Subject: Correct The Record Monday August 25, 2014 Morning Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 10:11:18 -0400
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

**

*Correct The Record Monday August 25, 2014 Morning Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*The Atlantic: “Inside the Democrats' Plan to Save Arkansas—and the Senate”
<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/inside-the-democrats-plan-to-save-arkansasand-the-senate/379028/>*

[Subtitle:] “The party's desperate bid to hang onto the majority rests on
an unprecedented political organizing effort in red states like this one.”

*BuzzFeed: “Hillary Clinton Ignores Questions On Ferguson”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/hillary-clinton-ignores-questions-on-ferguson#2wwn3q7>*

“Surrounded by a retinue of aides and members of her security detail,
Hillary Clinton left a book signing on Sunday afternoon as two reporters
asked questions about the protests in Ferguson, Missouri.”

*Politico: “On Ferguson, no words from Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/hillary-clinton-ferguson-110301.html>*

"The event began early, with a crowd lined up along the street well in
advance. Clinton received what has become a standard number of entreaties
to run in 2016 from people who moved along the line to shake her hand and
have their books signed."

*Tampa Bay Times: “Rep. Paul Ryan promotes book, talks Hillary Rodham
Clinton and 2016 in Brandon”
<http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/us-rep-paul-ryan-visits-brandon-to-promote-book-talk-2016/2194455>*

“Despite only a few dozen people showing up to his book signing at
Books-A-Million in Brandon on Sunday, the 44-year-old House budget chief
managed to project the upbeat and optimistic attitude he prescribes in his
new book, The Way Forward, which is part memoir and part manifesto for how
the GOP can win national majorities again.”

*Politico: “Secrets of the Clinton Library”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/secrets-of-the-clinton-library-110289.html>*

“Six months after the National Archives began releasing long-withheld
Clinton White House documents, thousands of pages of the most sensitive
records are still not yet public. But hints of their contents emerged
during a POLITICO recent review of the gaps in the library’s public files.”

*NBC News: “Point of No Return: Democrats Want Definitive Signal from
Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/hillary-clinton/point-no-return-democrats-want-definitive-signal-hillary-clinton-n187201>*

“If she ends up deciding not to jump in, Democrats want an answer sooner
rather than later.”

*Washington Post: “Republican Comstock’s past a political touchstone in Va.
congressional race”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/comstocks-past-emerges-as-political-touchstone-in-congressional-race/2014/08/24/d8738bd6-24ab-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html>*

“Today, Comstock is making a name for herself as a state lawmaker and the
Republican nominee to replace Wolf, who is retiring from his Northern
Virginia seat. And her history as a Clinton foe carries a new resonance in
a state likely to factor heavily should Hillary Clinton run for president
in 2016.”

*Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column: David M. Shribman: “Hillary Clinton and
the price of being on top”
<http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/david-shribman/2014/08/24/David-M-Shribman-Hillary-Clinton-and-the-price-of-being-on-top/stories/201408240064>*

“Right now the campaign is akin to walking on heels across concrete in an
empty room. Once other candidates are in the race — and some surely will
join—that room will have some carpeting and it will no longer be empty.”

*Articles:*

*The Atlantic: “Inside the Democrats' Plan to Save Arkansas—and the Senate”
<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/inside-the-democrats-plan-to-save-arkansasand-the-senate/379028/>*

By Molly Ball

August 24, 2014, 7:00 a.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] The party's desperate bid to hang onto the majority rests on an
unprecedented political organizing effort in red states like this one.

PINE BLUFF, Arkansas—No sign announces the purpose of this little
storefront, squeezed between a Bestway Rent to Own and a Rent-a-Center in a
dilapidated shopping center. But the words hand-lettered in black and red
marker on three pieces of paper taped to the window—"Register to Vote
Here"—and a cluster of placards for candidates give it away: It is a
Democratic Party field office.

Democrats aren't advertising this office and 39 others like it that are
scattered around Arkansas—in fact, their locations are a closely guarded
secret. When I visited last week, having tracked it down through creative
public-records sleuthing, I took Chita Collins, the field organizer on duty
there, by surprise. But I wanted to see the evidence of what Democrats have
been claiming they're building in states like this one, and what could be
crucial to their uphill quest to keep the Senate: an Obama-style
community-organizing effort of unprecedented scale for a non-presidential
election.

The office in Pine Bluff is a cavernous, mostly empty space. Six full-time,
paid staff work out of the unit, which is open seven days a week. Long
tables line the right side of the room; three staff offices—messy and
largely uninhabited thanks to some recent water damage—line the back. A
long list of rules scribbled on a paper tacked to the wall begins with
these two bullet points: "Goals are mandatory. Meetings are mandatory."
Another handwritten sheet bears a quotation from Barack Obama: "Yes we can."

Every weekday morning and evening, this space fills up with volunteers.
Some stay in to make phone calls; others are sent out with a list of
addresses to knock on doors, looking for voters. (On weekends, the effort
intensifies.) Weeks like this, when it's 95 degrees out with 50 percent
humidity, it is punishing work, but they have been at it for months, and
they will not stop until November. "Oh yeah," says Collins, a friendly Pine
Bluff native in her 40s, when I tell her I'm trying to confirm this field
organization really exists. "We real."

This year, Arkansas is home to one of the nation's most intense Senate
races, as incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor faces a challenge from a first-term
congressman, Representative Tom Cotton. Like many of this year's
competitive Senate contests, it features a Democratic incumbent desperately
trying to survive in deeply hostile territory—in this case, a state Mitt
Romney won by 23 points, or more than 250,000 votes. Other seats Democrats
are trying to hold onto are in similarly tough states such as Alaska, North
Carolina, and Louisiana.

To beat the odds, across the country Democrats have mounted an ambitious
political organizing effort—the first attempt to replicate the Obama
campaign's signature marriage of sophisticated technology and intensive
on-the-ground engagement on a national scale without Obama on the ballot.
The effort is particularly noticeable in states like Arkansas and Alaska,
which have small electorates and which haven't been presidential
battleground states for a decade or more. (In 2004, John Kerry initially
tried to compete in Arkansas, but pulled out of the state three weeks
before the election and lost it by 10 points.) In Arkansas, campaigns
traditionally begin after Labor Day; this year, the airwaves have already
been blanketed with campaign ads, from both the candidates and
deep-pocketed outside groups, for months.

