Subject: Correct The Record Wednesday August 13, 2014 Afternoon Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 13:46:02 -0400
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

**

*Correct The Record Wednesday August 13, 2014 Afternoon Roundup:*

*Tweets:*

*Pres. Bill Clinton* @billclinton: Grateful for the life of Robin Williams,
a true talent and a wonderful friend. He will be missed by so many.
[8/12/14, 6:34 p.m. EDT
<https://twitter.com/billclinton/status/499322972969369603>]

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: HRC said "best solutions...will come
from harnessing energy & creativity of youth" #HRC365
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/HRC365?src=hash> #internationalyouthday
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/internationalyouthday?src=hash>
http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2012/08/196362.htm …
<http://t.co/GbJm5NKlPt> [8/12/14, 6:02 p.m. EDT
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/499315005352083456>]

*Headlines:*

*Media Matters for America: “Maureen Dowd Reaches Self-Parody: Links Robin
Williams' Death To Hillary Clinton Attack”
<http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/08/13/maureen-dowd-reaches-self-parody-links-robin-wi/200415>*

“Maureen Dowd's long descent into anti-Clinton self-parody hit a new low
last night when she managed to transition from discussing the death of
Robin Williams to an attack on Hillary Clinton.”

*Wonkette: “Cool Robin Williams Story, Maureen Dowd”
<http://wonkette.com/556979/cool-robin-williams-story-maureen-dowd>*

“Maureen Dowd has been eating jazz cookies again. One time she met Robin
Williams, which makes her think about her friend Michael Kelly, who later
died covering the war in Iraq, and that’s why Hillary Clinton is a monster.
Wait, what?”

*Huffington Post: “Obama, Clinton Camps Move To Downplay Schism”
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/12/obama-clinton-schism_n_5672970.html?1407881878>*

“In the end, advisers said they expect Obama and Clinton to disagree on
foreign policy matters. It would be odd if there was no divergence. And
more likely than not, Clinton will come off as more aggressive than Obama.
But the breaks, they said, shouldn’t be over-emphasized, considering the
more copious common ground.”

*The Hill: “White House says media won't see Obama, Clinton hug it out”
<http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/215043-white-house-says-media-wont-see-obama-clinton-hug-it-out>*

“If President Obama and Hillary Clinton hug it out Wednesday night, the
news media won't be there to witness it.”

*National Journal: Ron Fournier: “Groveling, Backpedaling, and 'Hugging It
Out:' The Fear of Being Authentic”
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/groveling-back-peddling-and-hugging-it-out-the-fear-of-being-authentic-20140813>*

“Throughout her long career as a lawyer, a public wife, and a public
servant, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a role model for millions of young
people, especially women, entering politics and government. I hope none of
them are paying attention now.”

*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “Hillary Clinton’s Barack Obama problem”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/08/13/hillary-clintons-barack-obama-problem/>*

“Hillary Clinton made a strategic move to begin to distance herself from
President Obama's foreign policy over the weekend. It failed.”

*The Daily Beast: “So How Hawkish Is Hillary Clinton?”
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/13/so-how-hawkish-is-hillary-clinton.html>*

[Subtitle:] “She’s not a neocon. She has a humility they lack. However, she
could stand to show a little more humility toward Democratic primary
voters.”

*The New York Times blog: Taking Note: “Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Know When
to Stop”
<http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/hillary-clinton-doesnt-know-when-to-stop/>*

“When she runs in 2016, she will want to separate herself from Mr. Obama.
That’s normal. Doing it now, more than two years ahead of time, is
inadvisable.”

*Slate blog: David Weigel: “Ben Carson's New Book Just Outsold Hillary
Clinton's”
<http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/08/13/ben_carson_s_new_book_just_outsold_hillary_clinton_s.html>*

“According to Nielsen BookScan, Carson has pushed past Hillary Clinton and
become the author of the year's second-best-selling nonfiction book.”

*Articles:*

*Media Matters for America: “Maureen Dowd Reaches Self-Parody: Links Robin
Williams' Death To Hillary Clinton Attack”
<http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/08/13/maureen-dowd-reaches-self-parody-links-robin-wi/200415>*

By Ben Dimiero and Hannah Groch-Begley

August 13, 2014

Maureen Dowd's long descent into anti-Clinton self-parody hit a new low
last night when she managed to transition from discussing the death of
Robin Williams to an attack on Hillary Clinton.

In her August 12 column following the news that Williams died in an
apparent suicide, Dowd opened by recounting an interview she once conducted
with the comedian, before abruptly transitioning into an attack on Hillary
Clinton (emphasis added):

“As our interview ended, I was telling him about my friend Michael Kelly's
idea for a 1-900 number, not one to call Asian beauties or Swedish babes,
but where you'd have an amorous chat with a repressed Irish woman. Williams
delightedly riffed on the caricature, playing the role of an older Irish
woman answering the sex line in a brusque brogue, ordering a horny caller
to go to the devil with his impure thoughts and disgusting desire.

