[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;126914]Oh? Can you say "Iran Contra"? "Oliver North"?? Clinton's indiscretions were minor in comparison.[/QUOTE]

I was aware of Iran Contra when I made the claim. We can debate severity/consequences of the various scandals and how that affects designation of "worst since Nixon", but I think we'd get off in the weeds. Clinton certainly had an unusually high number of scandals, even if most of them had minimal impact on his policies.

Back to the topic at hand - educating our reader in the Netherlands. There is a difference between bad publicity and scandal. Many feel Clinton is not worthy of the honor of our nation's highest office because of these past scandals. I think Europe would see similar foreign policy with either Hillary or Obama. The past scandals, partisan divisiveness, woman breaking the glass ceiling, and racial healing aspects of the election are mainly domestic concerns.

All contributions above read with great interest. And thankyou George and others for the education. :smile:

Perhaps Hillary Clinton would benefit from some training on the effective use of her voice. I can certainly concede that.

I don't personally accept that Clinton went anything like as far out of line as Reagan and George W but I suppose it depends on the kind of misdemeanors you judge worse than others. I remember seeing Bill Clinton interviewed a few years after he handed the presidency over to GWB, and he said that his greatest regret/mistake was that he did not intervene in Rwanda at the time of the genocide there. He felt he could have saved lives by acting appropriately at the right time. Generally I remember Clinton as a humanitarian president, and I regard financial scandals as less important than war crimes.

[quote=Brian-E;127000]I remember seeing Bill Clinton interviewed a few years after he handed the presidency over to GWB, and he said that his greatest regret/mistake was that he did not intervene in Rwanda at the time of the genocide there. He felt he could have saved lives by acting appropriately at the right time.[/quote]Without a doubt, he is correct about that... and without a doubt he would also be correct in stating that the American public would have been completely against getting involved as well. It's hard to fault him for it personally.

Clinton was pretty roundly criticized here for finally getting our military into the effort to halt Serbia's atrocities -- I'd bet that the situation in Rwanda at least contributed to his (and everyone else's) impetus to finally put a stop to it in 1995.

What if the timing of events had been reversed though? Might we have had 1MM killed in the former Yugoslavia, and then Rwanda might have been halted prior to events spinning out of control? I know that is ridiculously over-simplistic, but it makes me wonder.

IMO, the Rwandan genocide is one of the two greatest human tragedies of the latter half of the 20th century, along with the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s.

If anyone is interested in learning more about it -- particularly why exactly more was not done, and how such a monstrous evil came to pass -- I could not more strongly recommend "[URL="http://www.amazon.com/Shake-Hands-Devil-Failure-Humanity/dp/0786714875"]Shake Hands With The Devil[/URL]" by General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian who was in charge of the UN force (such as it was) in Rwanda at the time. His account is meticulous, heartbreaking, insightful, and pulls no punches. Not for the faint of heart, but excellent.

[QUOTE=tallguy;127022]Without a doubt, he is correct about that... and without a doubt he would also be correct in stating that the American public would have been completely against getting involved as well. It's hard to fault him for it personally.

Clinton was pretty roundly criticized here for finally getting our military into the effort to halt Serbia's atrocities -- I'd bet that the situation in Rwanda at least contributed to his (and everyone else's) impetus to finally put a stop to it in 1995.[/QUOTE]

Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don't recall a large backlash against the NATO actions vs the Serbs, especially given what was happening in places like Sarajevo. In Rwanda, it was as much the fault of the feckless top-level UN bureaucrats as of the Clinton administration that nothing was done until it was far too late. [The sorry story, including extensive interviews with the aforementioned Gen. Dallaire, were also documented in a [url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/video/][i]Frontline[/i][/url] piece.]

What I do remember as a clear case of Clinton falling down on the job w.r.to international security issues is when he allowed Saddam Hussein to boot out the UNSCOM weapons inspectors - one could argue that the resulting multiyear lacuna in hard-information gathering is what made possible the worst-case scenarios subsequently painted by the hawks in the Bush administration with respect to Iraq's [alleged] WMD capabilities. "Saddam engaged in massive WMD programs and coverups thereof before ... we don't know what he's been up to since he kicked the UN weapons inspectors out ... thus we should assume he's up to his old tricks." No, my intent is not to retroactively blame Clinton for the WMD intelligence fiasco, merely to point out the for-want-of-a-nail-the-shoe-was-lost chains of events that such failure to nip dangerous situations in the bud can and do lead to.

Now, none of that has anything to do with Hillary, except by way of the "if you leverage your husband's reputation and political ties to gain high office, then you inherit his political baggage." Can't have it both ways, alas for her.