The Democrats' Arkansas organizing effort kicked off with a canvass on June
7. "People were saying, 'Robert, the election's six months away! What are
you doing?'" Robert McLarty, the director of the Arkansas Democratic
Coordinated Campaign, tells me. "We are starting from a blank slate. People
here have never seen what folks in Ohio and Pennsylvania are used to every
year." Throughout the entire 2010 election the party recruited 1,210 local
volunteers; that number was surpassed in the first 30 days of this year's
effort. Seventy percent of the volunteers recruited so far have never
worked for a campaign. They have registered more than 6,000 new voters. The
Democrats believe there is an iceberg-like mass of latent votes that are
theirs for the asking but have simply never been mobilized before.

That the Republicans don't have an office in Pine Bluff isn't
surprising—there aren't a lot of Republican voters here. Arkansas's
ninth-largest city, an impoverished, crime-ridden burg of about 50,000
people, is predominantly African American and sits in one of the 10 of
Arkansas's 75 counties that went for Obama in the last election. Pine Bluff
is exactly the kind of place from which Democrats need to extract more
voters if they want to reshape the electorate. On my way out of town, I saw
one of the most depressing signs I've ever seen, a mortuary touting its
bargain prices: "Complete Funeral $2,490."

Republicans say they, too, are mounting a massive, never-before-seen effort
in Arkansas, part of the Republican National Committee's vow to beef up the
party's ground game and technological efforts post-2012. Last week, the
RNC's chairman, Reince Priebus, visited Little Rock and touted the party's
work. "We call it 'Victory 365': our plan to be everywhere, all the time,
nonstop, ground game, data, and being obsessed with the mechanics," Priebus
told reporters at the Cotton for Senate headquarters on the top floor of a
Regions Bank building. While some might consider such nitty-gritty work
boring, he said, "I happen to believe races are won and lost on the ground.
They're won and lost now with data, infrastructure, and technology."

Republicans now have 11 offices open across Arkansas, party officials told
me, all of them staffed by field organizers. They have recruited "hundreds"
of volunteers, and the RNC has had staff here for almost a year. This
effort is indeed bigger than anything the party previously built in this
state. "We clearly have the largest mobilization we've had in my memory,
which is pretty good," the state GOP chairman, Doyle Webb, tells me,
crediting the RNC for stepping up its game. "We've been waiting for the
cavalry, and now it's here."

But the Republicans' effort pales in comparison to what the Democrats have
built: Democrats are spending more than five times as much money in
Arkansas, and have four times as many field offices and triple the number
of staff. In the month of July alone, the Arkansas Democratic Party
reported nearly $900,000 in federal campaign spending, while Arkansas
Republicans reported $155,000. (Most of the money the Democrats are
spending has come directly from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee.) Democrats listed 64 staffers on their payroll; Republicans
listed 22. The RNC claims it has 50 people on the payroll in Arkansas,
including some being paid by other GOP committees, but I could not find a
record of them and staffers on the ground were not aware of them. According
to public records, there are Democratic staffers in places like Cabot
(population 24,000), Marion (12,000), Arkadelphia (11,000), and Dardanelle,
Tom Cotton's hometown, with fewer than 5,000 residents.

Republican candidates also have organizing help from Americans for
Prosperity, the conservative nonprofit supported by Charles and David Koch,
which has sought to build its own ground game separate from the Republican
Party. Many Arkansans told me the group had the state's most visible
canvassing effort. It has five full-time staff on the ground in Arkansas
and offices in Little Rock, Jonesboro, and Rogers, spokesman Levi Russell
told me. But AFP can't work directly with the Republican Party, meaning the
party has no control over its efforts. And there are indications AFP's
Arkansas efforts aren't meeting their goals. A memo written by a fired AFP
Arkansas consultant that was leaked to Mother Jones in April lamented
"declining tea party engagement" that was diminishing the group's pool of
activists.

If, as many believe and some studies have shown, the Starbucks-like
proliferation of swing-state campaign offices and staff helped Obama win in
2012, Republicans appear to be in danger of being organizationally
overmatched once again.

Democrats believe the ground game has powered them to victory in unlikely
circumstances in the past. In 2010, the year of the Obama backlash and the
Republican tsunami, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet managed to buck the
tide and win by a narrow margin after his campaign invested heavily in
data-driven field operations—a daring choice that went against the
traditional campaign's reliance on advertising. (Bennet, who chairs the
senatorial committee, is the brother of The Atlantic's editor in chief and
co-president, James Bennet.) Inspired by Bennet's success, in 2012,
Democrats built large field operations in Montana and North Dakota, two red
states untouched by the presidential candidates. Turnout in those states
exceeded the national average, and Democrats won both states' Senate races
even as Obama lost both states by wide margins.

This year marks Democrats' attempt to roll out the program on a national
scale. Dubbed the Bannock Street Project, after the Bennet campaign's
Denver headquarters, it will, by the time the election is over, comprise a
4,000-employee, $60 million effort in 10 states. The voter-contact metrics
recorded in each state are uploaded in real time to the Washington
headquarters of the senatorial committee. While such efforts are commonly
described as turnout operations, Matt Canter, the committee's deputy
executive director, says there's more to it than that. "This is about much
more than [get-out-the-vote]," he tells me. "This is not just identifying
supporters and turning them out. This is actually building sustained voter
contact programs through multiple face-to-face conversations that can
persuade voters to change their minds and vote Democrat."

Democrats believe they have a technological edge in their ability to use
data to model and target voter preferences. Republicans, who have invested
heavily in technology since 2012, are working to catch up. But on a basic
level, turning out voters relies on the simple arithmetic of the
application of resources—bodies on the ground, close to their communities,
tirelessly recruiting volunteers who will work to activate their neighbors
and family and friends. On a recent evening in Little Rock, two
retirees—Jim Hickman, a former social worker, and Susan Hickman, a former
psychiatric nurse—were pulling their regular weekly phone-calling shift
along with 21 others at the campaign office. Lifelong Democrats, the
Hickmans are regular volunteers for the first time.

Jim uses his personal cell phone in hopes of getting more people to answer,
but very few do. "The answering machine rules," he says. Of those who do
pick up the phone, many either have no idea what's on the ballot or have
already made up their minds. But Hickman hopes he is making a difference.
"At least I sleep better," he says. "I go as long as my battery lasts."

