http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/201...resilient-like-me-dont-underestimate-her.html Bill Clinton on Palin: 'Resilient,' Like Me, Don't 'Underestimate' Her Former president Bill Clinton had words of warning for Democrats who think Sarah Palin could be the best thing to happen to President Obama in a 2012 presidential bid – "It's always a mistake to underestimate your opponent." “In the Republican primaries she's very popular with the conservative base. She gets more people to come out,” he told me. “And she hasn't won all of her endorsements, but she's won most of them. And you know, she's a compelling, attractive figure.” I sat down with the former president as he kicked off the sixth annual Clinton Global Initiative. Palin, who recently made a high profile trip to Iowa, was the subject of Mark Halperin’s “One Nation” column Monday. I asked Clinton to react to Halperin’s take on the former Alaska governor that “Most of all, she is like Bill Clinton: what doesn't kill Sarah Palin makes her stronger.” Clinton laughed and then offered his own observations. “I do think she’s a resilient character. And we may be entering a sort of period in politics that’s sort of fact free, where the experience in government is a negative,” he told me. “I think she's clearly a public figure who is, who speaks well and persuasively to the people who listen to her. And she's somebody to be reckoned with,” he said. “And she's tough.” Clinton recalled when “people were making fun of her” he read about Palin’s husband finishing the last 500 miles of Alaska’s Iron Dog race with a broken arm. “Now, where I come from people like that. They think that's pretty good,” he said. So is she qualified to be president? Clinton said the “American people can elect whomever they want.” “But [she] served, you know, not a full…term as governor, and she went out and did this. We don't even know if she's going to run for President,” he said. Tell me what you think -- weigh in below. --George Stephanopoulos
I saw this interview over the weekend. He's taking the high road, which is refreshingly different for a change. Did I just say "change? " I think his assessment of her is spot on. I don't care to have her as president, but she's clearly far more influential than those who are on the hate wagon give her credit for. And to get on board that hate wagon is a huge risk for the Democrats, IMO.
I think you can't just make it like she's ineffective. She's incredibly effective. The downside of downplaying her effectiveness is that she could end up running against Obama and if things aren't much different from now, she'd actually win. Just about anyone would win.
I didn't say she was ineffective. She's stupid. At some point in time people will figure her out. Right now she's riding a wave of 'I hate government' stuff. But her time will be short lived.
"I respect people with a conservative philosophy. This country has been well-served by having two broad traditions within which people can operate. If you have a philosophy, it means you’re generally inclined one way or the other but you’re open to evidence. If you have an ideology, it means everything is determined by... dogma and you’re impervious to evidence. Evidence is irrelevant." - Bill Clinton http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2010/09/15/clintontea That quote captures so much of how I see America has gone off track in the past decade.
The funny thing is that when I pointed this quote out to my British mother-in-law, she sighed and said, "You Americans. You have 45 flavors of coffee, and only two ways of running your government. And a lot of you only want one."
Chris Matthews just said on Hardball that Palin's approval rating is 76%. That's personal approval rating, not "job approval." Obama's approval rating is much higher than his job approval.
I may be out of touch - but it seems to me that the only way Obama wins the next elections is if he runs against Palin.
It's funny because I see it as just the opposite. I don't really see a candidate out there on the Republican side who can make it past the Tea Party and then win a general election. I think in Presidential elections you have to have much more of the moderate vote than in off-year congressional/governor elections. Obama may seem extreme to a lot of people on the right, to the average American I think he's a lot less extreme than what the Tea Party will approve. Besides, I think incumbents always seem less extreme than challengers, even when they aren't.
That's very much a possibility. I was operating under the premise that the Republican party will actually realize that they need a more mainstream candidate and distance themselves from extremes.
Approval rating is like a popularity contest. Job Approval Rating is how you're doing your job. During the Clinton impeachment, his job approval was sky high and his approval was in the dumps.
Yeah, I think it'll be kind of similar to the 2004 presidential election. I don't think Dubya won that one so much as the Democrats failed to field a candidate who could take it away from him. In that instance it wasn't that Kerry was too extreme, though. He was just a real stiff. When Democrats field a dynamic, interesting candidate, they win. (Obama, Clinton, Jimmy Carter in his first term). When they field a zombie they lose. (Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, Carter in his second campaign.) It's funny, but as far back as I can remember in politics (1980) one candidate just had more charisma, personality and a more interesting story than the other, and that guy always won. (One exception might be 1988, where both Dukakis and Bush were kind of stiffs. I don't really remember Mondale much, so I could be off on that one. But I doubt it.) I think Republicans are going to be hard pressed to beat Obama on the charisma/personality/storyline front. Although I guess Palin has those qualities, and she has Tea Party backing, so maybe she really could win. *shudder*
Mondale was a stiff. Carter only won because people were a bit angry about watergate still, and Ford still almost made a full comeback from a big deficit in the polls to win.
The issue with Palin is, she's really a hollow quote machine. If she actually went on other news agencies (and in the process didn't blame the "main stream media" for being biased), she'd get skewered. The problem is, Republicans are allowing a very very vocal minority run (and ruin) their party. They've allowed Fox News to run their party, and rile up their vocal minority base. They've gone away from what made Republicans electable, and have gone towards a very conservative loony base. As much as the right likes to say that the left is loony, the fact of the matter is Republicans ARE being controlled by the far conservative right. They have overtaken an otherwise sane and logical Republican party, and control it far more than the left ever wishes it could control the democrats. The left has never truly been in charge of the D's, as the D's are too spineless to actually be assertive in the manner that the left wants. Think about what the far right wants the Rs to stand for. No gay rights, huge business tax cuts, no regulation, tax cuts for the rich, and wars (and of course others). What does the far left want? Equal rights, businesses to pay taxes, regulation to fix things, returning the tax cuts to Clinton era levels, and not invading wars (and of course others). And they don't question your sexuality, patriotism and loyalty to god or whatever, if you disagree with them. Sure they might call you names, but they don't have a major media outlet that promotes their viewpoint or promotes staged rallies or protest movements. The Republican party of small government, and the government staying out of your business has been replaced by the party of big government (no matter what they try to say), increased debt, name calling, lazy labels and more intrusive behaviors. Face it, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party is exactly whats wrong with the Republican party.
julius, I think you have it backwards. The Republican Party has been influenced by the religious right more and more, at least through the end of the Bush administration. The Tea Party candidates may express positions on social issues, but I have seen zero (nothing) to support a suggestion that there's any religious right to the Tea Party issues. They talk the Libertarian line - smaller government, reduce the deficit, pay off the debt, kill big brother type programs. If anything, the Tea Party has upset the Republican Party's apple cart. Tea Party backed candidates have knocked off several of the regular party's selected candidates and otherwise bucked the establishment. Anti-establishment is a huge part of the message. To top it off, they've been knocking off religious right type incumbent candidates, like Bennett in Utah (who has a hard right voting record on social issues). Something for folks to chew on. Obama's JOB APPROVAL rating is a little more than 10 points higher than W's when he left office. There's 2 years to go, and the trajectory is downward. We've seen that a community organizer who was elected to a senate seat where he never showed up to do his job can win the presidency if the outgoing guy has a low approval rating. More to chew on is the Tea Party growing in favor with independent voters, and the way you win a presidential election is to win your base and win more than half those independents. The independents are by far more than a majority not supporting Obama or Democrats at this time. If things continue on the current course, it may not matter who republicans run against Obama in 2012. I'll repeat something I've said numerous times. I want Obama to succeed and win re-election. If he does, the economy will be rocking and standard of living for people rising. Who could be against that?
