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Thursday, September 6, 2012

Clinton's Speech and the Policy Gap

Posted by on Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Only Bill Clinton can do a speech like the one that closed day two of the Democratic National Convention last night. It was 50 minutes of detailed policy talk, compare-and-contrast mathematics, fact checking, and revisiting of ancient history—and it was a total, riveting pleasure to hear.

It also reminded that the major speakers at the Republican convention were not at all interested in talking to people on this level. There was little-to-no policy discussion from the RNC headliners (and what there was had a hard time surviving fact checks). How do Republicans expect to convince voters to change direction if they won't explain their policy proposals?

Part of Clinton's brilliance is his understanding that the American people want to be sold a plan to get from here to there, want to be treated as if we're CEOs sitting around the table and he's the serious but not-too-slick pitchman trying to explain to a smart crowd why his ideas are the ones to purchase.

Which gets the relationship right.

The Republican convention, by contrast, felt more like an exercise in predatory lending. Hey, OK, so listen to this great story about me that has nothing to do with anything. I'm a real nice guy, would I lie to you? No! Now sign here, let's not worry about the details, let's just get this new thing going for you right now. It's going to be great!

 

Comments (13) RSS

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Pope Peabrain 1
Democrats want to make government work. Republicans want to plunder government for themselves and their super rich accomplices and leave it crippled.
Posted by Pope Peabrain on September 6, 2012 at 8:48 AM
gloomy gus 2
Lovely point. NYT couldn't help itself, though, and did fact check the DNC speeches so far. Certainly no mendacity on the scale the GOP tried, but some bloopers, a strech o' the truth by Warren, but also a great win for Clinton, it turns out: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/us/pol…
Posted by gloomy gus on September 6, 2012 at 8:52 AM
3
"Do a speech?" Make a speech.
Posted by Amanda on September 6, 2012 at 8:55 AM
MacCrocodile 4
@3 - Actually, it's "do a speakery".
Posted by MacCrocodile http://maccrocodile.com/ on September 6, 2012 at 9:09 AM
rob! 5
@2, it's again interesting how that NYT headline morphed— from "Democrats Stretch the Truth in Talk and Text" to "A Startling Truth Amid the Hyperbole."
Posted by rob! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZBdUceCL5U on September 6, 2012 at 9:16 AM
ScienceNerd 6
I'm on my second listen of this speech. It really is wonderful.
<3 <3 <3
Many of the speeches last night seemed so refreshingly true. I don't consider myself a Democrat, but now I'm wondering why I don't. They seem to be saying what I think.
Posted by ScienceNerd on September 6, 2012 at 9:28 AM
STJA 7
@5 I hadn't seen the new one! Wow!

Also, I keep trying to imagine GW Bush giving a speech like this. No dice. NO DICE. I'd have broken my computer if he had even tried. Imagine HIM grinning up there...
Posted by STJA on September 6, 2012 at 9:28 AM
gloomy gus 8
Good eye, rob! I love that the NYT has a fact-checking-both-conventions beat - I'm imagining the reporter assigned to it being like the meme of Dwight from "The Office": watching speeches and reading texts and declaring "False." "False." "False."
Posted by gloomy gus on September 6, 2012 at 9:43 AM
9
If Obama and the Clintons are democrats, then I'm Jeremiah Bullfrog!


Everyone seems to have forgotten about Bradley Birkenfeld, one of the first whistleblowers the Obama administration successfully prosecuted into jail and out of the public limelight!

What was the very first thing the Obama administration did upon winning the White House? They went after the enemies of Bush and Cheney, that's right, they continued and redoubled the efforts of the Bush administration against the whistleblowers from that administration.

Most were government workers, for instance, honest and ethical Americans at the EPA, FDA, DoD, etc., but one, Bradley Birkenfeld, was not. Bradley came from the UBS bank in Switzerland, armed with a list of super-rich American tax dodgers, the list which would have ended the political career of Willard Mitt Romney, but the Obama administration prosecuted Bradley into jail.