*BuzzFeed: “Hillary Clinton Ignores Questions On Ferguson”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/hillary-clinton-ignores-questions-on-ferguson#2wwn3q7>*

By Ruby Cramer

August 24, 2014, 4:54 p.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] The former secretary of state has not commented on the shooting
of Michael Brown or the subsequent protests.

WESTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Surrounded by a retinue of aides and members of her
security detail, Hillary Clinton left a book signing on Sundayafternoon as
two reporters asked questions about the protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

Clinton ignored them, exiting the bookstore through a backdoor.

Last week, Rev. Al Sharpton, the New York City preacher, called on Clinton
and another possible presidential candidate, Jeb Bush, to speak out on the
violence in Ferguson. “Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton,” he said, “don’t get
laryngitis on this issue.”

But in the two weeks since the police shooting of Michael Brown, a black
teenager, Clinton has not commented on the unrest in the St. Louis suburb.

On Sunday, she stayed quiet again, sticking to her routine at the signing
at Books & Books, a shop on the main drag of this hamlet in the Hamptons.

The event capped off a two-month publicity tour to promote her memoir, Hard
Choices. This month, Clinton and her husband have decamped to Amagansett
for vacation. She is scheduled to appear at several Democratic Party
fundraisers and at a campaign event in Iowa next month, Sen. Tom Harkin’s
annual steak fry.

Clinton’s team added the Westhampton stop to her schedule just last week. A
staffer at Books & Books said they started preparing for the event last
Monday.

The owner, Jack McKeown, said he’d been trying for six months to schedule
an event with Clinton. McKeown, who is also the former head of Clinton’s
publishing house, Simon & Schuster, told reporters he was able to get the
signing on her calendar after running into an old mutual friend: Bob
Barnett, the Washington lawyer who represents Clinton and negotiated her
book contract.

*Politico: “On Ferguson, no words from Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/hillary-clinton-ferguson-110301.html>*

By Maggie Haberman

August 24, 2014, 4:33 p.m. EDT

Hillary Clinton ignored reporters’ questions about the racial conflict in
Ferguson, Missouri, on Sunday at the end of a book-signing event in
Westhampton Beach, a vacation enclave near her rented summer house.

Clinton, the potential 2016 Democratic presidential hopeful who has been
vacationing in the Hamptons since the first full week of August, has not
yet commented on the situation in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, where an
unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown was killed by a police officer
two weeks ago.

Since then, there have been protests marked by arrests and clashes with
police, and a national debate about race and the militarization of police
departments.

Two reporters called out questions to Clinton about her thoughts on
Ferguson after she had wrapped up at Books & Books on Main Street in
Westhampton Beach, a store owned by former Simon & Schuster executive Jack
McKeown. (Simon & Schuster is the publisher of her new book, “Hard
Choices.”)

Clinton ignored the questions and kept walking toward a rear entrance of
the book store.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, at a rally in Ferguson last weekend, pushed toward
the future, calling on all the 2016 potential candidates, including Clinton
and Republican Jeb Bush, to comment on the situation. Clinton is the clear
front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

Few other Democrats have publicly called for a comment from Clinton on
Ferguson, and some Democrats have said there is a danger of further
inflaming a tense situation by weighing in.

It was Clinton’s second book signing in New York’s Hamptons. The first was
a week earlier, on a Saturday. The event had been heavily advertised for
three weeks.

The Westhampton Beach event, by contrast, was added only last Monday,
officials with the store said. McKeown said he had been seeking Clinton for
six months, and that he was mainly able to make it happen because of his
longstanding relationship with Robert Barnett, the Washington lawyer who
has negotiated her book deals.

Westhampton Beach, an earthier summer enclave compared to the high-end feel
of East Hampton, was prepared for the event, with police handling crowd
control outside the store an hour before the 2 p.m. signing began.

The event began early, with a crowd lined up along the street well in
advance. Clinton received what has become a standard number of entreaties
to run in 2016 from people who moved along the line to shake her hand and
have their books signed.

One man asked her for her campaign contact. Clinton, who has said she has
yet to decide whether she’s running, replied, “Oh, I don’t have a campaign
yet.”

*Tampa Bay Times: “Rep. Paul Ryan promotes book, talks Hillary Rodham
Clinton and 2016 in Brandon”
<http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/us-rep-paul-ryan-visits-brandon-to-promote-book-talk-2016/2194455>*

By Adam C. Smith

August 24, 2014, 7:12 p.m. EDT

BRANDON — Republicans need not be cowed by the prospect of taking on
Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016, said U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, one of the
leading Republican contenders to do just that.

"She's very formidable. She'll raise a lot money, she has a lot of name
ID," the Wisconsin native and former Republican vice presidential nominee
said during a stop in Tampa Bay to promote his new book. "But I think
Hillary Clinton is very beatable because a Hillary Clinton presidency is
basically the same thing as an Obama third term. I don't think she'll be
able to shake that."

Despite only a few dozen people showing up to his book signing at
Books-A-Million in Brandon on Sunday, the 44-year-old House budget chief
managed to project the upbeat and optimistic attitude he prescribes in his
new book, The Way Forward, which is part memoir and part manifesto for how
the GOP can win national majorities again.

"We need to be that happy warrior inclusive party that appeals to people
based on their common humanity, based on their aspirations, based on
opportunity and growth. That means we have to take this message everywhere
to all communities and show people why our ideas are better for them and
their families," Ryan said in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times.

There is no sign that Ryan is veering away from his longtime advocacy for
cutting spending on programs that benefit middle- and lower-income
Americans while reducing taxes for wealthier Americans. President Barack
Obama hammered him and presidential nominee Mitt Romney for that approach
during the 2012 campaign, but Ryan contends the party can still broaden its
tent and diversify its support without compromising on core conservative
ideas.

That includes making the fight against poverty a top priority.

"We have an obligation to have smarter and more effective ways of fighting
poverty given that we are losing the war on poverty 50 years into it," said
Ryan, who stopped at nine bookstores in north and central Florida over
three days to promote his 304-page volume. "The point is to attack the
status quo and to have a different approach to fighting poverty and totally
reorienting the federal government's role."

Unlike other 2016 prospects, such as Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand
Paul of Kentucky, Ryan has not been assembling a team of likely
presidential advisers and says he will not decide about running until 2015.
The decision will be based on his family and the field of candidates, he
said.