“I couldn't wait to play the tape for Kelly, who doubled over in laughter.

“So when I think of Williams, I think of Kelly. And when I think of Kelly,
I think of Hillary, because Michael was the first American reporter to die
in the Iraq invasion, and Hillary Clinton was one of the 29 Democratic
senators who voted to authorize that baloney war.”

Dowd's bizarre segue was immediately greeted with widespread ridicule from
both conservatives and liberals.

Conservative website Twitchy -- which Media Matters agrees with very
seldomly -- asked, "How does that make any sense whatsoever?" The site also
highlighted criticism from numerous pundits, including NYU journalism
professor Jay Rosen, who wondered whether "the New York Times is too
embarrassed to edit Maureen Dowd anymore"; Bay Area News Group editor
Daniel Jimenez, who called the column "stupefyingly embarrassing" and
posited that Dowd was "destroying" the Times' brand; and Forbes contributor
Tom Watson, who said the Times should "be ashamed."

Fox News contributor Mary Katharine Ham, writing for conservative site Hot
Air, called Dowd's transition from Williams to Clinton "the most graceless,
tacky, incoherent segue in recent memory." Referencing Dowd's ill-fated
experiment with edible marijuana, Washington Examiner senior writer Philip
Klein wrote, "From now on, I'm just gonna assume that Maureen Dowd writes
all her columns from a Denver hotel room." (Examiner colleague Tim Carney
replied, "I literally assumed there was an editing error.")

Several critics noted Dowd's tendency to turn any news event into an attack
on the Clintons. Wonkette's Rebecca Schoenkopf called the piece "as glowing
an example of Maureen Dowd's Hillary vendetta as any we've seen yet," while
Mother Jones' Kevin Drum asked, "I wonder if there's anything left in the
world that doesn't remind Dowd of Hillary Clinton?"

The answer is no. Dowd's bizarre obsession with Hillary Clinton dates back
more than two decades, during which she has attacked the former secretary
of state and first lady in at least 141 columns. A Media Matters analysis
of Dowd's work since 1993 found that the columnist has repeatedly used
popular culture references to attack Clinton, managing to link her to
everything from the movie The Stepford Wives to a Picasso painting.

*Wonkette: “Cool Robin Williams Story, Maureen Dowd”
<http://wonkette.com/556979/cool-robin-williams-story-maureen-dowd>*

By Rebecca Schoenkopf

August 13, 2014, 7:43 a.m. EDT

Maureen Dowd has been eating jazz cookies again. One time she met Robin
Williams, which makes her think about her friend Michael Kelly, who later
died covering the war in Iraq, and that’s why Hillary Clinton is a monster.
Wait, what?

“As our interview ended, I was telling him about my friend Michael Kelly’s
idea for a 1-900 number, not one to call Asian beauties or Swedish babes,
but where you’d have an amorous chat with a repressed Irish woman. Williams
delightedly riffed on the caricature, playing the role of an older Irish
woman answering the sex line in a brusque brogue, ordering a horny caller
to go to the devil with his impure thoughts and disgusting desire.

“I couldn’t wait to play the tape for Kelly, who doubled over in laughter.

“So when I think of Williams, I think of Kelly. And when I think of Kelly,
I think of Hillary, because Michael was the first American reporter to die
in the Iraq invasion, and Hillary Clinton was one of the 29 Democratic
senators who voted to authorize that baloney war.”

This is as glowing an example of Maureen Dowd’s Hillary vendetta as any
we’ve seen yet. There were 29 Democratic senators (or almost 60 percent of
the caucus) who voted to authorize that baloney war, says Maureen Dowd.
When she thinks about Michael Kelly (and Robin Williams), does she think
about

Blanche Lincoln

Dianne Feinstein

Chris Dodd

Joe Lieberman

Joe Biden

Thomas Carper

Bob Nelson

Max Cleland

Zell Miller

Evan Bayh

Tom Harkin

John Breaux

Mary Landrieu

John Kerry

Jean Carnahan

Max Baucus

Ben Nelson

Harry Reid

Bob Torricelli

Chuck Schumer

John Edwards

Byron Dorgan

Fritz Hollings

Tom Daschle

Tim Johnson

Maria Cantwell

Jay Rockefeller

or Herb Kohl?

Hint: one of those people is currently vice president of the United States,
and is possibly maybe thinking about running for president again too! But
when Maureen Dowd remembers her fallen comrade because she met Robin
Williams once, she thinks about Hillary Clinton. When doesn’t Maureen Dowd
think about Hillary Clinton? Never. She never doesn’t think about Hillary
Clinton. Eggs on toast? Hillary Clinton. Caught in the rain? Hillary
Clinton. Watching unexplainably popular Disney flicks? Hillary Clinton.
Eating Chinese takeout with “Game of Thrones” on in the background? Hillary
Clinton. Watching a TMC marathon of The Birds or whatever? Hillary Clinton.
Soused at a drunken Irish Thanksgiving? Well, if that doesn’t put every one
of us in mind of Hillary Clinton, I don’t know what would.

