Honest Political Discourse
I have to admit, I was a little frightened at times.
During the Bill Clinton speech at Butler University last night, a jammed Hinkle Fieldhouse was quite obviously filled with Democrats. Tim provided the tickets and we jammed ourselves into the uncomfortable benches and endured a 45-minute delay in the hot and crowded arena until the ex-pres made his appearance. From time to time I conjured a paranoid fantasy of an unruly crowd that numbered around 10,000 pointing at me there in the front row of the balcony section directly across the arena from the podium and yelling, "It's a Conservative - Get Him!".
That didn't happen, and the speech itself was actually more interesting than I expected. The ex-pres actually dealt with some substantive issues, even though he just couldn't resist the occasional political spin. What I mostly appreciated, and suspect most of the liberal crowd found disappointing, was that Clinton avoided the Bush-bashing that seems to be Democrats' most popular sport.
I can't help but wonder how many people in the crowd noticed that the first 10 minutes or so of Clinton's speech could have been delivered by Bush. In fact, I would estimate that somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the points made in the speech were very much in line with the philosphies expressed by our current president. It seems like that had to just about drive the liberal partisans in the audience a little crazy, but you couldn't tell from their enthusiastic response. I laughed at a point in the speech where Clinton started talking about "Corrupt, incompetent" governments and the crowd started howling in glee until they found out he was talking about foreign governments. But then again, maybe it's a code, like Clinton throwing around the perjoratives so over-used against the current administration and then, with a wink and a nod, giving himself cover by saying it about unnamed foreign leaders.
The two main thoughts I had from the speech itself were, first, that it's unseemly for an ex-president to run around the country giving partisan speeches. And although he was very generous to our Republican president in policies with which he agreed and was relatively muted on issues of disagreement, there was a little too much partisan spin in some of those disagreements.
All the same, have you ever heard the senior Bush trashing policies of the Clinton administration? Apparently I'll get a chance to compare and contrast the two this spring, when George H.W. Bush comes for his own speech at Hinkle Fieldhouse, again compliments of Tim. There seems to be a consistent theme, where Republican ex-presidents comport themselves in a dignified manner and seem above petty politics, while Clinton and Carter have no problem with expressing a party-line spin at the drop of the hat, Carter often embarrassing himself repeating wild leftist propaganda.
However, I have to give the former president credit for laying out each issue fairly clearly and making his own argument. Generally he did so in a civil manner, framing it as disagreement with Bush rather than suggesting, as most of his friends do, that the current president is either too stupid or lacks the character to understand and support the obvious (in a liberal mind) solutions.
His speech was focused on international policies, and I suspect it's one he is giving everywhere in a campaign to take over as the UN Secretary General. As an aside, I think if he wants the UN job, why not? Maybe it will keep him busy.
The points he made that I agreed with were also things the current administration already supports, even though he sometimes pretended that wasn't the case. For example, he talked about the Kyoto accord, which of course I absolutely do not support (and he didn't either, until he left office). But when he started outlining his "global warming" solutions, he wasn't talking about anything that is new or is not already under development and supported by the current administration. He spent a lot of time on wind energy, which I thought was a little strange, but whatever. I would love to have asked him about the fact that an attempt to put wind farms off the east coast was blocked by Ted Kennedy and his eastern blue-blood rich liberals because they didn't want their ocean views cluttered.
Probably the strangest comments were about jobs. He pointed out that the boom in the 90's was in Information Technology, but India has taken most of those jobs. But he's a globalist, so he doesn't think we should impose limits on that. Then the strange part - first he claims that he had something to do with that IT boom in the 90's, which is certainly news to me, as I can't remember a single policy or initiative that helped that industry take off. But then he suggested that the big job growth opportunity is in developing alternative energy sources. Huh?
His worst comments were about our government "torturing" enemy prisoners, which is such a distortion of facts. And he actually supports joining the World Court, which wants to indict our military for "war crimes" in Iraq, with perhaps his weakest argument of the night. And of course the whole "tax cuts for the rich" thing. If he wants to say we shouldn't cut taxes when we have a war and all these natural disasters, fine, I can respect that. But to intentionally use the whole mythology that somehow the only people who got tax cuts were the extremely rich, and that if only we could roll them back all our deficit spending problems would be fixed is intellectually dishonest.
If I could say one thing positive to the ex-president on his speech, it is probably "thank you for staying away from the whole 'Bush lied' rhetoric and actually talking about real issues and solutions." That's quite a departure from most of his Democratic Party comrades.
So a fraternity near Hinkle Fieldhouse was using the event as an opportunity to help them in their fund drive. They were raising money to help in research and treatment for a childhood disease (sorry, I forgot which one). I watched for awhile as the thousands of liberals streamed past the frat guys on their way to their cars. I didn't see a single person put money into their bucket. I hope they set up outside the Bush event, because I'd really like to test my theory about the difference between Democrat and Republican individual generosity.