So what became of that list of super-rich tax dodgers?

Good question, but we know what became of Mitt Romney!

The only reason, the one and only reason, Romney was able to run and win the republicon party's presidential candidacy is Barack Obama. (A court recently found in favor of one of those female whistleblowers, Dr. Cate Jenkins of the EPA, who had some scathing words for rightwinger lowlife, Obama.)

The NARAL Pro-Choice America candidate, Nancy Keenan, claims that President Obama is pro-workers' rights, pro-union, pro-women, and blah, blah, blah --- a bunch of female teachers in Chicago, female whistleblowers in the government, and otherwise sane American women might just disagree with that opinion!

Now the reality: President Obama strenuously supports the privatization of education in America, with its subsequent destruction of the teachers' unions. It was President Obama, after all, who went on national television to applaud the decision of the Chicago Public Schools superintendant for firing all the teachers at an inner city high school, supposedly due to the mediocre performance of a few there!

All the teachers were fired due to the so-called performance of a few?

That's pro-workers' rights? That's pro-women? That's pro-union?

Now the reality: That Chicago school was specifically targeted for privatization, as are the Chicago schools in general. (Fortunately an honest judge overturned that wrongful termination that Obama so supported and reinstated those teachers --- no thanks to the Obama administration!)

Now the reality: We've seen little effort from congress or the Obama administration in the passage of "card check" legislation, according workers protection to organize in the workplace should they so desire.

Yes, Nancy Pelosi, when she first became House Speaker, did push for legislation ending those corporate tax breaks for offshoring American jobs (legislation first proposed by President Kennedy in 1960), but quickly backed down when republicans threatened to filibuster it --- those phony dems weren't willing to battle on behalf of the public --- their supposed constituents!

Now the reality: The Obama administration has strenuously litigated in favor of Bush administration people's immunity from prosecution for torture and war crimes; immunity for telecoms for warrantless wiretapping; immunity for banksters in fraudclosures, when they committed millions of felonies in filing false affidavits, called robo-signing; immunity for BP from their wanton dereliction in the destruction of the Gulf; preemptive arrests of activist-organizers throughout the country to sabotage present and future protests; the persecution of Pfc. Bradley Manning for allegedly revealing war atrocities and the multinationals' control over the State Department, and on and on and on, somehow completely ignoring the contrived witch hunt against the honorable Gov. Don Siegelman.

If Obama's a democrat --- I'm Jeremiah Bullfrog!

The only thing worse than the Obama/Biden ticket is the Romney/Ryan ticket --- the same line we heard in 1964 in favor of Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater; Johnson would later go on to do everything Goldwater promised to do --- wage war, end the financial transaction tax, send arms and military aid to overthrow the demcratically-elected government of Brazil and occupy the Dominican Republic with US military, then dramatically increase the number of military in Vietnam --- from a paltry 16,792 --- which President Kennedy was planning to withdraw before the 1964 election, to 500,000 in a relatively short time.

With the Clintons we got NAFTA, GATT, China into the WTO, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 for the final consolidation of corporate media and the reconsolidation of AT&T; the overturning of Glass-Steagall with his signing of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act along with the deregulation of credit derivatives by signing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, leading to the global economic meltdown; total immunity from the US Constitution for intelligence personnel with by his signing of the Intelligence Authorization Act, and the overturning of the tuna industry boycott, allowing for the resumption of wholesale slaughter of dolphins!

With Obama we not only have a 100% neocon administration, but the reappointment of the author of that Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, Neal Wolin, as well as Bush inner circle types like Marc Grossman and Victoria Nuland. (Victoria Nuland, spokesperson for the State Department, recently claimed that WikiLeaks' Julian Assange was making "wild assertions" about the US government's intentions towards him --- forgive me for not trusting a Bushie now with Obama.)

Although Obama has yet to appoint Cheney to his administration, he has appointed those consultants who once worked for Poindexter and Cheney on their Total Information Awareness project, and former members of Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration.