Maureen Maureen Maureen.

*Huffington Post: “Obama, Clinton Camps Move To Downplay Schism”
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/12/obama-clinton-schism_n_5672970.html?1407881878>*

By Sam Stein

August 12, 2014, 6:17 p.m. EDT

For months now, political junkies and the national press corps have been
salivating over the prospects of Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama
once again applying proverbial chokeholds to each other.

Conflict seemed inevitable since she -- contemplating a presidential run --
needed distance from him -- wallowing in some of his lowest approval
ratings on matters of foreign policy. After a few instances of apparent
friction passed without much of a stir, the flames finally erupted over the
weekend.

Interviews by the president and his former secretary of state put them at
odds over (at least) two matters -- one specific, the other expansive.
Clinton told The Atlantic Magazine that the failure of the U.S. to arm the
moderate rebels in Syria had left a vacuum that Islamic State extremists
had filled. Obama, meanwhile, told The New York Times that it was absurd
revisionism to think that sending arms would have changed the course of the
Syrian revolution. The president, in that interview, defended a foreign
policy based on prudence, planning, and caution. Clinton, meanwhile,
derided the Obama-themed tag line, “Don’t Do Stupid Shit” as insufficient
and uninspiring as an organizing principle.

And there you had it: Enough fodder for Republican trolling, liberal
hair-pulling, intra-camp sniping, and a provocative, umbrage-heavy tweet
from David Axelrod, Obama’s longtime counsel.

If you had flashbacks to the heydays of the 2008 campaign, when foreign
policy rifts defined the Democratic presidential primary, you could be
forgiven. By midday Tuesday, the emerging wisdom was that Clinton had
committed the same mistake that cost her that contest.

And yet, below the surface, several Democrats insisted the rift may
underwhelm. Clinton’s spokesman put a statement Tuesday afternoon, saying
she had reached out to the president to assure him that her interview was
not “an attempt to attack him, his policies, or his leadership” and to
narrow the perceived schism.

“Secretary Clinton has at every step of the way touted the significant
achievements of his presidency, which she is honored to have been part of
as his secretary of state,” said Nick Merrill. “While they've had honest
differences on some issues, including aspects of the wicked challenge Syria
presents, she has explained those differences in her book and at many
points since then. Some are now choosing to hype those differences but they
do not eclipse their broad agreement on most issues.”

Tellingly, earlier in the day, Merill declined a request for comment,
saying there was not much to add to Clinton’s previous remarks. Such
reserve usually comes when one thinks a story is on the verge of petering
out. Indeed, elsewhere on Tuesday, several other Democrats made the case
that the gulf between Clinton and Obama -– at least on the specifics --
wasn’t vast.

“We are not talking about big differences in foreign policy,” Howard Dean,
the former Democratic National Committee chair and Vermont governor, told
The Huffington Post. “I think the Hilary versus Obama stuff is inside the
Beltway kerfuffle, irrelevant and typical Washington crap.”

The substantive component of Dean’s point was that on the issue of Syria,
Obama and Clinton ended up largely in the same place. While Obama clearly
moved slower than Clinton wanted, he did end up sending arms to the rebels
-- even if he thought it was futile. In June, he asked for $500 million
more.

Clinton also firmly backed the president's push to launch military strikes
in September 2013 -- strikes that were called off when it became clear the
president lacked congressional support, and a separate deal to rid the
country of chemical weapons emerged.

And while Clinton may have expressed regret that the administration moved
slowly to put its imprint on Syria’s civil war, she peppered her position
with skepticism (“I totally understand the cautions that we had to contend
with”) and drew limits to U.S. involvement.

“Most Americans think of engagement and go immediately to military
engagement,” Clinton said. “That’s why I use the phrase 'smart power.' I
did it deliberately because I thought we had to have another way of talking
about American engagement, other than unilateralism and the so-called boots
on the ground.”

As for her criticism of “Don’t Do Stupid Shit,” not all old Obama hands
were offended.

“I feel like that [phrase] has been misinterpreted. It’s not an organizing
principle and it hasn’t been one for Obama,” said Tommy Vietor, a former
Obama White House national security spokesman who has advised Clinton
during the rollout for her book. “It is a shorthand rebuke to Bush
administration.”

The problem, in the end, isn’t so much the substance or tone as the history
-- namely, Hillary’s. Her support of the Iraq War spooked liberals in 2008
and she hasn’t earned back their trust since. In a phone conversation, Dean
-- the first Democrat to run for president on an explicitly anti-war
platform -- seemed to urge people to take a second look. He praised Obama’s
foreign policy as laid out in his West Point address (“He is not interested
in getting in a scrum with a lot of bad guys”) and offered confidence that
Clinton would not deviate.

“She is very, very smart,” said Dean. “And she is more experienced with
respect to foreign policy, really, than probably any American president
since, gee, I don’t know ... Wow, you’d have to think how far back.
Eisenhower I guess. I guess with the exception of George H.W. Bush.”