Clinton is the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination if she
runs, while the Republican field is much more competitive. The average of
recent polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.com shows New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie drawing 11.5 percent support, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush 10.8
percent, Paul 10.3 percent, Ryan 9.3 percent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz 8.8
percent, Texas Gov. Rick Perry 8.3 percent and Rubio 7.5 percent.

Asked about the Florida GOP heavyweights, Ryan said Bush and Rubio are
"absolutely cream of the crop, top-tier leaders who would make great
candidates or presidents."

He and Rubio have been mutual admirers since early 2010 when Ryan became
the first U.S. House leader to endorse Rubio for U.S. Senate over
then-Republican Charlie Crist.

"The party was upset because Crist was their backed guy," but after meeting
with both candidates, Ryan said it was clear Rubio was "head and shoulders
above" Crist.

Democrats had promised protesters at every Ryan book-signing stop, but the
only hint of that in Brandon occurred when Wesley Chapel resident Ray
McCullough, 61, handed Ryan a book to sign and asked him about plans to cut
retirement benefits for seniors.

Ryan assured him he is not advocating any cuts for people close to or
currently in retirement.

*Politico: “Secrets of the Clinton Library”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/secrets-of-the-clinton-library-110289.html>*

By Josh Gerstein

August 25, 2014, 5:01 a.m. EDT

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — It is a lingering mystery of Bill Clinton’s White
House: the genesis of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that gay groups
came to revile.

But soon, this and other secrets that remain hidden away here at the
Clinton Presidential Library may be unlocked. What did the Justice
Department say about all the random requests for pardons? What kind of
advice came from Clinton staffers such as now-Supreme Court Justice Elena
Kagan? What strategic thoughts were offered to the president and first lady
Hillary Clinton on terrorism, Whitewater and health care reform? And what’s
the library been holding back about Vince Foster?

Six months after the National Archives began releasing long-withheld
Clinton White House documents, thousands of pages of the most sensitive
records are still not yet public. But hints of their contents emerged
during a POLITICO recent review of the gaps in the library’s public files.

To see document-by-document descriptions of what remains unreleased, one
has to venture in person to the gleaming silver library alongside the
Arkansas River. Most visitors go for the presidential limousine and the
cart selling “I miss Bill” memorabilia before heading upstairs, taking in
the Oval Office replica and the saxophone that candidate Clinton played on
“The Arsenio Hall Show.”

But ask at the reception desk and a National Archives staffer will be
summoned to escort you through a secure hallway to a wing of the library
complex that houses 78 million pages of White House records and about 20
million emails — most of them stored on a couple of underground floors of
the complex. Less than 5 percent of the records have been processed for
release.

Internal National Archives files obtained by POLITICO show that the threat
of publicity seems to have been a factor in getting some of that material
out this year, nudging forward a painfully slow process involving the
Archives, President Barack Obama’s lawyers and Clinton’s team — all of whom
play roles in dictating the pace and sequence of releases.

Three days after POLITICO inquired with the White House in February about
why none of the so-called previously withheld records had been released
more than a year after the legal authority to withhold them expired, White
House lawyer David Sandler emailed the Archives, approving the release of
tens of thousands of pages of documents. The very next day, Clinton
representative Bruce Lindsey signed off on disclosing the same batch of
records — a trove so large that it has taken the library months to organize
and post online.

So while the Obama White House decides on clearing the release of all of
the roughly 33,000 records, here’s our rundown of the most intriguing
still-unreleased files from the Clinton Library:

1) Gays in the military

For gay rights advocates, the Clinton years were complicated. Far and away,
up to that time, he was the president who was friendliest to the gay and
lesbian community. But he also put in place policies that took nearly two
decades to reverse, such as the Defense of Marriage Act and “don’t ask,
don’t tell.”

Set for release soon from the Clinton archives are detailed notes of a key
meeting where DADT was born. National Archives records obtained by POLITICO
show plans to release: “Thirty-four pages of handwritten notes taken at a
Jan. 25, 1993, meeting to discuss the issue of gays in the military between
President Clinton, Vice President Gore and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Clinton, Al Gore and their top advisers are said to have discussed “their
personal viewpoints of homosexuality” (choice vs. genetics).

The politics of gay rights have changed so abruptly in recent years that
some of the views expressed privately on the subject could sound outdated
or even offensive to many Americans. The papers could support or undercut
Clinton’s claims that he was assured the new policy the military was
considering would result in gay soldiers not being investigated unless they
explicitly disclosed their sexuality.

2) The pardon feeding frenzy

The last-minute pardon of billionaire financier Marc Rich became one of the
most infamous moments of Clinton’s presidency, sullying the president’s
reputation as he walked out the door. Less well-known or remembered is the
feeding frenzy of clemency applications that flowed into the White House in
the weeks before Clinton left office. The list of individuals relaying
pardon requests is a who’s who of prominent Democratic Party figures.

Rosalynn Carter requested a pardon for Patty Hearst, citing her “exemplary
life for more than 20 years now.”

Former DNC Chair Donald Fowler urged a pardon for ABSCAM “victim” ex-Rep.
John Jenrette (D-S.C.). Clinton friend Vernon Jordan sent in a pardon
request for a New York fertility doctor serving time for health care fraud.
(The physician happened to be Marc Rich’s ex-wife’s boyfriend.)

Michael Brown, son of the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, unsuccessfully
sought a pardon for boxing champion Riddick Bowe. (The junior Brown now
needs one for himself. The former D.C. Council member is now serving a
39-month sentence after pleading guilty in a federal corruption sting.)

Many of the requests are already public. What’s set to emerge in the coming
weeks are the recommendations Clinton got from the Justice Department and
his own staffers, including the pros and cons of the most sensitive pardons.

Some of the soon-to-be-released papers appear to relate to cases tied to
Hillary Clinton, like the commutations her husband granted to four Hasidic
Jewish leaders from New Square, N.Y., a few months after they held a
meeting with her as part of her Senate bid. A federal prosecutor
investigated that clemency case and others but never filed charges.

3) Vince Foster

The Clinton Library has never released its key files on the death of Vince
Foster, a White House attorney and former law partner of Hillary Clinton.
Foster killed himself in July 1993 as he was handling various controversies
that enmeshed the Clintons in their early months at the White House. The
event was emotionally scarring for many in the Clintons’ circle and fueled
numerous conspiracy theories.

