology that he did not consider himself to be “American”—so much so that he encouraged the like-minded to carry out killing Americans and other  “infidels.” Does it matter if like many leaders of his ilk he was too cowardly to personally punch his own ticket to “paradise” in the same grisly manner? His culpability was just the same. 

It is useful to remember that with the extreme right and its spokespersons, Obama is in a no-win situation. How often have we heard him referred to in frightened or hysterical tones as a “Muslim” and.or a “terrorist”? How often have we heard wrinkled buffoons like John McCain accuse Obama of endangering American security? We would hear even more of this and worse if he didn’t order the military to “take out” threats to American security like al-Awlaki. Whether or not this is even a moral issue is beside the point; no one involved in this “war” can be accused of behaving morally.

Here's to Hillary riding off into the sunset--and maybe she should stay there

Here we go again. After Hillary Clinton’s last day in office last week, every news media source was exercising considerable effort in putting a positive spin on Clinton’s “legacy” as Secretary of State. Although most political insiders believe that the 2016 Democratic nomination is Vice President Joe Biden’s to lose, that hasn’t stopped anyone from bloating Clinton’s “credentials” like a porcupine fish (unlike a pufferfish, it has spines to sting the nonbelievers). Hillary—despite her claim that she has no further political ambitions—has already launched a new website called hillaryclintonoffice.com. There is little on it except a big picture of an airbrushed Hillary from the shoulders up—sans the frumpy figure we saw sitting next to the lithe Barack Obama on 60 Minutes; at least she doesn’t have to consume all those high-calorie dinners-of-state she was served at those 112 countries she’s visited, and maybe even enroll in an aerobics class. Oh yes, the website also has contact information for media and speaking engagements, and for you to grovel and tell her how much you worship her very feet. 

Am I being cynical? Sure, why not? If Hillary Clinton was not the wife of someone named Bill, would people even know who she is? Not likely. Plenty of people have more personality than she does, and her accomplishments read more like a grocery list than anything noteworthy. There has been a great deal of intellectual legerdemain involved in the attempt to concoct a best possible narrative. The only thing an “expert” on the foreign policy on National Public Radio could come-up with was her supposed brokering of an oil-sharing deal between Sudan and South Sudan (although it was admitted after almost two years it still hasn’t been implemented) and Burma; what exactly she had to do with the latter’s recent lessening of military rule is unclear. The closest thing to a criticism was that she didn’t initiate policy; this was excused as being a “good soldier” and going along with administration policy. Benghazi wasn’t even mentioned. How does she rank with other Secretaries of State? Probably not in the same class as George Marshall, but it isn’t “fair” to judge her because all administrations are “different.” And besides, Hillary had to deal with so much, the “Arab Spring” and all.

There seems to be hardly any legitimate critique of Clinton “accomplishments,” and her 69 percent approval rating only makes sense in that context. Sen. John McCain continues to make a hypocritical buffoon of himself when he praises Clinton’s diplomatic acumen, yet at the same time blasts Obama’s foreign policy. What sense does that make? None.  Fox News’ Brit Hume admitted that Clinton has had no major “gaffes”—like the 2008 racial code “hard working people—white Americans” crack, and the bizarre RFK assassination stream-of-consciousness puzzler—and she worked  “hard” to get to all those 112 countries, but this hardly justifies the adulation she is receiving. Iran may or may not be closer to a nuclear bomb, there has been no “reset” with relations with Russia, and peace between Israel and its neighbors remains far apart. Interestingly, Israeli leaders praise her to high heaven while giving Obama the cold shoulder; one can surmise the reason.

Some who sing Hillary’s praises are out-of-control in their overreach. I read a post by someone named Eli Sugarman. “Hillary Clinton is widely admired for her intelligence, drive, and success as secretary of state. Her four years in office have been marked by a series of noteworthy accomplishments and near lack of serious missteps. Replacing her is a daunting task.” Yeah, it will be a “daunting task” to do better than these “noteworthy” accomplishments:

People-to-People Diplomacy. The new Secretary of State, John Kerry, will need to sacrifice doing real diplomacy is he expects to beat Hillary’s 112 countries visited.