That may seem like wishful thinking to some. Certainly, there is ample
evidence that Clinton’s hawkishness is not an act, meant to prop up the
perception of her toughness, but an honest reflection of her worldview. Her
insistence that Iran have no uranium enrichment capability, and her
unbending, almost defiant, support for Israel in that same Jeffrey Goldberg
interview suggest as much.

But Clinton’s defenders are certainly aware of the downside of that. Over
the weekend, one loyalist told The Huffington Post that what made him
nervous, heading into a presumptive 2016 presidential run, was disaffection
on the left over matters of foreign policy. Clinton's remarks to The
Atlantic likely caused their share of angina.

In the end, advisers said they expect Obama and Clinton to disagree on
foreign policy matters. It would be odd if there was no divergence. And
more likely than not, Clinton will come off as more aggressive than Obama.
But the breaks, they said, shouldn’t be over-emphasized, considering the
more copious common ground.

“Having a different point of view on policy than your secretary is not a
rift. It is why you have smart advisers around,” said Vietor. “The notion
that she has to be lockstep is ridiculous, as is the notion that he demands
fealty. He is not a guy who is easily aggrieved by comments like this.”

*The Hill: “White House says media won't see Obama, Clinton hug it out”
<http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/215043-white-house-says-media-wont-see-obama-clinton-hug-it-out>*

By Justin Sink

August 13, 2014, 1:00 p.m. EDT

If President Obama and Hillary Clinton hug it out Wednesday night, the news
media won't be there to witness it.

The press won't be allowed into the birthday party where Clinton and Obama
will meet, White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters on Martha's
Vineyard.

"I appreciate the request, but I do think this is a private social
gathering for someone’s birthday, so it’s going to be hard to bring all of
you lovely people in," Schultz said.

The event will be the first time Clinton and Obama will see each other
since the former Secretary of State made several comments critical of the
president's foreign policy, including that “don’t do stupid stuff” is not
“an organizing principle” worthy of “great nations.”

A spokesman for Clinton said the remarks were not intended as an attack on
Obama and that the former first lady was looking forward to "hugging it
out" at the birthday party of the wife of a prominent Democratic fundraiser.

But Schultz swatted down reporters' requests to be present for the highly
anticipated gathering.

“I believe the president and Secretary Clinton have had many hugs over the
years, and many of them have been caught on camera,” Schultz said.

The White House spokesman said that Obama “appreciated” that Clinton had
already phoned him over the interview, in which she argued Obama’s
restrained approach to the civil war in Syria had created a vacuum that
enabled the rise of Sunni extremists now targeting minorities in Iraq.

Schultz defended the president, saying Obama was concerned that U.S.
weapons “could have fallen into the hands” of ISIS if he had begun
providing rebels with weapons earlier. He also said that few would agree it
was wrong to avoid doing “stupid stuff.”

Clinton’s comments had clearly irritated people close to Obama.

David Axelrod, Obama’s former campaign adviser, on Tuesday took a veiled
shot at Clinton, tweeting that “’don’t do stupid stuff’ means stuff like
occupying Iraq in the first place, which was a tragically bad decision.”

Clinton voted for legislation authorizing military action in Iraq, a
decision she said in her new memoir was a mistake.

The Obama and Clinton camps have sought to play down the dispute by
highlighting the get together on Wednesday.

Schultz the administration was "looking onward and upward" after the rift,
and described the friendship between Obama and Clinton as "close and
resilient."

“The president appreciates her counsel and advice, but more importantly, he
appreciates her friendship,” Schultz said.

Schultz did offer one crumb of news for 2016-watchers, however: President
Obama will meet with Vice President Biden — among Clinton's biggest rivals
for the Democratic presidential nomination — when he briefly returns to
Washington next week.

*National Journal: “Groveling, Backpedaling, and 'Hugging It Out:' The Fear
of Being Authentic”
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/groveling-back-peddling-and-hugging-it-out-the-fear-of-being-authentic-20140813>*

By Ron Fournier

August 13, 2014

[Subtitle:] Long a role model for young Americans, especially women,
Hillary Clinton rewards bad-boy behavior.

Throughout her long career as a lawyer, a public wife, and a public
servant, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a role model for millions of young
people, especially women, entering politics and government. I hope none of
them are paying attention now.

The statement she issued Tuesday to calm an offended Obama White House was
exactly the type of behavior you don't want your daughters
modeling—groveling to a thin-skinned boss, eating her own words, and
swallowing her pride by "hugging it out."

It's silly, really, this entire Obama versus Clinton frame. Barack Obama,
Hillary Clinton, and former President Bill Clinton never looked smaller
than when they were race- and sex-baiting during the 2008 Democratic
nomination fight. They never looked bigger than when they covered the scars
and formed a genuine "Team of Rivals" in the Obama White House.