During the Bill Clinton speech at Butler University last night, a jammed Hinkle Fieldhouse was quite obviously filled with Democrats. Tim provided the tickets and we jammed ourselves into the uncomfortable benches and endured a 45-minute delay in the hot and crowded arena until the ex-pres made his appearance. From time to time I conjured a paranoid fantasy of an unruly crowd that numbered around 10,000 pointing at me there in the front row of the balcony section directly across the arena from the podium and yelling, "It's a Conservative - Get Him!".
That didn't happen, and the speech itself was actually more interesting than I expected. The ex-pres actually dealt with some substantive issues, even though he just couldn't resist the occasional political spin. What I mostly appreciated, and suspect most of the liberal crowd found disappointing, was that Clinton avoided the Bush-bashing that seems to be Democrats' most popular sport.
I can't help but wonder how many people in the crowd noticed that the first 10 minutes or so of Clinton's speech could have been delivered by Bush. In fact, I would estimate that somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the points made in the speech were very much in line with the philosphies expressed by our current president. It seems like that had to just about drive the liberal partisans in the audience a little crazy, but you couldn't tell from their enthusiastic response. I laughed at a point in the speech where Clinton started talking about "Corrupt, incompetent" governments and the crowd started howling in glee until they found out he was talking about foreign governments. But then again, maybe it's a code, like Clinton throwing around the perjoratives so over-used against the current administration and then, with a wink and a nod, giving himself cover by saying it about unnamed foreign leaders.
The two main thoughts I had from the speech itself were, first, that it's unseemly for an ex-president to run around the country giving partisan speeches. And although he was very generous to our Republican president in policies with which he agreed and was relatively muted on issues of disagreement, there was a little too much partisan spin in some of those disagreements.
All the same, have you ever heard the senior Bush trashing policies of the Clinton administration? Apparently I'll get a chance to compare and contrast the two this spring, when George H.W. Bush comes for his own speech at Hinkle Fieldhouse, again compliments of Tim. There seems to be a consistent theme, where Republican ex-presidents comport themselves in a dignified manner and seem above petty politics, while Clinton and Carter have no problem with expressing a party-line spin at the drop of the hat, Carter often embarrassing himself repeating wild leftist propaganda.
However, I have to give the former president credit for laying out each issue fairly clearly and making his own argument. Generally he did so in a civil manner, framing it as disagreement with Bush rather than suggesting, as most of his friends do, that the current president is either too stupid or lacks the character to understand and support the obvious (in a liberal mind) solutions.
His speech was focused on international policies, and I suspect it's one he is giving everywhere in a campaign to take over as the UN Secretary General. As an aside, I think if he wants the UN job, why not? Maybe it will keep him busy.
The points he made that I agreed with were also things the current administration already supports, even though he sometimes pretended that wasn't the case. For example, he talked about the Kyoto accord, which of course I absolutely do not support (and he didn't either, until he left office). But when he started outlining his "global warming" solutions, he wasn't talking about anything that is new or is not already under development and supported by the current administration. He spent a lot of time on wind energy, which I thought was a little strange, but whatever. I would love to have asked him about the fact that an attempt to put wind farms off the east coast was blocked by Ted Kennedy and his eastern blue-blood rich liberals because they didn't want their ocean views cluttered.
Probably the strangest comments were about jobs. He pointed out that the boom in the 90's was in Information Technology, but India has taken most of those jobs. But he's a globalist, so he doesn't think we should impose limits on that. Then the strange part - first he claims that he had something to do with that IT boom in the 90's, which is certainly news to me, as I can't remember a single policy or initiative that helped that industry take off. But then he suggested that the big job growth opportunity is in developing alternative energy sources. Huh?
His worst comments were about our government "torturing" enemy prisoners, which is such a distortion of facts. And he actually supports joining the World Court, which wants to indict our military for "war crimes" in Iraq, with perhaps his weakest argument of the night. And of course the whole "tax cuts for the rich" thing. If he wants to say we shouldn't cut taxes when we have a war and all these natural disasters, fine, I can respect that. But to intentionally use the whole mythology that somehow the only people who got tax cuts were the extremely rich, and that if only we could roll them back all our deficit spending problems would be fixed is intellectually dishonest.
If I could say one thing positive to the ex-president on his speech, it is probably "thank you for staying away from the whole 'Bush lied' rhetoric and actually talking about real issues and solutions." That's quite a departure from most of his Democratic Party comrades.
So a fraternity near Hinkle Fieldhouse was using the event as an opportunity to help them in their fund drive. They were raising money to help in research and treatment for a childhood disease (sorry, I forgot which one). I watched for awhile as the thousands of liberals streamed past the frat guys on their way to their cars. I didn't see a single person put money into their bucket. I hope they set up outside the Bush event, because I'd really like to test my theory about the difference between Democrat and Republican individual generosity.
posted by Dan S. at 1:31 PM
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