[quote=ewmayer;127024]Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don't recall a large backlash against the NATO actions vs the Serbs, especially given what was happening in places like Sarajevo.[/quote]Perhaps I listen to too much conservative radio? :ermm:

Editorial Cartoon: Nader 4 Prez
 

Todays' editorial cartoon by Mike Luckavich of the [i]Atlanta Journal-Constitution[/i] nicely sums up what could be called Nader's just-announced "Needless Distraction 2008!" campaign. After all, this is the guy whose sense of self-righteousness is sufficiently strong that he still thinks taking [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_2000#National_results]enough votes[/url] from Gore/Lieberman in 2000 to give Bush/Cheney the election win was in some bizarre way "worth it." Thanks, Ralph - your Green Party candidacy in 2000 helped set back the Green movement in ther U.S. by at least 10 years...

[quote=ewmayer;127173]Todays' editorial cartoon by Mike Luckavich of the [I]Atlanta Journal-Constitution[/I] nicely sums up what could be called Nader's just-announced "Needless Distraction 2008!" campaign. After all, this is the guy whose sense of self-righteousness is sufficiently strong that he still thinks taking [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_2000#National_results"]enough votes[/URL] from Gore/Lieberman in 2000 to give Bush/Cheney the election win was in some bizarre way "worth it." Thanks, Ralph - your Green Party candidacy in 2000 helped set back the Green movement in ther U.S. by at least 10 years...[/quote]Why do we buy into the premise of "taking votes"?? Do we really think these voters believe Nader might win, and take away a vote that would otherwise go to the Democrats? I just don't believe the electorate is that stupid...

Example: I voted for Perot in 1992, when I would have otherwise voted for Bush pater. The conventional wisdom was that Perot "spoiled the vote" by drawing away Republican votes. Hogwash...

I felt at the time that Bush was out of touch with the economic situation (he was) and coasting on his Gulf War victory (he was), but that Clinton was much too liberal and an empty suit (he wasn't). Knowing very well that Perot wasn't going to win, nor was Bush, I voted for him in the hopes that his vote count would reflect my desire for some serious fiscal discipline.

I have no idea if that entered into Clinton's thinking about his mandate or not, but the trimming of the welfare state and balancing of the budget were exactly the sorts of things that Perot was talking about.

I don't buy for a second that somehow liberal voters are going to blindly shoot themselves in the foot and usher in McCain simply because Nader is on the ballot. Maybe I give people too much credit?

[QUOTE=tallguy;127174]Why do we buy into the premise of "taking votes"?? Do we really think these voters believe Nader might win, and take away a vote that would otherwise go to the Democrats? I just don't believe the electorate is that stupid...[/quote]

Stupid and shortsighted are not the same, though they often have similar results.There is wide consensus that Nader cost Gore far more votes than he did Bush - as far as more precise numbers go, from the same wikipage:
[quote]Democrats blamed third party candidate Ralph Nader for taking the election away from Gore. Nader received some 97,000 votes in Florida. According to the Washington Post, exit polls there showed that "47 percent of Nader voters would have gone for Gore if it had been a two-man race, and only 21 percent for Bush," which would have given Gore a margin of some 24,000 votes over Bush.[44] Some Democrats claim that had Nader not run, Gore would have won both New Hampshire and Florida and won the election with 296 electoral votes. (He only needed one of the two to win.) Defenders of Nader, including Dan Perkins, argued that the margin in Florida was small enough that Democrats could blame any number of third-party candidates for the defeat, including "Workers World Party" candidate Monica Moorehead, who received 1,500 votes[/quote]

The point is, sans Nader, Gore might not have *needed* Florida: Looking more closely at the state-by-state [url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/data.php?year=2000&datatype=national&def=1&f=1&off=0&elect=0]results[/url], with the [not rigorously justified but not unreasonable] assumption that the relative percentages of Nader votes which would have gone to Gore and Bush are 47/21, we see that in the aforementioned 2 swing states:

NH: Gore:266,348, Bush:273,559, Nader:22,198, Other:6,976, Bush beats Gore by 7,221 votes. Giving 47% of Nader votes to Gore and 21% to Bush causes Bush's margin to shrink to a paper-thin 1450 votes. If you assume that the "32%" undecided in the Washington Post poll would, when faced with an actual Nader-less ballot, have voted for either Bush or Gore instead of another 3rd-party candidate [which certainly is more plausible than all of them voting 3rd-party], then divvying up the 22198 Nader votes in 47/21 fashion gives Gore the win by over 8000 votes, i.e. similarly close as actually occurred, but in the other direction.

FL: Gore:2,912,253, Bush:2,912,790, Nader:97,488, Other:40,579. Gore needs only a tiny fraction of the Nader voters to tip the result in his favor - Dan Perkins' argument above is disingenuous.