Now they're back to the petty. And over what? Hillary Clinton's criticism
of Obama was fair and smart—and it might even be right. She rebuked his
foreign policy principle of "Don't do stupid shit," arguing that Obama
should have armed the Syrian rebels to prevent the creation and growth of
an Islamic state.

She didn't call him an idiot. She didn't say he was a bad leader. In fact,
she praised the president more than she criticized him, and her critique
gave Obama an opportunity to better explain his foreign policy principles.
Who doesn't want what Obama plans to do about this scary new world order?

Instead, he acted like a typical politician. Mr. Hope-and-Change dialed the
20th century and sicced his attack dogs on Clinton. His top consultant,
David Axelrod, tied her to President George Bush's decision to invade Iraq,
as if none of what's occurred in the Mideast these past six years is
Obama's responsibility.

I made a mistake at the end of my column Tuesday, "The Audacity to Be
Authentic: Hillary Clinton's Risky Hedge Against Obama." For the first 16
paragraphs, I challenged conventional wisdom that Clinton was distancing
herself from Obama and that doing so was an obvious political victory. I
noted that Clinton's remarks, consistent with her long-held interventionist
views, actually ran counter to those of a majority of the public,
especially the Democratic base. Why would she be willing to do that? "Call
me naïve," I concluded "but maybe Clinton is simply being honest."

I was naïve.

A few hours after that column posted, Clinton issued this statement through
a spokesperson:

“Earlier today, the Secretary called President Obama to make sure he knows
that nothing she said was an attempt to attack him, his policies or his
leadership. Secretary Clinton has at every step of the way touted the
significant achievements of his presidency, which she is honored to have
been part of as his secretary of State. While they've had honest
differences on some issues, including aspects of the wicked challenge Syria
presents, she has explained those differences in her book and at many
points since then. Some are now choosing to hype those differences but they
do not eclipse their broad agreement on most issues. Like any two friends
who have to deal with the public eye, she looks forward to hugging it out
when she they see each other tomorrow night.”

There are several problems with her statement.

·         It's inaccurate. Clinton certainly did criticize some of Obama's
policies, most directly with the "stupid stuff" formulation.

·         It's inconsistent. She denies attacking "him, his policies or his
leadership," and two sentences later notes "honest differences." If you
can't be honest about "honest differences," what are you going to be honest
about?

·         It's borderline demeaning, like a subordinate trying to get back
in the boss's good graces. Clinton is an accomplished person who has
challenged glass ceilings. She shouldn't have to come even close to
apologizing for her opinions.

·         Her interview with my Atlantic colleague Jeffrey Goldberg wasn't
"hyped," it was covered fairly, and now she's trying to blame the messenger.

·         It's too cute by half, too Clintonian. She's trying to
distinguish her policies from Obama's without upsetting all the president's
men. She can't have it all.

For young people who might be paying attention to politics, I hope they
don't take away the wrong lessons. They're already abandoning government
and politics in alarming numbers.

Clinton didn't make a mistake challenging a male authority figure. She
wasn't wrong to speak her mind. Her aspirations are not dependent on her
"hugging it out." The lesson here is to be true to yourself. Stick to your
guns. Be authentic. After all, that's really what Americans want in a
leader.

*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “Hillary Clinton’s Barack Obama problem”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/08/13/hillary-clintons-barack-obama-problem/>*

By Chris Cillizza

August 13, 2014, 10:49 a.m. EDT

Hillary Clinton made a strategic move to begin to distance herself from
President Obama's foreign policy over the weekend. It failed.

Clinton's team, concerned about the blowback from Obamaworld for her
critique of his "don't do stupid stuff" comments, put a statement out
Tuesday evening seeking to quiet the tensions. "Earlier today, the
Secretary called President Obama to make sure he knows that nothing she
said was an attempt to attack him, his policies, or his leadership," said
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill.

That statement, of course, is not, technically, accurate.   If Clinton
wasn't talking about Obama in saying that "don't do stupid stuff" wasn't an
organizing principle for foreign policy then c-a-t spells "dog".  This is a
clean-up-the-mess statement; the Clinton people know that it stretches
credulity but don't really care -- they needed to publicly defuse the
tension before the two meet on Martha's Vineyard tonight (more on that
below) and this, they believe, is the best way to do so.

But, the sturm und drang of the past 72 hours proves two things: 1) The
kumbaya story that the Obama and Clinton teams tell about their
relationship isn't the whole story and 2) Clinton's attempts to distance
herself from some of the less-popular policies of the Obama Administration
will be more difficult than her team may have realized.

On the first point, there has been much effort over the past six years --
from people in both camps -- to paint the relationship between the
erstwhile 2008  rivals as one of professional respect and even personal
friendship. But, old wounds rarely heal over so easily and it's clear that,
at least for some, the tensions that dominated the race for president six
years ago remain.

In the wake of Clinton's critique-except-it's-not of Obama's foreign
policy, David Axelrod, Obama's closest political adviser sent out this
tweet:

[TWEET]

Now, one tweet does not a rift make. But, there was other pushback --
mostly private and to journalists -- from the Obama camp that suggested
Clinton was re-writing history in advance of her 2016 bid.