Now, many Foster-related files are set to be disclosed, including a note
from White House counselor David Gergen with Deputy Attorney General Philip
Heymann about turning over Foster’s suicide note to the U.S. Park Police.
Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation found it took the White
House 30 hours to advise the police about the note, which staffers said was
overlooked in initial searches of Foster’s office.

At the time of Foster’s death, he was deeply involved in responding to a
lawsuit filed against Clinton’s Health Care Task Force. One previously
secret document is listed this way in Clinton Library files: “Photcopy
[sic] Note from Vincent Foster to Hillary Rodham Clinton [Re: Health Care
Task Force lawsuit] (1 page).”

Of the half-dozen other handwritten notes Foster saved, several are set for
release, but — fueling unending conspiracy theories — several of his other
writings are still slated to be withheld on privacy grounds.

National Archives and Records Administration records obtained by POLITICO
also indicate the forthcoming files include “White House personnel opinions
on what to do about disclosure” relating to the Foster saga as well as
legal memos about strategies to fight Freedom of Information Act requests
seeking White House records about Foster’s death.

4) Crackdown on militias?

The 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City led to a
smattering of legislative proposals, including efforts to streamline
application of the death penalty and criminalize support for foreign
terrorist groups. However, the Clinton White House also pressed into two
areas that are highly controversial today and sure to raise the hackles of
tea party types and the National Rifle Association: enhancing government
surveillance powers and regulating armed groups of U.S. citizens.

Records set for release show the Clinton administration gave serious
consideration to seeking a law that would crack down on “paramilitary”
organizations by setting up a “strict licensing system” for the provision
of military-style training, according to library records obtained by
POLITICO.

After lawyers raised concerns that some of the proposals could violate the
Constitution, Clinton political adviser Dick Morris was among those who
counseled Clinton on how he could press forward against the “militias,” a
summary of the files says.

Ultimately, Clinton didn’t seek a militia control law but did propose
greater legal authority to obtain phone records (call it metadata if you
must) as well as hotel, airline and bus details. Most of what he proposed
became law within a couple of years and was broadened further under the
PATRIOT Act following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

5) The presidency may change, but the players stay the same

The Clinton files — including the documents still to be released — are
replete with appearances by individuals who are now at the highest levels
of the Obama administration. The Sylvia Mathews who was involved in
searching Vince Foster’s office following his death? That’s the current
secretary of Health and Human Services: Sylvia Mathews Burwell. The Elena
Kagan who wrote memos about Paula Jones’ lawsuit against President Clinton?
She’s now a Supreme Court justice.

The Jennifer O’Connor who dealt with many of the complaints about the
structure and legality of Hillary Clinton’s health care task force? The
same Jennifer O’Connor who served as a scandal-managing lawyer for the
Obama administration, first at the IRS, the HHS and now at the White House.

The National Security Council lawyer Caroline Krass, who opined on the
constitutionality of collecting embassy employee DNA? She’s now the general
counsel of the CIA.

Many of the Clinton-Obama transplants now have private advice they gave or
received set to become public in short order.

6) White House Travel Office affair

One of the earliest “scandals” to plague the Clinton White House, the
decision to abruptly terminate the entire staff of the office that
organizes travel for the White House press corps and others accompanying
the president on official trips became the subject of intense scrutiny. In
a draft memo released in 1996, a top White House aide said there would be
“hell to pay” if then-first lady Hillary Clinton’s wishes to clean house at
the office were ignored. She had suggested that a firm close to the Clinton
campaign take over the office.

Earlier, public statements by the White House downplayed Hillary’s role,
but the White House’s full records on the controversy — including legal
advice on how to respond to questions about the first lady’s actions — have
never been made public. About 2,000 pages of records were withheld from an
investigating congressional committee on executive privilege grounds. Now,
many of those records are set for release.

7) Whitewater

Notably absent from the recent Clinton Library releases: any of the more
than 56,000 pages the White House maintained on the Clintons’ Whitewater
land deal and the years of investigations it gave rise to.

The Archives will soon break the seal on what it describes as “legal advice
from Janet Reno on executive privilege,” along with “many letters and
papers to and from counsel pertaining to fact-gathering, what is going on
with the investigation, responding to requests and strategy as well as key
points on Whitewater for press conferences.”

Despite the plan to make some sensitive Whitewater documents public, other
letters and memos related to Whitewater could remain under wraps for some
time. Archivists classified those files, including memos prepared by
Clinton lawyer David Kendall and letters from late Whitewater figure Jim
McDougal, withheld on privacy grounds as opposed to the confidential advice
provisions that have expired.

8) Betsey Wright (keeper of the Clinton self-oppo file)

Of all the figures in Bill Clinton’s circle from his Arkansas days, none
provokes as much curiosity and suspicion as Betsey Wright, the Clinton
adviser known for developing the file of opposition research that outsiders
might turn up on Clinton— particularly the many rumors of affairs.

At least one Wright email is set to emerge soon: Sent to a White House
political aide in 1996, the email appears to relate to Whitewater and was
gathered by Kagan in response to a subpoena from Independent Counsel Ken
Starr.

9) How long will a SCOTUS nominee live?

With President Barack Obama talking about forthcoming vacancies on the
Supreme Court, speculation is fueled about the health of the court’s
current justices. But there is less public discussion of how health issues
affect the consideration of potential Supreme Court nominees. In 1994,
Clinton seriously considered naming federal appeals court judge Richard
Arnold to the Supreme Court but opted against it because he’d been treated
for lymphoma. The White House’s blunt internal deliberations on the issue,
which have never been made public, are set for release. The records include
“several different doctors discussing Arnold’s health and predicting how
long they expect Arnold to live,” according to an Archives summary obtained
by POLITICO.

Hillary Clinton reportedly pushed hard in favor of Arnold, but her husband
eventually tapped Stephen Breyer for the slot. The soon-to-be-released
files contain such sensitive information about Arnold’s health and
reputation that they would not ordinarily be made public, even though the
statutory legal protections for White House deliberations have expired.
Those details are being made public because Arnold died in 2004 from
complications of the lymphoma he’d struggled with for decades, lessening
the weight given to privacy concerns.

10) Health care reform constitutionality

Long before Obamacare, there was Clintoncare — sometimes known as
Hillarycare. It never became law, but lawyers still had to prepare to
defend it. That task fell to Walter Dellinger and other top lawyers at DOJ
who drafted memos like “The Constitutionality of Health Care Reform.”