[quote]Example: I voted for Perot in 1992, when I would have otherwise voted for Bush pater. The conventional wisdom was that Perot "spoiled the vote" by drawing away Republican votes. Hogwash...[/quote]
Unlike the 2000 data, that "wisdom" about the 1992 result is neither conventional - except perhaps among Bush Sr. supporters - nor backed by the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_1992#National_results]facts[/url]:
[quote]exit polling indicated that Perot voters would have split their votes fairly evenly between Clinton and Bush had Perot not been in the race, and an analysis by FairVote - Center for Voting and Democracy suggested that, while Bush would have won more electoral votes with Perot out of the race, he would not have gained enough to reverse Clinton's victory.[/quote]
Given that Perot got ~19M votes and Clinton won by ~6M, one would have needed a Nader-like 2:1 bias in who-would-I-vote-for-if-Perot-weren't-running to change the outcome. Perot drew voters much more evenly from the 2 major parties, hence "Perot cost Bush Sr. the election" is a non-starter.

[quote]I don't buy for a second that somehow liberal voters are going to blindly shoot themselves in the foot and usher in McCain simply because Nader is on the ballot. Maybe I give people too much credit?[/QUOTE]

Replace "McCain by "Dubya" and "blindly" by "shortsightedly" and that is in fact precisely what happened. Even bright, so-called "enlightened" folks are not immune to the law of unintended consequences. In fact, I would argue that liberal activist types are more prone to TLUC than most - I could cite any number of examples, but "we refuse to vaccinate our precious children with mercury-laced vaccines", "let's ban DDT without providing any viable mosquito-controlling substitute," and "we use paper bags, even though plastic bags cost less energy to manufacture and are in fact much greener if properly recycled" come to mind.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;127173]...this is the guy whose sense of self-righteousness is sufficiently strong that he still thinks taking enough votes from Gore/Lieberman in 2000 to give Bush/Cheney the election win was in some bizarre way "worth it." ...[/QUOTE]

I have to defend Nader (and all other third party candidates) here. I think we'd be better off in the long run with several healthy alternative parties with decent candidates. Voters are then free to choose a candidate for whatever reason - the two major parties are then confronted with working a lot harder to earn my vote. Right now the two parties take the attitude of "piss off and accept our corrupt politics-as-usual, after all your only other choice is the other party's corrupt politics-as-usual candidate". Or maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part :cry:

Would Gore have won if Nader hadn't run? Yes, but so what. He'd also have won if he'd appealed to voters better, or was "himself" more rather than the canned image his handlers recommended, or if he'd had better debate performances, or....

[quote=ewmayer;127177]Stupid and shortsighted are not the same, though they often have similar results.[/quote]So true! The rest are good points as well...

Certainly FL & NH in 2000 was a truly extraordinary example of the effect, but I think it still doesn't negate two points:

1) Nobody has any idea how many 3rd party candidate voters would simply abstain rather than vote for a major party candidate.

2) A major party candidate in a race with a 3rd party candidate has the opportunity to shift emphasis in order to carve out a position that will neutralize the impact of that 3rd party candidate. In the case of Nader, I think that is exactly what he ultimately wants to achieve - in order to get a hearing for his particular issues. I don't see this as being problematic in any way, although it must be extraordinarily frustrating to the two major parties.

Interesting Nader story I heard on the radio yesterday -- a Nader supporter stated that long before 9/11 he was advocating "steel doors" on airliners for security reasons, but nobody would listen because it was "too expensive". Can anyone confirm or refute this?

[quote=Prime95;127182]I have to defend Nader (and all other third party candidates) here. I think we'd be better off in the long run with several healthy alternative parties with decent candidates. Voters are then free to choose a candidate for whatever reason - the two major parties are then confronted with working a lot harder to earn my vote. Right now the two parties take the attitude of "piss off and accept our corrupt politics-as-usual, after all your only other choice is the other party's corrupt politics-as-usual candidate". Or maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part :cry:

Would Gore have won if Nader hadn't run? Yes, but so what. He'd also have won if he'd appealed to voters better, or was "himself" more rather than the canned image his handlers recommended, or if he'd had better debate performances, or....[/quote]
I'm a Republican/conservative, not at all a neutral/third/other-partier, but I think it's just fine that there's third parties. If the Republicans and Democrats ever both pick truly horrible and/or corrupt candidates, I think a lot of people will vote third party, and the third party will win. If that candidate makes the people happy, we'll have a three-party system on a regular basis. Who wants to be the first to complain that they'll all say, "piss off and accept our corrupt politics-as-usual, after all your only other choices are the other parties' corrupt politics-as-usual candidates"?
We have a two-party system because it's still working, simple as that. If it wasn't working, the voters would look for an alternative and find third parties to vote for.