That tension flies in the face of the story Clinton has been working on
building for months in the lead-up to her expected 2016 bid: That she was
fusing the best of the Obama world and the best of her team into one
superteam.  Ready for Hillary, the super PAC functioning as Clinton's
campaign-in-waiting, has hired Jeremy Bird and Mitch Stewart, the two men
who led the Obama ground game, and Tommy Vietor, a former Obama campaign
spokesman turned national security communicator in the White House, helped
Clinton with her recent book tour.

The reality is -- and always has been -- that the papering-over of the
nastiness of the 2008 campaign was somewhat flimsy.  By all accounts, the
two principals respect one another but, at the staff level, some lingering
hard feelings remain.

Those hard feelings have begun to crop up as the political paths of Obama
and Clinton begin to diverge in earnest -- a process that will continue
over the coming weeks and months.  That reality -- coupled with the fact,
as Republicans are quick to remind reporters, that Clinton was Obama's top
diplomat for four years, will make the process of creating some distance
between the two on a policy front difficult for the former Secretary of
State.

What Clinton really wants to spend the next year (or so) doing is laying
out her vision for the future of the country -- a vision that, at least
from what we have seen of it to date, borrows far more from the policies of
her husband's time in office than those of President Obama.  That means, at
least in part, that she wants to make clear some of the differences between
she and the president, particularly in the foreign policy space.

The problem that raises for Clinton, however, is that among Democratic base
voters -- particularly among African Americans -- Obama remains incredibly
popular and any attempt to "get away" from him will be met with
resistance.  That distancing goes double for Clinton who is always and
forever fighting a battle over authenticity -- whether she genuinely has a
core set of beliefs or whether she takes positions solely for political
positioning.

Working in Clinton's favor is the fact that there appears to be no serious
challenger to her in a primary, which, theoretically, allows her more
leeway in positioning herself as a centrist of sorts. Of course, if Clinton
did continue to antagonize the Obama forces and the liberal left, there is
the possibility that someone on the sidelines right now -- Elizabeth
Warren, anyone? -- could step forward although that remains very unlikely.

The back and forth over the last 72 hours -- and the incredibly awkward
"hugging it out" that a Clinton spokesman suggested might happen at  the
party both the president and the former Secretary of State will be at
tonight -- should serve as a reminder that the relationship between the
Obamans and the Clintonites is like an iceberg: What you see above the
water is only a small part of what's really going on under the surface.

*The Daily Beast: “So How Hawkish Is Hillary Clinton?”
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/13/so-how-hawkish-is-hillary-clinton.html>*

By Michael Tomasky

August 13, 2014

[Subtitle:] She’s not a neocon. She has a humility they lack. However, she
could stand to show a little more humility toward Democratic primary voters.

Okay, everybody. Deep breath, back to equilibrium. Yes, Hillary Clinton
talked some smack on Barack Obama to Jeff Goldberg in that interview. But
beyond those three or four sentences—and when yanked out of their larger
context, sentences like that always carry more shock value than they do in
context—did she really say very much that set her dramatically apart from
Barack Obama? How different, really, would a Clinton foreign policy be?

Despite Clinton’s very public efforts to make up with the president, the
consensus verdict over these last three hyperventilating days is:
dramatically different. Hillary’s a neocon! Robert Kagan, operatic Iraq war
enthusiast, admires her. MoveOn, the grassroots liberal group, snarled at
her like a tiger—specifically, one freshly on the prowl for a non-Clinton
alternative for 2016: “Secretary Clinton…should think long and hard before
embracing the same policies advocated by right-wing war hawks that got
America into Iraq in the first place and helped set the stage for Iraq’s
troubles today.”

Having read through the interview a few times now and talked to some folks
about it, I’m less convinced that the differences—with two key
exceptions—are that dramatic. But those exceptions are big ones, and they
make me wonder not only about any future Clinton foreign policy priorities,
but about her political judgment today.

The main, non-headline-making takeaway from the whole interview is that she
wants a bigger American footprint in the world than Obama seems to. Okay,
we’ve known that, but she spelled out what that means at some length. And
she’s actually pretty nuanced about it. She does not mean, as people to her
left reflexively seem to think she means, going bombs away. Money quote:

“I think we’ve learned about the limits of our power to spread freedom and
democracy. That’s one of the big lessons out of Iraq. But we’ve also
learned about the importance of our power, our influence, and our values
appropriately deployed and explained. If you’re looking at what we could
have done that would have been more effective, would have been more
accepted by the Egyptians on the political front, what could we have done
that would have been more effective in Libya, where they did their
elections really well under incredibly difficult circumstances but they
looked around and they had no levers to pull because they had these
militias out there. My passion is, let’s do some after-action reviews,
let’s learn these lessons, let’s figure out how we’re going to have
different and better responses going forward.”

