With the Clinton-McCain gas tax Gimmick, Hillary Clinton and John McCain have clearly and unequivocally passed the Panderer-in-Chief Threshold.
What is the Panderer-in-Chief Threshold?
It's simple.
Some candidates will propose solutions that aren't solutions, quick fixes that fix nothing, poll-driven policies that placate voters but do little else. Essentially, pander policies offer a helping hand that does little more than hurt all of us in the long run.
Take the Gas Holiday. This is a pander policy that Clinton and McCain both support and Barack Obama does not. ABC news notes that the experts all say Obama is essentially right on this issue. Obama says the Gas Holiday is simply not honest, that it is typical of how Washington works.
Clearly, Barack Obama does not meet the Panderer-in-Chief Threshold...
It should come as little surprise that Hillary Clinton has joined John McCain in this dishonest panderfest; Hillary Clinton is just following the political tactics perfected by her husband, Bill Clinton, and her pollster Mark Penn (yep, he still works for her...he was merely "pander-fired".) A gas tax holiday won't save any of us much money, it won't reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and it will starve our infrastructure of needed funds; you might as well call it the "Pothole Preservation and Strut Replacement Act of 2008."
Hillary Clinton lies when it's politically expedient. That's her m.o.
She was for NAFTA and praised it as an achievement of the Clinton Administration, but in Ohio and Pennsylvania she told voters that "I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning."
That's a pander.
It's like saying that you were always against the war in Iraq and hoping no one checks the record. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. Bill Clinton knows how to tell fairy-tales better than the best of 'em. Shucks, we all know he "wouldn't take a nickel to watch the cow jump over the moon."
Nobody does pander better than Bill.
But Senator Clinton is doing her best to prove her Panderer-in-Chief bona fides.
Take her appearance on Bill O'Reilly tonight. It's one thing to go on FOX News. It's another thing to go on FOX News with Bill O'Reilly and echo right-wing attacks about your opponent.
Pandering on FOX is about as low as it goes, but that's par for the course with Senator Clinton. When she was in Pennsylvania she waxed poetically about (dog-whistle alert) the "faith of my father and grandfather"...and then she attacked Senator Obama's church.
That's a pander-attack.
No blow has seemingly been too low for Hillary Clinton in 2008. Now she's running ads attacking Barack Obama for refusing to join her and John McCain in pandering to the voters of Indiana and North Carolina with a "Gas Holiday" that will, by all accounts, do nothing...!?
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honesty
Why, fundamentally, does Barack Obama fail to meet the Panderer-in-Chief Threshold?
Simple. He's more honest than Hillary Clinton or John McCain.
Here's what Ezra Klein had to say about Obama's new ad on the "Gas Holiday":
Obama was first out of the gate with a full cap-and-trade plan -- and when I say full, I mean 100 percent of carbon is auctioned -- and he's right on the macro point of politicians seeking symbolic, and even counterproductive, measures and then using the pleasantly named legislation to pretend they've solved the problem. All in all, a good response, and showcases Obama's impressive ability to relate almost all attacks back to the central themes of his campaign.
Honesty isn't just a matter of personal integrity, it's essential for making good policy. Barack Obama gets that. As I've shown time and again, Obama supports innovative, substantial and bold new policies.
His policy set also embodies a core morality, a code of ethics followed by his campaign. In fact, this is something crucial that gets missed in a lot of the debates about experience and effectiveness: if somebody lies to you to get elected, how can you trust them to govern?
Barack Obama is an honest man. He's proved that. In fact, that's why the Republicans have spent three months joining Senator Clinton in attacking him. Honesty is the best policy, but it will spell an end to business as usual in Washington D.C.
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honest policy and our future
I've been plenty negative in this diary, let me finish positive.
Honesty is a core aspect of sound policy. One of the reasons young voters support Barack Obama is that those of us under 40 face a lifetime in a world where we need honest leadership. We can't afford leaders who pander to win votes but push our problems under the rug.
The problems we confront, let's face it, are more global and more profoundly complex that those faced by previous generations. Our world economy is completely inter-dependent. Key aspects of our manufacturing base have been largely shipped overseas through treaties and trade policies negotiated in the 1990's and the 00's. We've passed treaties on trade but not on climate and protecting our planet. We haven't done the hard work on climate change because that takes honest political leadership. Quite frankly, we haven't faced the facts. We need honest leadership like we got from Lincoln or FDR; we need honest leadership because the solutions we forge will have to be based on the best that science and economics and public policy have to offer not the latest poll-tested bromide.
Those of us under 40 know that our climate here in the United States will be shaped by treaties as-yet-unwritten that we negotiate with China and India. Failing to pass Kyoto and future treaties to protect the earth is a political luxury our generation cannot afford. We can't face our children and pass this planet on to them knowing we failed to take action to save this planet. Bill Clinton, frankly, did not achieve that; Barack Obama will.
We want to raise our children in a world where we have effectively defeated global warming and achieved full energy independence. We want to join Barack Obama in resetting our nation's priorities towards negotiating for peace from a position of strength instead of waging ongoing wars that weaken our ability to construct mutually beneficial alliances for peace and stability.
We want to send a message to the world. The United States of America is ready to lead the world into a new day. That will take honesty and pluck. It will also take electing an agent of change, like Barack Obama, to be our President.
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hope and strength
We need to send a message of hope and strength to the world. We can do great things when we work together. Pandering get us nowhere. We tried that. It got us the pickle that we are in today: a mortgage crisis, a dependence on foreign oil, a fleet of automobiles that favor the SUV instead of fuel-efficient vehicles that emit almost no CO2. We live in ever-expanding exurbs that mean longer and longer commutes, we have allowed 'the pander' to tell us that credit card debt is okay, while ignoring that our lack of savings isn't. We've seen the fruits of conservative Republican policies on government in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and in the ongoing war in Iraq.
We need honest leadership in Washington. We need a change in business as usual in D.C. I see that in Barack Obama. I see that in the thousands of volunteers who've rallied behind him. These are proud Americans of every background and income level. These patriotic Americans who have phone banked and door knocked and donated are the reason Senator Obama is where he is today.
Our donations are why he can afford to be honest. We need that. We don't need a "Gas Holiday"...we need a change in Washington. Barack Obama is an honest man who can do just that if we give him the chance. Nobody said it was going to be easy.
Sometimes you gotta work hard for it...
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