... Weird! We read Obama’s book—and discovered Clinton’s plan:FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2007
OBAMA "The Audacity of Hope" (page 183): As vital as it may be to raise the wages of American workers and improve their retirement security, perhaps our most pressing task is to fix our broken health-care system. Unlike Social Security, the two main government-funded health-care programs—Medicare and Medicaid—really are broken; without any changes by 2050, these two entitlements, along with Social Security, could grow to consume as large a share of our national economy as the entire federal budget does today.
Unlike Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid really are broken, he says. This is exactly what Clinton says now—and Obama attacks her for it. Just last year, this outlook displayed the audacity of hope. Today, it’s a sign of bad character.
We’re sorry, but we’ve seen this movie before; it played in 1999 and 2000, and it did massive harm to this country. At that time, Bill Bradley had launched a self-consciously high-minded run for the White House, just as Obama has done this year; Bradley faced a strongly-entrenched front-runner, just as Obama does. But uh-oh! When Bradley failed to gain sufficient traction against his opponent, he and his campaign began launching bogus attacks on this fellow’s character—and he used reams of old RNC spin in launching these punishing sorties. Indeed, by the late fall of 1999, Bradley’s campaign was using every old RNC attack-line that could be found in that org’s butcher shop. (The “mainstream” press corps loved these scripts, and was quite happy to pimp them.) With Bradley, this process even descended to the point where he claimed that his opponent, Al Gore, was responsible for the 1988 Willie Horton race-sliming—an ugly, ludicrous, inexcusable charge which the RNC had brainlessly pimped since July 1992. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/01/02, for a fairly detailed account of this matter. You’ll see George Will making this ludicrous charge against Gore during the 1992 Dem convention.)
What makes this eight-year-old episode so much like the current one? Just this: In his own 1997 best-seller, Time Present, Time Past, Bradley had explicitly said, in substantial detail, that Gore did not racialize the Willie Horton matter. Needless to say, everyone with half a brain already knew this. But you know how these high-minded White House campaigns can be! Having told the truth in 1997, Bradley began to “misstate” in 1999—and the mainstream press, which was now jeering Gore during debates, was perfectly happy to let him. (Except Mort Kondracke. See link above.)
It’s hard to watch high-minded Obama now without thinking of high-minded Bradley back then. In Obama’s book, published last year, he proposes Clinton’s current plan! But today, when she takes this stance, he attacks her character. It’s the same stance he promoted last year. (And on This Week, just this May.)
This is how Bradley helped Bush reach the White House. His claims that Gore was a hit-man and a liar were recited by the press corps all through the 2000 general election. Now Obama is calling a front-runner names—contradicting what he said in his best-seller. Unless you want a Republican successor to Bush, it’s very bad news to see this bad movie back in the theaters again.Note on history:Yes. Sometimes, strategists do recommend such conduct. And ambitious candidates do sometimes accede. We’re sorry to have to speak frankly today. But this is your recent, sad history.http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh111607.html