Obama reappointed FBI director Robert Mueller, first appointed by George H.W. Bush to head the DOJ's criminal division during the BCCI investigation, then later reappointed by George W. Bush to the directorship of the FBI, four days prior to 9/11/01.

We forget the reason why the 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush was so close --- there was little difference between the two presidential candidates, precisely the same reason Obama and Romney are tracking so close together.

I voted for Cynthia McKinney, I voted for Ralph Nader, and by God I will be voting for the only real democrat this time around, Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party!

Two sides of the same coin: John Paulson, one of Romney's financial backers, was once thought of as a savvy hedge fund manager --- until the back story emerged. Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman and one of the architects of the housing bubble, went to work for Paulson's hedge fund.

Paulson then got together with Goldman Sachs and designed a mortgage CDO designed to fail. Meanwhile, Paulson purchased a number of credit default swaps against that mortgage CDO --- called naked swaps, as Paulson wasn't directly invested in the CDO.

For each CDS Paulson purchased at $1.4 million, he received a payout of $100 million, totalling over $1 billion, when their CDO failed.

(Obama's SEC found nothing untoward about this from their investigation into the matter?)

Where did that money come from? The American tax base and the national debt, for if those TARP bailout funds weren't made available to support such fraud, then AIG, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and GE would have disappeared overnight!

The other side of the same coin: according to Neal Barofsky's recently published book, Obama and Geithner managed the mortgage foreclosures (or fraudclosures) to benefit the banks so they wouldn't take a major hit at one time, to the financial and to the financial and economic detriment of everyone else.
More...
Posted by sgt_doom on September 6, 2012 at 11:23 AM
Bauhaus I 10
Conservative pundits - all they could come up with last night is: There he goes again....ol' long-winded Bill. But I agree with Eli:

...it was a total, riveting pleasure to hear.


You know what's pissing me off a little? All the shots of audience members doing various things (listening intently, painting their nails, talking with someone else) during the speeches. I hate that. It the same direction and technique they use on shit like The Maury Povich Show and all those silly self-help shows on PBS during Pledge Week, Month, Half-Year (what's it up to now?).

And this pisses me more. Even the good old guys at PBS are doing it. They break away from speakers so everyone (reporters, pundits) can yak and analyze what was just said by the previous speaker. Um, may I be the one to analyze that please? May I be the one who chooses which speeches I wish to hear and the ones that maybe aren't as important? Get the fucking camera back on the speaker!

The only place they don't do this - as far as I can tell - is CSPAN which, unfortunately, doesn't broadcast in hi def.

I'm pretty upset about the PBS coverage. I expected more (or less) from them.
Posted by Bauhaus I on September 6, 2012 at 12:14 PM
Sean Kinney 11
C-SPAN is in hi-def Bauhaus (II get it off the wall jack without a cable box: 24 is low-def and 35-101 and 35-102 are hi def. There has to be a hi-def version for you if you even have basic cable (I hope I'm not wrong).

C-SPAN is great. That said, if you are going to suffer some commentary and reaction, I still would rather listen to some schooled pundits (however steeped they are in the conventional wisdom)... than the callers that hold sway on C-SPAN's open mic. Ugh...
Posted by Sean Kinney http:// on September 6, 2012 at 2:36 PM
Bauhaus I 12
Actually, SK, I have Dish...but I'll investigate to see if there's a hi-def option. I don't think there is, but I've found surprises up in the 8000, 9000 series. Oh and yes about the call-in stuff. Don't want to hear that either, but as far as I can tell, the call-ins don't start until after all the speeches are over.
Posted by Bauhaus I on September 6, 2012 at 4:39 PM
Knat 13
How do Republicans expect to convince voters to change direction if they won't explain their policy proposals?

You're being rhetorical, right? They'll do the same thing they've done for decades, of course: lie and appeal to voters' baser instincts.
Posted by Knat on September 6, 2012 at 11:12 PM

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