What did she just say there? No Iraqs. Good. But more aggressive pushing on
Egyptian moderates to form political parties, get in the game, and not
leave the competition to just military vs. Muslim Brotherhood (she had
spoken at length on this earlier). And more follow-through in Libya. I
don’t think those are positions that would have her marching in the
shoot-’em-up parade next to John McCain. A bit later, Goldberg gently
challenged her that the constituency in America for her middle-ground views
between Obama and the neocons might not exist, and she acknowledged that by
making a good point in her own defense: “…most Americans think of
engagement and go immediately to military engagement. That’s why I use the
phrase ‘smart power.’ I did it deliberately because I thought we had to
have another way of talking about American engagement, other than
unilateralism and the so-called boots on the ground.”

Sentiments like these left me, and others, with the feeling that
differences with Obama in a lot of cases would not be that great—more
presence, more follow-through, more diplomatic pressure, but not
war-mongering. Heather Hurlburt, who worked for President Clinton and is
now at the New America Foundation, told me: “Clinton and her closest
advisers are more rooted in a style of visible, public American leadership
developed in the 1990s, before the catastrophes of the 2000s, to which
Obama’s personal style is in many ways a reaction. But Clinton’s assessment
of the world—that the United States wields great power, has great
responsibilities, and best exercises both in close coordination with
others—is not fundamentally different.”

Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress largely agreed, but he
pointed to Clinton’s talk of smart power and her identification of
“prosperity” as a central organizing principle as providing something of a
contrast. “I don’t see much difference here in substance, but perhaps there
is one of emphasis. Clinton talks about this more. Of course, President
Obama continues to have this element in his foreign-policy outreach,”
Katulis told me. “But Clinton seems to keep this concept closer to the core
of her world view, which places less emphasis on limits than Obama does.”

There were two issues, though, in addition to the much-discussed Syria
example, where Clinton’s comments were alarming. The first was her
balls-to-the-wall defense of Benjamin Netanyahu. First of all, as Peter
Beinart wrote for Ha’aretz, she left a lot of inconvenient facts out of her
narrative. She sounded like she was reading from an AIPAC press
release—particularly surprising, said Matthew Duss, the new president of
the Foundation for Middle East Peace, given the way the Netanyahu
government has been trashing Clinton’s own successor, John Kerry. “To
completely back Netanyahu both on substance—about having control of
security in the West Bank—and to do so after several weeks in which the
Netanyahu government has really gone out of its way to embarrass and
humiliate your successor…that’s really troubling,” says Duss.

The other issue on which Clinton got pretty far out there was on Iran and
the current nuclear negotiations. The position she took in the interview—no
working centrifuges for Iran, or a very small number of “discrete,
constantly inspected” centrifuges—sounds much harder-line than the Clinton
of 2010, when she told the BBC that Iran should be “entitled to the
peaceful use of civil nuclear energy.” So maybe she’s just being
politically crafty here, but that’s not much of a defense. The potential
long-term implication is that the Obama administration could negotiate a
deal with Iran that would permit civilian centrifuges to operate, and then
a President Clinton could come into office and derail the deal—a deal that
she, as secretary of state, had helped forge! “Again, it’s troubling to see
her weigh in on the side of U.S. hardliners,” says Duss.

Those hardliners don’t all feel like Kagan. I emailed with Elliott Abrams
about this yesterday, and he thinks that Clinton “has moved all over the
place,” from “totally pro-Israel” as a New York senator to not so much as
secretary of state, and now apparently back again. “And as Gates’s book
reminds us, her views on the Iraq surge were apparently politically
motivated rather than sincere,” Abrams continued. “Her track record is hard
to decipher, and most of what she billed as major speeches are just laundry
lists of problems we face. There’s no sense of priorities or strategy.”

I don’t think she’s a neocon hawk. I think she’s what we might call a
muscular internationalist. And yes, there are differences. The main one is
about American hegemony: It is the neocons’ core belief that America is and
must remain the world’s sole superpower and can do whatever it needs to do,
unilaterally or otherwise, to maintain that status. Obama is a cautious
internationalist, and on the whole I see Clinton as closer to Obama than to
McCain. Yes, she agreed with McCain on Syria, but arming the Free Syrian
Army is essentially a muscular-internationalist position for which the
neocons are having to settle. And unlike McCain, who preens his way around
Washington saying that that ISIS’s strength is entirely Obama’s fault, at
least Clinton says, “I don’t think we can claim to know” what would’ve
happened had the FSA been armed two years ago. That’s a humility the
neocons lack. It’s a crucial distinction, and it’s a pretty damn important
quality in a president.

However, the interview suggests she may lack another kind of
humility—toward the Democratic primary voter. Yes, she’s probably
invincible. There appears to be (emphasis added) no one out there who is
like Obama was in 2008—someone, that is, who could knock her off. And if
her hawkishness is the left’s concern, then Elizabeth Warren isn’t the
answer, since foreign policy isn’t her portfolio. So it’s hard to picture
Clinton not getting the nomination.

