I really was planning to let this go, but Hillary said some things this weekend that were so silly that, well... just take a look at this:
"I think we've been for the last seven years seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion behind policies that haven't worked well for hard working Americans... It's really odd to me that arguing to give relief to a vast majority of Americans creates this incredible pushback...Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that don't benefit" the vast majority of the American people."
Again, Sunday:
"Well, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to put my lot in with economists."
And just for good measure, here is Howard Wolfson, Clinton's Communications Directior, offering this gem:
"The presidency requires leadership.... There are times when the president does something that the group of experts, quote unquote, does not agree with. Presidents get advice and then act, and that is what Senator Clinton is doing."
Rather than rant about how this is the very same attitude towards empirical reality that produced the Iraq debacle, blocked any progress on environmental protection or climate change legislation, or any of a million other policy disasters over the past seven years, I'm going to outsource a much smarter response to Jonathan Cohn:
Back when the issue of the day was mandates to purchase health insurance, her campaign wasn't nearly so dismissive about what the experts thought. On the contrary, they repeatedly cited the verdict of economists and other health care experts as proof that their position was correct.
I thought Clinton was right then, just as surely as I think she is wrong now. And while I'd argue the insurance issue is more important, if only because the gas tax holiday would be temporary, the argument itself is probably more egregious now because--as far as I can tell--the experts' skepticism about a gas tax holiday is unanimous.
I'd actually push that just a bit further. In abstract, Clinton's health care plan really is better than Obama's, and if pushed I suspect Obama would admit that too. He has said, after all, that if we could start over from scratch he'd build a single payer system, so what's at issue here isn't which is the best policy solution in abstract, but which is the best politically feasible policy solution. Everyone admits that reform with tough mandates will be a bit harder to pass, but Sen. Clinton has made the decision that it is nevertheless worth the fight. Why? Because health care experts largely agree that mandates are necessary if you want to simultaneously lower costs and reach universality!
Were she to follow her gas-tax approach to policymaking in health care, there's just no way she would support her own plan. Mandates, however effective they might be, aren't popular. Nevertheless, she is ignoring the opinion of average voters and proposing something that has the backing of most policy experts. By her own telling, that makes her an elitist who doesn't understand the problems of the average working family.
Its really simple. Listen to the people to find out what their problems are. Listen to policy experts to determine how to solve those problems. Hillary Clinton knows this, of course, because one of her strengths has always been that she is a policy wonk. As she so often reminds us, she works hard to come up with solutions to our problems. She is an expert who has the experience necessary to do the job right on day one. Except....
Will someone please make this ridiculous primary campaign end? Please?
UPDATE: Hilzoy:
Clinton is presently making a big deal about the fact that she is "a fighter". After this primary season, I don't think there can be any doubt about her willingness to fight. What Clinton's gas tax proposal tells me is what she's willing to fight for. She is not willing to fight for what she thinks is right in the face of public pressure. She's not even willing to restrict her compromises to cases in which public pressure to do something stupid already exists. She will sacrifice principle and the public good when it's expedient for her to do so.
Which is to say: she's a fighter, all right, but what she fights for is her own interest, not what she thinks is right.Based on this episode, how much confidence can we have that she'll really be wiling to go to the mat to combat global warming? None at all. Based on her vote for the Iraq War Resolution -- a vote that was, at the time, seen (wrongly) as one that Democrats had to cast if they wanted to secure their own political viability -- how much confidence can we have that she'll be willing to go to the mat to protect our national interests or to prevent a pointless, stupid, destructive war? Likewise, none at all.
If there's anything we should have learned from George W. Bush, it's that generalized combativeness is not a good thing in a President. We need not just someone who's willing to fight in general, but someone who's willing to fight for the right things. If you think that the right things just are the things that advance Hillary Clinton's political interests, then there's no problem. But if you want someone who is willing to fight for good policies that are in our national interest, that actually address serious problems, then it's worth recognizing that while she is more than willing to fight, she is not willing to fight for that...
Let's pretend, for the moment, that we don't know that a gas tax holiday would simply shift revenues from the government to the oil companies, revenue that Clinton's windfall profit tax would then take back again. I'd like to know in what possible world resisting a gas tax holiday could possibly count as "standing with the oil companies". Even if a gas tax holiday meant that the price of gas would actually go down, that would presumably help the oil companies by boosting demand for oil. It wouldn't help them as much as it would in the actual world, in which the oil companies stand to pocket most of the money the government be giving up, but it would still be a net positive for them.
Does anyone think that cutting cigarette taxes would count as "taking on big tobacco"? Of course not. So why would cutting gasoline taxes count as "taking on big oil"? If anyone is "standing with big oil" at the moment, it's Clinton and McCain.
The relationship between campaign rhetoric and reality is normally pretty loose. But in this case, Clinton and McCain's rhetoric seems to have divorced itself from reality entirely. It's as though old campaign cliches -- taking on big oil, standing up to special interests -- are now just free-floating phrases that can attach themselves to anything and everything. I expect this from George "Clear Skies Initiative" Bush, and from John "I have no clue what I'm talking about" McCain. Call me naive, but while I did expect Clinton to spin things to her advantage, I didn't expect her rhetoric to have no relation to reality whatsoever. Apparently, I was wrong.
UPDATE II: Tim F + Tom Levenson:
Here I was about to write a semi-long post about the Clinton campaign's fourth-quarter full court press with no goalie, and then I see Tom Levenson wrote it first.
[B]roadly speaking, judging by the issues papers on her website, Clinton has maintained a fairly sophisticated approach to global warming and applied research, with the implication that the policies near and dear to scientists' hearts -- more money, and even more important, respect for the real knowledge developed within by scientific process, would flow under a Clinton presidency. What Clinton provided for public consumption may be boilerplate, but it has been good boilerplate.
But now, what she said at the Indiana interview this morning changes the game. She said, in effect, if the smart boys and girls don't agree with her, then to hell with them.That is, of course, precisely the anti-rational madness that has dominated the George Bush years. It is inimical to science or a scientific world view. If we are to pick and choose the facts we like, it is a very short step, quickly taken, to making them up. And that way lies an ever more rapid collapse of the American republic.
Do I have anything to add? Not really. Hillary seemed to be doing fine until the inevitability meme died, and then her campaign went a little crazy. It's reached the point now where she doesn't just sound like a Republican, she sounds like the intellectual dregs that the GOP tries to keep off of network TV. She sounds like David Horowitz. Are we really that far from Gastaxofascism Awareness Week? Her rhetoric offers up the same paranoid conviction that all of the experts on Earth are either wrong or out to get you.
Maybe Hillary knows that her populist message really is pap and nonsense, but then maybe Horowitz does too. They're both either stupid enough to believe what they're saying or enough morally stunted to lead masses down an intellectually poisonous path in return for some cheap attention.
UPDATE III: One last late addition. John Cole:
Since oil is apparently the only thing we talk about anymore, I have a great idea for the 2008 Presidential election. We should elect two people with extensive ties to oil. Real oil industry insiders, who have experience and know how these things work. I bet we could get oil prices down in no time if we do that.
Oh. Wait. Nevermind.
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