Dellinger said earlier this month that his work focused on whether “a
proposed national health board constituted an impermissible delegation of
legislative authority, as well as questions about claims regarding taking
of private property and “whether Congress had authority to enact the entire
bill under the commerce clause.”

While Obamacare’s individual mandate has survived its Supreme Court
challenge, opponents of the law will be looking to see what chinks the
Clinton legal team saw in the legal foundation of health care reform and
whether any of those arguments could be brought to bear against the
Affordable Care Act.

11) Collecting federal employee DNA

In the wake of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, a
State Department review panel recommended that the U.S. government collect
DNA samples from all U.S. Embassy personnel overseas. An email and
handwritten notes show the Clinton White House struggled with the privacy
and legal implications of building a database containing the DNA profiles
of U.S. government workers. The plan ultimately was dropped.

*NBC News: “Point of No Return: Democrats Want Definitive Signal from
Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/hillary-clinton/point-no-return-democrats-want-definitive-signal-hillary-clinton-n187201>*

By Mark Murray

August 25, 2014

Analysis: Hillary Clinton isn’t simply dipping her toes into the 2016
presidential waters; it looks more like she’s sizing up for a somersault –
with a full twist – off a diving board.

But if she ends up deciding not to jump in, Democrats want an answer sooner
rather than later.

In the past few months, Clinton has concluded a big book tour with dozens
of news interviews; distanced herself (either in small or substantial ways)
from her party’s currently unpopular president; and is now heading next
month to Iowa, which traditionally holds the first presidential nominating
contest.

What’s significant about all of this activity, Democrats say, is that the
more she walks and talks like a presidential candidate – effectively
freezing out any other Democrats even contemplating a run – the more
difficult it becomes to turn around and say no.

“The longer it goes, the harder it becomes for her not to run, unless there
is a significant reason she can't,” says Democratic communications
strategist Karen Finney, an MSNBC contributor.

“A ‘no’ has to come earlier than a ‘yes,’” adds another Democratic
strategist, who wished to remain anonymous. “If it's a no, I suspect she
won't let it drag on.”

The question is timing, of course. Some Democrats believe she has until
early next year to state she’s NOT running. Others believe that it should
come before or after the midterm elections.

“Secretary Clinton can freeze the Democratic field as long as she wants,
but I would suspect she and her team aren't interested in dragging it out
any more than anyone else,” says Stephanie Cutter, a former top aide to
President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign. “ I think she has until early 2015
to make a decision.”

While all of her steps since leaving her position as secretary of state
suggest plans for a presidential run beginning next year, there also have
been doubts she might not run.

Has all the scrutiny over her news interviews (“dead broke!” “distancing
herself from Obama!”) made her think twice about running for president in a
media environment that has changed considerably since her last presidential
run? Does she simply want to be a grandmother now that daughter Chelsea is
expecting her first child?

After all, deciding to run for the presidency could be a 10-year endeavor –
two years running in 2016, four years in a first term and another four
years if re-elected.

Earlier this year, Politico reported that two of Clinton’s closest advisers
(Cheryl Mills and Maggie Williams) were against her running.

Yet since then, all the signs – the book tour, the distancing from Obama
(either real or perceived), the Sept. 14 visit to Iowa with her husband –
all point to a White House run.

And that has done two things. One, it has frozen the Democratic field.
According to data compiled by U.S. News & World Report, Vice President Joe
Biden; Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Maryland
Gov. Martin O’Malley; and former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer have made a
combined 12 trips to Iowa and New Hampshire since the beginning of 2013.

By comparison, Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Marco Rubio,
R-Fla.; Texas Gov. Rick Perry; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; and Rep.
Paul Ryan, R-Wis., have made nearly three times as many visits – a combined
30.

Those visits give a potential presidential candidate more exposure and name
identification with voters.

Two, it possibly opens Clinton up to blame from Democrats if she passes on
a presidential run and if Republicans win the White House in 2016. The
logic: Clinton freezing the field didn’t give prospective Democrats enough
time to grow their national profile.

But Democrats caution that such blame wouldn’t be fair unless she waited
until March or April of 2015 to say “no.” By contrast, a “no” by the end of
the year, or early next year, would still give Democratic candidates times
to build an organization and higher name ID.

Yet there are others who believe that all the attention on Clinton has
actually benefitted Democrats who might want to take her on, even if she
does run.

“I used to think she was freezing potential 2016ers out, but I believe that
all of her missteps over the last few months – on her enormous personal
wealth, on the border crisis, and on foreign policy – have created a bigger
opening than ever for someone to challenge her,” says a Democratic
strategist eyeing the emerging 2016 field.

Still, a fellow Democrat mounting a challenge to Clinton would be against
all odds. Polls have shown the former first lady and secretary of state
crushing all other Democratic opponents.

And that’s why, if she is going to pass on a presidential bid, Democrats
want a clear signal sooner rather than later.

*Washington Post: “Republican Comstock’s past a political touchstone in Va.
congressional race”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/comstocks-past-emerges-as-political-touchstone-in-congressional-race/2014/08/24/d8738bd6-24ab-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html>*

By Antonio Olivo

August 24, 2014, 5:23 p.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] The candidate touts her bulldog aggression, while opponents
consider her a partisan wet blanket

Barbara Comstock was a young aide to U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) 21
years ago when she was assigned a constituent’s complaint about the White
House that would eventually grow into the roiling political scandal known
as Travelgate.

The duty propelled Comstock into a role that would last for years —
Republican foil to Democrats Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton through many
of the big scandals that engulfed them: Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky,
impeachment.

Today, Comstock is making a name for herself as a state lawmaker and the
Republican nominee to replace Wolf, who is retiring from his Northern
Virginia seat. And her history as a Clinton foe carries a new resonance in
a state likely to factor heavily should Hillary Clinton run for president
in 2016.

Comstock is trying to rally the Republican base with critiques of the
former secretary of state’s handling of the 2012 terrorist attack in
Benghazi, Libya. And she peppers her remarks with recollections of her
anti-Clinton advocacy during the 1990s.

But Comstock’s Democratic opponent, John W. Foust, is seizing on her
résumé, too. Clinton herself was featured in a recent online ad for Foust
that calls Comstock “a professional Clinton hater” who is “hellbent on
smearing Hillary Clinton.”