The Importance of Economics. This is a little muddled. Her economic “vision” is not explained, but she did support “traditional economic aspects of foreign policy – such as sanctions – including those that crippled the Iranian government – and free trade – including Free Trade Agreements with allies Panama, Colombia, and South Korea.” Are these “accomplishments”—or simply following long-held policy? 

Restoring American Credibility. Hillary has supposedly “rejuvenated U.S. engagement in the Middle East by brokering a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel earlier this year. Her shuttle diplomacy and coordination with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi will likely give the U.S. greater leverage to pursue a robust peace process in 2013.” Some people might beg to differ on her actual expertise in brokering agreements—rather than just being humored. Clinton did not broker anything with Hamas representatives at all; that was Egypt and other Muslim parties. And as I mentioned before, on one of her last visits to Egypt she was greeted not as a "rock star" but with brickbats and chants of “Hillary get out.” 

Diplomacy is National Security.  “She was also a strong proponent of NATO airstrikes in Libya that eventually led to Muammar Gaddafi’s ouster. Her active diplomacy was critical to securing United Nations Security Council authorization of the Libya mission and maintaining strong European and regional support for it.” Well, actually, no; news reports at the time noted that Clinton had little input in it, and was not entirely supportive of the NATO action in Libya.

Texts From Hillary. Now we are getting somewhere. “In 2012, Clinton became an internet sensation because of a series of memes depicting her having fictitious, comical text exchanges with other celebrities while wearing her trademark sunglasses. Texts from Hillary became so popular that Clinton herself submitted her own caption to the website and invited its creators to meet with her at the State Department. Her star power and ability to capture the imagination of individuals around the world is one noteworthy aspect of her success.” Or is that people with no life of their own, like those Trekkies? Hillary’s groupies certainly behave as if they are under some kind of mind control. Anyways, we sure glad to know what Hillary does in her off-time—certainly not catching up on text books  that might give her clue about how to accomplish real things. 

Of course, “legitimate” news media might take a more even-handed approach to evaluation—except that Newsweek and TIME magazine have long abandoned its pretenses to objectivity and have gone the celebrity tabloid route. While the latter confessed that “Clinton is piling up awards and accolades faster than clear-cut achievements” and “hasn’t done anything as momentous as opening the door to China like Henry Kissinger or assembling the first Gulf War coalition like James Baker,” Clinton nevertheless has to her credit “the liberation of Libya, establishment of diplomatic ties with Burma and the assembly of a coalition against Iran bear her imprimatur.” Other than what was already mentioned concerning Libya, the opening of ties to Burma had more to do with internal politics in the country, and if one considers that the Obama administration had sought to unfreeze relations with Iran, her “diplomacy” has been an abject failure. 

Without any real achievements to gush about, TIME instead gushed about Clinton’s “legendary” endurance.  “She maintained a punishing 18-plus-hour-a-day schedule on her weeklong swing from Libya to Central and South Asia. At the end of her day in New York City last September, with its endless one-on-one meetings, public appearances and forums, Clinton sat down in a closed session with the 27 E.U. Foreign Ministers and listened as each aired opinions on U.S. foreign policy. Even as glazed looks settled over her staff, Clinton retained an easy and relaxed demeanor, speaking off the cuff and calmly responding to bitter criticism of the U.S.’s veto threat against a vote on Palestinian statehood”—which wasn’t too hard for her, given Clinton’s well-known hob-knobbing with the right-wing of the Israeli government.  I suspect that some of those 18 hours spent napping on airplanes, while her glazed-eyed staff were up doing most of her prep work. OK, attending meetings, listening and occasionally talking is hard work—especially if you are getting on in age. Anyways, I think calling it bitter “criticism” from European Union representatives was probably a bit of hyperbole. 

