Unethical Quote Of The Week: Politico






Hillary Clinton was a U.S. Senator for eight years. She was Secretary of State, a poor one, but that’s not relevant here, for four. She gets some experience credits for being First Lady for eight years, though how relevant that experience is to being President is open to debate. That’s it. It’s not the least relevant experience a Presidential candidate has had, but it is notably short on elected executive experience: she never has served as a governor, which is perhaps the most relevant experience there is. Even avoiding such legitimate challengers as Dwight Eisenhower (Is overseeing the Allied Forces in World War Two as ideal a test of leadership an individual can have?) or anomalies like Grover Cleveland, who was the only non-incumbant Presidential candidate who had previous experience as President of the United States (from 1884 to 1888…Might being President for four years qualify as “more experience” than Hillary has had? I think so), there have been candidates that lapped Clinton in the experience department, such as…

George H.W. Bush: Four years in Congress, Ambassador to the UN, Envoy to China, Director of the CIA, Director of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Vice-President under Ronald Reagan for eight years.

Richard Nixon: Two terms in the House; two years in the Senate; eight years as the most policy-involved Vice-President up to that point, and who also served as President during President Eisenhower’s recuperation from a serious heart attack.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: New York State Senator; Assistant Secretary of the Navy; Governor of New York

Theodore Roosevelt: New York State assemblyman, the U.S. Civil Service Commission; New York City Police Commissioner (and wouldn’t THAT be a useful curriculum vitae entry today!); Assistant Secretary of the Navy; Governor of New York and Vice President of the United States.

That’s just winning candidates in the 20th Century, and the most clearly superior to Clinton in relevant experience for Presidential leadership.

In summary, the statement that Hillary Clinton is “the most experienced person to ever run for the White House” is, to be blunt and crude, bullshit. But you will hear it repeated over and over by Hillary surrogates, and see it written over and over by pro-Hillary reporters and pundits, and consequently believed by millions of Democrats who are historically ignorant and believe what they are told, as long as it is favorable to Hillary Clinton.

A reporter can say that she has experience. A reporter can say that she has more relevant experience than Barack Obama had. A reporter cannot ethically and honestly state as fact that Hillary Clinton is “the most experienced person to ever run for the White House,” because it is factually false.

I recommend not trusting journalists that write lies like this, or publications that allow them to do so.

23 thoughts on “Unethical Quote Of The Week: Politico

  1. I agree, Michael. I think the HW’s biggest mistake was the “read my lips” promise before he discovered he had to raise taxes. His predecesssor, as former Sen. Alan Simpson has pointed out, raised taxes 11 times in eight years. HW served fairly and honorably, but there were a lot of Republicans who walked away from his re-election in 1992.

        • You couild blame Clinton on Dukakis too.

          Michael Dukakis had vetoed a bill that would have denied furloughs to persons sentenced to life without parole for first-degree murder because ‘cut the heart out of efforts at inmate rehabilitation.'”

          Remember, Dukakis had a 17-point lead over Bush twenty-eight years ago.

          • I blame the Democrats for nominating Dukakis. I’m from Massachusetts, remember. Mike was a joke, and everyone paying attention knew it. (Bias disclosure: he also cut off funding for my first post-law school job after I had been hired.)

            • (full disclosure also: The only time I voted Democrat was in ’88.

              During a 1st Grade mock election, sharing 1st names with a candidate seemed logical enough reason to throw my support that direction.

              I’ve wised up since then obviously. Though I suspect my 1st grade reasoning is more sound than some people’s method of voting these days.

              Had I been named George, I would have aided that camp just as readily)

            • I suspect you didn’t appreciate the fact he didn’t do much for Greeks’ image as leaders either. Agnew and then Dukakis. 0 for 2.

            • In their defense, from spring to summer ’88, Dukakis had a comfortable lead over Bush in the polls. Bush was a terrible candidate. But the veto regarding the furlough issue caused Dukakis’s lead to dissipate like the summer heat.

              ( AL Gore brought up the furlough issue during the primaries, but did not place enough focus on the veto.)

              • The tipping point for Duke is generally regarded as his absurd answer to Bernie Shaw’s soft-ball debate question, where he discussed his wife’s hypothetical rape and murder with the detachment of Eichmann. That, the Snoopy photo in the tank and the Willie Horton attack ads did him in. And should have.

                • Willie Horton was probably the most effective. He was not someone who happened to have been furloughed during Michael Dukakis’s term in office. Instead, Dukakis actually vetoed a bill denying furloughs to first degree murderers serving a life sentence without parole, saying that it would because ‘cut the heart out of efforts at inmate rehabilitation.”.

                  This painted him (and the Democratic Party, by extension) as soft on crime who would rather side with proven murderers than their victims. This also did great damage to the anti death penalty campaign, as they were seen as people who did not want to punish murder.

  2. I admit I look for military or maybe major police experience, have they commanded troops and faced danger on duty? First Ladies may be in danger but that’s a more passive danger of the celeb. Facing danger’s not a guarantee of grit, but mindful leadership must keep faith with the people who put their lives on the line under their command as well as the freedoms they all swore to protect. (and yes, that knocks a lot out)

  3. The talented Ms. Karnie merely said “most experienced person to ever run for the WH” without providing context.

    Clinton is far and away the most experienced (prior to running) at mendacity & prevarication, from where I’m sittin’ leastways.

    Heck, going back to her ill-fated stint on the Nixon impeachment HJC (IMHO the ONLY gig she ever secured without the benefit of hubby) to present, she’s now in her 5th decade as an inveterate congenital, serial, reflex liar.

    Don’t you think that, based on a positively staggering amount of practice, she’d be better at it?

    • And unfortunately an awful lot of folks will vote for her because she was the First Lady, “it’s time for a woman”, and was Secretary of State (albeit an awful one). These folks don’t seem to care about her untrustworthiness and massive corruption. Go figure!

  4. I’ve heard this propaganda BS that “Clinton is the most experienced person to ever run for the White House” so often that it’s likely to become an underlying but very dominate Clinton campaign slogan.

    Robert J. Samuelson recently said, “The role of campaigns and elections in democracies is to let the people speak. Ideally, it is to shape public opinion by informing it and allowing it to coalesce around widely shared beliefs. But when the information being served up is false, incomplete or deceptive, the process is perverse. It sows disillusion, not progress.” The bold part of that quote properly defines the propaganda slogan that “Clinton is the most experienced person to ever run for the White House”; the propaganda slogan is openly deceptive!

    Propaganda has gotten completely out of control in today’s politics; we’ve had 8 years of the Progressive/Liberal political machine making propaganda common place and now we’re reaping the “benefits” of those propaganda laced 8 years.

      • Paul W. Schlecht asked, “Would you have a problem with a fellow Wisconsinite (or WESconsinite to the maladroit contingent) lifting that with proper citation?”

        Heck no, go for it; and here’s my source.

        “A political hack is a negative term ascribed to a person who is part of the political party apparatus, but whose intentions are more aligned with victory than personal conviction. The term “hired gun” is often used in tandem to further describe the moral bankruptcy of the “hack”. When a group of political hacks of a similar political affiliation get together, they are sometimes called a political hack pack. When one side of a debate has more political hacks than the other, this is referred to as a “hack gap” and gives an advantage to the side with more political hacks.”


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