And several former Clinton aides are helping Foust characterize Comstock as
an unrelenting conservative partisan.

In other words, Clinton-bashing is no longer a surefire way to rally voters
in a state that rejected both of Bill Clinton’s bids for president but
that, last fall, elected as governor one of the Clintons’ closest
confidants, Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

How the Clinton-Comstock narrative plays with voters in the 10th
Congressional District could say a lot about how much Virginia has changed
and whether the commonwealth is ready to embrace a Clinton run for
president.

“I think this will be a fascinating case study,” said Nathan Gonzales,
deputy editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. “Comstock was
uniquely involved in the Clinton-era investigations, and Democrats think
this is an opportunity to portray her as too partisan for the district.”

*‘She was a capable person’*

It all began in May 1993, when the Clintons were still settling into
Washington and seven career staffers in the White House Travel Office were
summarily fired.

The ensuing national drama included a federal trial on embezzlement against
the travel office director that ended in acquittal, allegations of
political cronyism and fraud against the Clintons, and the suicide of White
House deputy counsel Vincent Foster.

Comstock, now 55, said the Clinton-era investigations she helped oversee
and her later success in conducting opposition research on other Democrats
illustrate the effectiveness she can bring into Congress. For some
audiences, she also isn’t shy about recalling her work in a more partisan
light.

During a Republican primary debate last spring, Comstock said, “We made
criminal referrals to the Justice Department when the Clinton
administration stonewalled us on campaign finance investigations, the $6
million worth of fraudulent payments they had received, and I can go in and
do that with Benghazi.”

Wolf recalled that Comstock’s assignment to look into what was initially an
angry constituent phone call was somewhat random.

“She did a good job,” he said in an interview. “Whatever is coming in,
whoever handles it depends on who is available. She was picked because she
was a capable person.”

Comstock’s opponents see a direct line from her role back then to what they
argue is the extreme partisanship among Republicans in Congress.

Foust’s campaign — noting that he was coaching soccer during the ’90s while
she was investigating the Clintons — cited Comstock’s support of
conservative issues in Richmond and her work lobbying for such conservative
activists as the Koch Brothers as proof that she is a partisan soldier.

“People like Comstock, when they get to Washington, their focus is on
destroying the opposition as opposed to working across the aisle to get
things done,” Foust said in an interview. “Washington doesn’t have to be as
dysfunctional as it is, but if your mind-set when you go there is to
destroy the opposition, then things will never improve.”

When the Travelgate scandal first erupted, Comstock worked on child-care
and health issues for him.

Eventually, those duties expanded to include federal employee issues, which
Wolf, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, took an interest in
on behalf of a constituency heavy with government workers.

Her probe into the Travelgate controversy — which Republicans argued was a
scheme engineered by Hillary Clinton to put an Arkansas-based friend in
charge of the travel office — got Comstock hired in 1994 as chief
investigative counsel to the House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform.

There, she delved into Bill Clinton’s fundraising history. Later, she
became a fierce advocate for impeaching him.

*A shifting stronghold*

And all of it continues to play out in the 10th District today, once a
Republican stronghold but now a hotly contested region stretching from
McLean to the Shenandoah Valley.

Fliers passed out to 10th District voters by a political action committee
called South Forward — chaired by Don Fowler, the head of the Democratic
National Committee during the Clinton years — calls Comstock “part of the
culture of corruption in Richmond and D.C.” South Forward is based in South
Carolina and typically focuses on local elections in Southern states, but
Comstock’s presence in the 10th District race has drawn the committee to
action in Northern Virginia.

“She is the face of everything we believe is wrong with the Republican
Party,” said Jay Parmley, South Forward’s executive director.

Republican bloggers criticized the group’s involvement as an act of
vengeance against Comstock, who targeted Fowler in a 1999 probe into
fundraising by the Clinton-Gore campaign.

“I can understand why Mr. Fowler may have an ax to grind against her
because he was basically run out of town,” said Norman Leahy, a
conservative online columnist for several publications, including The
Washington Post.

Fowler scoffed at that charge, noting that the Justice Department cleared
him of all accusations. Nonetheless, he said, “I’m delighted, delighted
that we went into it, and I hope that we’re successful.”

Comstock said the investigations she conducted were never partisan,
particularly Travelgate.

“It was more that these guys had all been wronged,” she said.

Wolf, too, said it wasn’t about politics. “She was very intelligent,” he
said. “Barbara was an important part of my staff.”

More than 20 years later, that’s how some of the former travel office
staffers still see it.

Gary Wright, 72, said the income he lost by being forced into an early
retirement required him to take a job as a corrections officer for a North
Carolina state prison.

“My attorney told me I went from the White House to the big house,” said
Wright, who is now retired.

Though their legal bills were eventually picked up by the federal
government, the outcome “put a financial hurt on me,” Wright said.

Billy Ray Dale, the former director of the travel office, said it took
years for him to recover from the trauma of being tried in federal court on
embezzlement before he was acquitted with the help of character-witness
testimony from several prominent members of the White House press corps.

During a 32-year career that stretched back to the days of John F. Kennedy,
“nobody had ever tried to get rid of us,” said Dale, 77. “We worked for
Republicans and Democrats alike, and it never got political.”

He now lives in rural Virginia, he said, and considers himself an
independent.

*Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column: David M. Shribman: “David M. Shribman:
Hillary Clinton and the price of being on top”
<http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/david-shribman/2014/08/24/David-M-Shribman-Hillary-Clinton-and-the-price-of-being-on-top/stories/201408240064>*

By David M. Shribman

August 24, 2014, 12:00 a.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] She has a clear field in the presidential preseason, but the
perils of tripping are high.

The NFL preseason still has a few days left. The 2016 presidential
preseason still has a few months left — for every candidate but Hillary
Rodham Clinton.

For Ms. Clinton, familiar to Americans as first lady, senator from New York
and secretary of state, there is no preseason. She’s been at the center of
American attention for almost a quarter-century.

No American woman in our history has been so prominent for so long, with
the possible exception of Eleanor Roosevelt, who was in the public eye for
29 years but who held no elected office. Susan B. Anthony was involved in
women’s issues for 55 years but for many of those years operated beyond
widespread attention. Frances Perkins served as labor secretary throughout
the entire FDR administration — one of only two Roosevelt Cabinet members
to do so — and into the Truman administration but, apart from serving on
the Civil Service Commission, largely faded from view afterward.