Of course, the staid BBC might be counted on to put some perspective on Hillary’s true legacy, but alas this is not the case. On World News radio, I was bemused by the gushing BBC presenter who was clearly beside herself in her admiration of Clinton, as if she has a personal stake in her, like so many of the Clinton disciples and groupies. On the BBC America website, there was much more of the same. Contradictory statements abound, which typically occurs when one grasps any thin reed. Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was expected to say something nice about Hillary, and he obliged in a backhanded sort of way. He was quoted as saying "Pakistan-US relations went through the worst time during Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. When you come out of the worst times, I must give her a lot of credit for the wisdom she showed.”

He was referring to Clinton’s “apology” over the November 2011 NATO air strikes on Pakistani border troops, an incident in which Pakistani authorities admitted that their commanders had been informed that Afghan forces would be operating in an ant-Taliban operation, and that Pakistani forces did fire mortars and automatic weapons which caused the Afghans to request the air support. U.S. officials—including the president—offered the Pakistani government their condolences and promised a full investigation, but Pakistani public opinion was already at a low-point concerning relations between the two countries, no thanks to “diplomacy” that did not convince Pakistani authorities to be more cooperative to coalition objectives and less so to that of the Pakistani Taliban and Al-Qaeda. In the end Clinton’s “apology” turned out to be less an act of statesmanship, but a crumb to Pakistani officials who only wanted to extract a face-saving statement after having decided that the closure of NATO supply routes was proving to be counter-productive. 

The BBC also “credited” Clinton as a “foil” for the more “aloof” Obama—who left the “pressing the flesh” and “leaving the care and feeding” of foreign leaders to Clinton. But no doubt Clinton relished the attention.  But again the criticisms of Obama and praises of Clinton make absolutely no sense when it is claimed that Clinton has no major accomplishments because she is only following administration policy; and yet we hear comments from Jake Sullivan (who’s he?) like "The single biggest thing she's leaving behind is having restored American leadership.” If that is true, she did it all by herself? That’s like the film Zero Dark Thirty’s claims that it was some second-string CIA operative who happened to be a red-haired white female who was responsible for the elimination of Osama bin Laden. 

The BBC admitted that the "reset with Russia has malfunctioned while Iran is getting closer to a nuclear bomb.” And why is that? “Clinton clearly decided not to risk her reputation trying to bang heads together in the thankless task of Middle East peacemaking (she probably didn’t much care to try to outwit that Putin fella, either). But Clinton and her aides say you need to look at the big picture.” Alright, let’s back-up now. Is the “big picture” the fact that Clinton is such a media hound and image conscious that the hard work required of achieving diplomatic breakthroughs is inimical to her? That she will not engage in any undertaking if it doesn’t further inflate her self-image? 

Clinton was praised in some circles for the release of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, but it took the skills of an experienced hand, assistant secretary of state Kurt Campbell, to conduct the actual negotiations with the Chinese. And in a final piece of mental gymnastics, USA Today went bonkers with the claim that Clinton conducted “high wire” diplomacy when she had to” jungle” two cellphones to persuade Turkey and Armenia to abide by an agreement to normalize relations. She “succeeded”—well, not really. It was only a temporary “nudging together.”

To be fair, most of the trench warfare over the stimulus program, health care reform and the debt have not been fought personally by the president; but throughout history presidents have set the agenda and his subordinates negotiated such deals with Congress. The difference here is that the president is expected to take responsibility for the success or failure of those policies. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton has been given all of the credit for the successes that she may or may not have had a hand in, and none of the blame for the failures in foreign policy (see Benghazi). But at least she herself was honest about her “accomplishments.” After an interview last November, ABC News noted that “Among her accomplishments, she listed hosting town halls with global youth, raising awareness for religious minorities, protecting Internet freedom and advancing rights for women and the LGBT community around the world.” Leave to her fans to fill in the blank spaces.

These are the “big heels” John Kerry says he has to fill? Oh well—at least Hillary will have time now to go on all those speaking engagements to maintain her profile, like Sarah Palin (remember her?). Sure, she knows what the problems are; if there is anything we’ve learned over the past four years, she just doesn’t exactly know what to do about them. It isn’t exactly presidential material, but what does that matter?