Still, she should remember that it was in large part her hawkishness—her
pro-Iraq war vote—that cost her the nomination in 2008. She should be aware
that U.S. public opinion, and certainly Democratic primary-voter opinion,
while not exactly pro-Palestinian, is not as enthusiastically pro-Israel as
it once was. And she should keep in mind that the foreign-policy
establishment of Washington, D.C., whose favor she’s clearly currying in
sections of this interview, consists of only a few thousand voters. To the
millions who’ll vote in Democratic primaries, she’ll need to be
considerably clearer about those differences between her and the neocons.

*The New York Times blog: Taking Note: “Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Know When
to Stop”
<http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/hillary-clinton-doesnt-know-when-to-stop/>*

By Andrew Rosenthal

August 13, 2014, 12:33 p.m. EDT

It’s hard to dispute that Hillary Clinton is the smartest person in most
rooms. That’s why The Times editorial board endorsed her in the Democratic
primary in 2008 over Barack Obama.

She just doesn’t know when to stop. It was her problem when her husband was
in the Oval Office. It was her problem in 2008, and it’s her problem now.

In her failed run for the Democratic nomination, Mrs. Clinton’s team
cynically introduced race into the campaign, repeatedly. Should the country
be more excited about a woman president or a black president? Had African
Americans really needed a white leader to achieve their civil rights goals?

The “red phone” ad was a marvel of inappropriateness. It questioned Mr.
Obama’s leadership abilities, tried to terrify people about the crisis that
would follow his election.

Mrs. Clinton gleefully led the way to making the Pennsylvania primary of
2008 a low point in campaigning. She put Mr. Obama in the same list of
disasters as the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile
crisis, the cold war and 9/11. She talked about how she would be prepared
to “obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel.

Mrs. Clinton lost and Mr. Obama made her secretary of state – a mixed act
of graciousness and smart politics. And Mrs. Clinton did well in that job
until she decided to retire in 2013 and begin her run for the presidency in
2016.

Pretty soon, her inability to stop when she should stop began to show
itself. There was the bizarre interview about gay marriage in which she
ended up snapping at the host of Fresh Air, Terry Gross, for daring to ask
about her evolving views on same-sex marriages, instead of simply answering
the question.

The most recent episode, about Mr. Obama’s toughness in foreign affairs and
her supposed opposition to his Syria policies while she was Secretary of
State, takes Mrs. Clinton’s lack of an internal braking mechanism to new
heights.

Maureen Dowd did a masterful job this morning of summing it up.

I’ll just add a couple of thoughts and questions. First, Mrs. Clinton did
debate Mr. Obama on Syria. But in the end, she was part of the decision he
made and she can’t wiggle out of that. (Just as she can’t wiggle out of her
vote for the invasion of Iraq when she was in the Senate.) And the timing
of her criticism was very strange, just before Mr. Obama started dropping
bombs in Iraq. Her office said the interview had been long scheduled, but I
find it hard to believe that Mrs. Clinton was not briefed on what was
coming in Iraq, as a former secretary of state. And she still chose to
attack.

When she runs in 2016, she will want to separate herself from Mr. Obama.
That’s normal. Doing it now, more than two years ahead of time, is
inadvisable.

*Slate blog: David Weigel: “Ben Carson's New Book Just Outsold Hillary
Clinton's”
<http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/08/13/ben_carson_s_new_book_just_outsold_hillary_clinton_s.html>*

By David Weigel

August 13, 2014, 12:37 p.m. EDT

It's hard to gauge how seriously to take the political ambitions of Dr. Ben
Carson. For starters, it's unclear exactly what his ambitions are. He lives
in blue Maryland, where Democrats have comfortably won every Senate race
since 1986, and where Democrat Anthony Brown is expected to soon become the
state's first black governor. He has formed a PAC, and he's heading to Iowa
this month -- I talked to local Carson fans who are trying to get people to
his book tour stops in the western and eastern parts of the state. But as a
public speaker, he's sort of unfocused, spending lots of time re-litigating
the latest liberal calumny against him.

And yet. According to Nielsen BookScan, Carson has pushed past Hillary
Clinton and become the author of the year's second-best-selling nonfiction
book. Carson's One Nation has sold 224,990 copies, a massive success for
his publisher, Random House. (The book came out under the conservative
Sentinel imprint.) Clinton's Hard Choices has sold 222,822 copies. The two
of them have been bested only by Bill O'Reilly, whose Killing Jesus has
sold 228,811 copies. They are joined in the blockbuster circle by Michael
Lewis (189,726 copies of Flash Boys), Charles Krauthammer (177,121 copies
of his column collection) and Thomas Piketty (158,668 copies of Capital).
Carson's book is substantially shorter than Clinton's, and retails for
$9.05 less, but he gets bragging rights if he decides to jump into politics.

Oh, and Elizabeth Warren's A Fighting Chance has sold 71,930 copies. You
were the one who asked.