Ms. Clinton has not faded — indeed her national profile has only become
more vivid — since she stood beside Bill Clinton 23 years ago this fall as
he announced his candidacy for the White House. Every statement she utters
makes news. She doesn’t get to try out her lines in private, or before 18
people without cell-phone cameras in the lobby of the Hotel Ottumwa 75
miles downstream from Des Moines, the way her putative rivals do.

It’s a great advantage — and a great disadvantage.

The advantage is that she is by far the front-runner for the Democratic
presidential nomination, with a position more commanding than any
non-incumbent candidate at least since Walter F. Mondale in 1984, perhaps
since Adlai Stevenson in 1956. She will have money at hand, and attention
wherever she goes. For the next several months her very presence — as a
candidate if she becomes one, as a professed non-candidate until she
withdraws — keeps others from the race, and keeps dollars from potential
rivals.

The disadvantage is that when she says she and her husband were dead broke
when they left the White House, or when she appears to seek distance from
President Barack Obama and then appears to try to close the gap, she does
so in the full glare of the public spotlight.

All that helps explain a very curious wrinkle in public-opinion polling
that is evident in the latest survey from the well-regarded Marist College
Institute for Public Opinion.

That survey shows Ms. Clinton in two completely unremarkable positions:
supported ardently by Democrats, opposed virulently by Republicans. In
other years important political figures have had performances that did not
merit the adverbs (ardently, virulently) and thus have had cross-party
appeals. But there is less of anything that appears across party lines
today, so maybe the importance of that is smaller than it might otherwise
appear.

The Marist survey shows Ms. Clinton defeating former Gov. Jeb Bush of
Florida by 7 percentage points, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey by 6
points, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky by 4 points. These are relatively
small margins, especially this early in the political cycle, especially
since there breathes hardly a soul over 18 who has never heard of Ms.
Clinton while the other three could walk undisturbed through just about any
shopping mall in America outside their own states — and a few inside their
home states.

But that is not what should be worrisome to Ms. Clinton’s strategists.

This is: Her support among independent voters — who count in some primary
states but not all, but who are potentially decisive in general elections —
declined against each of those potential rivals. Indeed, that margin has
declined by 10 points against Mr. Bush and 9 against Mr. Paul.

“She’s upped her visibility with her book tour and some of her
misstatements, and that has shaken loose a few independents,’’ explains Lee
M. Miringoff, who directs the Marist poll. “For a while the idea of her as
a presidential candidate was abstract. Now people are getting a taste for
what a second Hillary candidacy might be like.’’

That first campaign — a pioneering effort by a female candidate — was
upended by the kind of inflexibility that did not allow for the entrant of
another pioneer, the first mainstream black candidate, nor for the
importance of caucus states, which Mr. Obama focused on and captured while
Ms. Clinton’s forces fought with each other and concentrated on primary
states.

Ms. Clinton’s 2008 campaign is regarded as an astonishing series of missed
opportunities and squandered potential.

All presidential races are different, and all comparisons are specious.

Mr. Mondale’s presence in the 1984 race, for example, did not chill others
from becoming presidential candidates the way Ms. Clinton’s presence has.

Sen. John H. Glenn Jr. of Ohio jumped in the race, and for a while he
presented an important challenge to the former vice president. Sen. Gary
Hart of Colorado entered the contest, and though he operated below the
political radar for many months, he emerged a winner in New Hampshire and
nearly won the nomination himself.

In the unusual circumstances of 2016, political professionals are trying to
measure just how effective a candidate Ms. Clinton can be in a race that
appears to offer her a clear field, a situation much different from 1984.

She has every element — an organized, disciplined mind, a broad network of
potential appointees, comprehensive knowledge of the world and familiarity
with world leaders — of being a good president. In that regard she has a
profile much like that of George H.W. Bush.

But she might have another characteristic attributed to the older Mr. Bush.
She may be a superb potential president but an awkward, perhaps even
halting, candidate. The problem with American politics since the beginning
of the 20th century is that the qualities that make a political figure a
good campaigner do not necessarily make him or her a good president.

Ms. Clinton can take some comfort from the notion that as the lone
contender in the Democratic presidential race all of her moves, especially
missteps, prompt an outsized reaction. Right now the campaign is akin to
walking on heels across concrete in an empty room. Once other candidates
are in the race — and some surely will join—that room will have some
carpeting and it will no longer be empty.

Even so, the perils of tripping are greater for her than for any other
candidate. That’s the price of being on top.

*Calendar:*

*Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official
schedule.*

·  August 28 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes Nexenta’s OpenSDx
Summit (BusinessWire
<http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140702005709/en/Secretary-State-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton-Deliver-Keynote#.U7QoafldV8E>
)

·  September 4 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton speaks at the National Clean
Energy Summit (Solar Novis Today
<http://www.solarnovus.com/hillary-rodham-clinto-to-deliver-keynote-at-national-clean-energy-summit-7-0_N7646.html>
)

·  September 9 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton fundraises for the DSCC at
her Washington home (DSCC
<https://d1ly3598e1hx6r.cloudfront.net/sites/dscc/files/uploads/9.9.14%20HRC%20Dinner.pdf>
)

·  September 14 – Indianola, IA: Sec. Clinton headlines Sen. Harkin’s Steak
Fry (LA Times
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-tom-harkin-clinton-steak-fry-20140818-story.html>
)

·  October ? – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton fundraises for House
Democratic women candidates with Nancy Pelosi (The Hill
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/215410-clinton-to-fundraise-with-pelosi-in-october>
)

·  October 2 – Miami Beach, FL: Sec. Clinton keynotes the CREW Network
Convention & Marketplace (CREW Network
<http://events.crewnetwork.org/2014convention/>)

·  October 13 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton keynotes the UNLV Foundation
Annual Dinner (UNLV
<http://www.unlv.edu/event/unlv-foundation-annual-dinner?delta=0>)

·  October 14 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes
salesforce.com Dreamforce
conference (salesforce.com
<http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF14/highlights.jsp#tuesday>)

 ·  December 4 – Boston, MA: Sec. Clinton speaks at the Massachusetts
Conference for Women (MCFW <http://www.maconferenceforwomen.org/speakers/>)