What now?

A lot of people forget many of the events during Bill Clinton's presidency. Something significant for me is that during his second term I really began to like him and accept him. Then, Kenneth Starr, lacking anything to stick on the President settled for a "sex" scandal. Most of you remember that.

But what many of you may not remember are some of the subtle details that surfaced. At first, like many Americans, I thought it was none of my business. But, Clinton stepped up to the plate and made his defense; valiantly he declared he didn't have sex with that woman. And then he had the trial where he asked the famous question, "what is 'is'".

Then America was angry because he lied to us.

But when this happened, as angry as we were, it wasn't up to us really to forgive him. It wasn't really our place to forgive. We waited for Hillary to let us know if it was ok to forgive her husband and move on.

N.O.W. had recanted all of their support for the President and the fallout from the rest of the U.S. was pretty strong. In hindsight, I don't think America was that aghast he had an affair, I think they were aghast at how irreverent he was towards his Presidency based on the testimony of Monica Lewinsky. I know for myself, he pretty much rendered himself ineffective because this affair gave too many of his enemies power over him. It was so much easier to manipulate him while the affair was not made public.

I'm wandering off point.

After the scandal was revealed and everyone was distancing themselves from him, America waited to see what Hillary would do. I can imagine the phone calls she received. I'm sure one of them was from the head of the DNC. I would guess that the conversation went something like this:

Hillary: I have been publicly humiliated and you want me to publicly stand beside him and give America permission to forgive him? Why should I?

DNC: stuttering...making weak pleading statements about the good of the party and of everything else.

Hillary: You want me to fix this? Then you owe me; I want to run for President and I want your support. In exchange, I'll get N.O.W. to reinstate their support and I'll give America permission to forgive him.

And so, that, in my opinion, is the deal, in very simplet terms, that Hillary made with the DNC back in 1999 to help them recover from Clinton's philandering.

Ok, so fast forward to today. DNC owes her. No doubt about it. And she is one smart woman and a power house in the Party. I do not believe that she should bow out of this race without some sort of plan. That "why should I?" conversation is probably taking place again. I'm really very interested in the outcome.

She stepped up and delivered to the DNC what they requested back in 1999, now they have something they need to deliver to her in return. What's it going to be?

The Obama Advantage

I have been giving great consideration to why Obama is doing as well as he is in the primaries and why I believe he will have a very strong chance at winning the Presidency if he successfully wins the Democratic nomination.

Let's start with a commonly known statistic. When a Governor goes up against a Senator, the Governor always wins. Recent examples would be Carter, Reagan, Clinton and G.W. who were all Governors. So why do Governors win against the more seasoned and experienced Senators? In my opinion there are two reasons.

First, the Governor is perceived as not being "corrupted" by D.C. politics. They are untouched and represent a pure break from what the rest of us hate about Washington D.C. We naive voters hope this new "innocent" will be able to resist the corrupt D. C. machine.

Secondly, they don't have a record that sticks to them. Once one becomes a Senator, the deals and negotiations begin and votes are traded for favors, etc. The Senator develops a track record of voting which later becomes public record and then is used by the "enemy" to begin defining who the person is. The objective is to put the person on defense.

Ok, so here we have a gaggle of Senators running for the White House. Both Clinton and Obama are minorities and there is no way that either of them would have had a shot at the White House if they were to try to run as Governors. They had to prove to America that they were Presidential material by first proving themselves as Senators.

So, how does one get the Governor advantage? By doing as little as possible while being Senator so that nothing sticks. And that, my friends, is what Obama has been doing. We can argue until we are blue in the face that Obama has no experience but then neither did all the Governors who became President of the U.S. Even though Clinton hasn't been Senator for long, we know her too well and she has some baggage she may not be able to rid herself of. Notice how Obama doesn't defend his lack of experience and instead promotes himself as a "new page".

Obama has cleverly demonstrated his D.C. "innocence" by not accepting specific types of donations for his campaign. This is his way of giving the image that he is "untouched" by Washington politics.

So, Obama's advantage, in my so ever humble opinion, is that he has studied all the reasons a Governor wins these elections and has effectively found a way to wrap himself to be a Governor in Senator's clothing.

Campaign Science

The "candidate matchmaker" I have posted just prior to this post has really been making me think. For some time now, I've been posting about my thoughts and opinions regarding the Republican Party and how I'm ready to abandon ship and go Democrat. Even going so far as to declaring my desire to vote for Hillary Clinton.

If someone told me 8 years ago that I would be voting for Hillary, I would have laughed in their face. Fast forward to today and that's where I am. I am about to vote for "the enemy".

So, I take the quiz and I discover that based on my answers and Hillary's existing position on the issues she is the least compatible with my views on politics and Huckabee is the strongest. And yet, I still want to vote for Hillary.

That's where the science of campaigning has to be an extremely fascinating phenomenon. I'm curious about the different markets that candidates have to woo. I guess I don't fall into the "I want to see where they stand on the issues before deciding" market. Because, obviously, I'm voting for the one I'm least aligned with. How do candidates decide to market themselves? What do they throw away and what do they keep as benefits for their constituents.

I guess it goes back to the seduction of G.W. I fell for him.....hard. And then I regretted it. So what difference does it make if they line up or not.

James Carville is the only political consultant I know of and I really know so little about him. But for some reason, I feel like I know of him well enough to think he's probably the best. But I'm sure timing is everything. Bill Clinton's campaign was the right time for Carville. Still, I would have to think that listening to his strategies and the reasoning behind them would be absolutely fascinating!

More campaign thoughts.

I think that the Republicans made a mistake having their debates so early in the game. A couple of weeks ago, I heard a commentary on NPR where they were saying that Guiliani had incredible support in South Carolina and that it was shocking because he is pro choice and supports gay marriage (unions).

Guiliani watered down his position during the political debates and has lost his footing and he is now neck and neck with McCain. When I saw that Guiliani watered down his position, he lost my support. The way he watered it down insulted me. It was a coward's approach. What I HEARD was, I support the idea of pro choice and gay unions but I support the party line, too. Somewhere in there, Guiliani stopped being Guiliani.

So, now I'm back to the Democrats AND drum roll please...... I am even open to the idea of voting for Hillary Clinton! OMG, what a shock! Here is this born and bred Republican girl entertaining the idea of voting for Hillary Clinton.

Why the change? Because I believe it should be the responsibility of the next administration to exit from Iraq for a lot of reasons. First of all, the administration that makes the exit needs to believe in the exit because it's going to require a lot of thought and work. Secondly, the exit strategy might be complicated so I think that it should be done while there isn't going to be a "change in command". And thirdly, I believe it should be done by someone who has a lot of knowledge and experience of the region. I think Clinton has that and she has Bill and his experience.

I do believe that over the years Hillary has become more conservative than when she became First Lady.

I do wonder if Barack could be a world leader.... I think I have to watch and see.