January 27, 2012

Hillary Clinton climbs down from "the high wire of American politics" on the theory that "it's a good idea to just find out how tired I am."

She says "It’s a little odd for me to be totally out of an election season... But, you know, I didn’t watch any of those debates." And "I am happy to work with Vice President Biden, who does an excellent job..."

Credibility assessment please.
I take the lady at her word. True until proven otherwise.
She's a diplomat. It's essentially true, but slathered in niceties.
She's a Clinton. That says it all. Anything that's not lies is there because it's useful.
These options don't express my subtle insights. Write polls that sound more like my thoughts.
  
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39 comments:

Bender said...

It is clear that the lust for presidential power has left Hillary. Its been 20 years now since she wasn't sitting around like Tammy Wynette making cookies.

She's gotten old. She's gotten tired and worn out.

Even if there are a few moments here and there where she might flirt with the idea, when she feels the creaks in her bones trying to get up, she says, "ah, to hell with it, I'm done. I've got better things to do."

Obama may have done Hillary a favor sticking her out in Siberia with the State Department job. He may have allowed her to become a regular person again and regain her soul.

Sydney said...

Why does she have to quit in order to find out how tired she is? Wouldn't she feel it now?

rhhardin said...

Hillary answers a question that nobody is asking.

edutcher said...

She was going to finish her term in the Senate, too.

And, if I were GodZero, I would seriously start watching my back.

As they say in Arkinsaw, revenge is a dish best served cold.

prairie wind said...

The fourth option is funny. You should have worded it differently, though.

Carnifex said...

I didn't like the choice of "She's a Clinton..." even though that was the way I voted. That presupposes
that she's a liar because her husband is a liar. I presuppose that she's a liar because she is a Liberal Progressive, and anything that comes with the adjective Progressive is usually a liar, or trying to manipulate you in some manner. (this includes insurance companies)

O/T The polls are looking strong for Walker against all the presumptive challengers. Good on him.(I gave up crying for "do overs" in the third grade)

Ann Althouse said...

"Why does she have to quit in order to find out how tired she is? Wouldn't she feel it now?"

It makes sense to me. You're a workaholic, running on adrenalin, and you keep going. Unless you crash, you're within the illusion that you can keep going. I assume soldiers, athletes, and others in similar positions live like this. It's only when you stop that the full impact of the work can be perceived.

(This is why I love the work pattern of the academic year. You get off the treadmill at regular intervals, and you can see whether you are emptying yourself out.)

john said...

But that might be good thing, she said, because “maybe we can even get more done” if the rest of the country is fixated on the polls.

That's a bit scary.

Scott M said...

What's truly amazing, given my normally mild-mannerness (which I have to have to offset the big golden "S" on my chest), that after all this time my knee-jerk intense dislike for this woman has not ebbed.

traditionalguy said...

Maybe she wants to rest and think about what happened since she played the loser role in Kill Bill#3.

If that woman wrote an autobiography with the real facts in it, it would be worth the reading.

Jaske said...

(i)She's gotten old. She's gotten tired and worn out./(i)

She's thinking experience. :)

Christopher in MA said...

"That presupposes she's a liar because her husband is a liar."

No, Carnifex, I'd say Hillary "I was named for Sir Edmund Hillary," "I never heard of the Rose Law Firm" and "I just read the Wall Street Journal and made big money on cattle futures" Clinton has enough of a record of prevarication to ensure you have to look out the window if she says the sky is blue.

Congenital liar. Just like her boss.

Brian Brown said...

Given our level of foreign policy failure for the last 3 years, if Hillary is a "work-a-holic" then she's even less impressive than I thought.

MadisonMan said...

I would think it's nice for a politician to get off the election treadmill.

It's a relevant comment for Russ Feingold, too.

Henry said...

Hillary is no idiot. The idea of replacing Joe Biden is poppycock and she knows it. It would also be a demotion.

pm317 said...

She is the only one in this incompetent administration who has worked hard and diligently for what she is hired to do. For those critics who say she has not produced anything of significance, look at what she is up against -- the Obama/Jarrett cabal. If it were not for Gates, her and Panetta, Bin Laden will still be alive. I am not surprised she is tired and wants to get out of there in a NY minute. Even as recently as his SOTU, Obama insulted her by referring to her as the woman who ran against him. The man has no class.

Sorun said...

She may still be suffering PTSD from dodging that sniper fire in Bosnia.

MayBee said...

What could we do to persuade you to run for vice president?” a staffer asked at a State Department town hall meeting Thursday, referring to cyclical rumors and the wishful thinking of some supporters. “Oh, my goodness,” Clinton replied.

I will certainly stay on until the president nominates someone and that transition can occur,” said Clinton


That's very oddly worded. It sounds as if Obama is going to nominate "someone" to be Vice President/

Bruce Hayden said...

And, I thought I would be one of the only ones cynical enough to vote #3. Currently, we are running about 70% totally cynical here.

And, yes, I would also agree that she really has done an abysmal job here. It could be the orders given by President Obama, or that she is just that much less brilliant, talented, schooled, and skilled in this than her predecessor in that office.

I think that we will ultimately see that their failure in foreign relations was a result of an America Last mind set, combined with the type of multiculteralism that panders to enemies, disses friends, and only works for regime change with allies, and never with enemies.

DADvocate said...

We know she's lying because she says Joe Biden does an excellent job.

Levi Starks said...

Well as I recall, every time Bill would give his public endorsement of someone in his administration who actions were in question... that person would resign the next week. So it seems obvious that the only reason you would include an endorsement of VP Biden in a statement declaring how tired you were of your own job is if you wanted his.

DADvocate said...

after all this time my knee-jerk intense dislike for this woman has not ebbed.

A group of us, males and females, here at work were talking about Hillary about 10 minutes ago. The subject was initially that the press almost unfailingly published unflattering pictures of Hillary. The conclusion was that she is almost universally disliked, even by many liberals, as well as being, like her husband, a consumate liar.

Levi Starks said...

As for the quitting to find out how tired she is thing?
Reminds me of Nancy P. telling us that we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it.

Michael said...

It is a pity that she is not our President at the current moment. She would have been so very much better than what we gave ourselves. That said I highly doubt she would challenge Obama unless he loses the current election and tries again in four years. Then all bets would be off. And she would be well rested.

pm317 said...

I expect a lot of off the wall Hillary hate comments on this thread. And I wonder why that is. Is it because she is a strong woman who goes after what she wants even in the face of such hatred that you men here despise her? Why such hatred?

Amexpat said...

These options don't express my subtle insights.

I chose that option. Problem is my insights are so subtly that even I am not aware of them.

Scott M said...

Why such hatred?

Why the immediate assumption that gender has anything to do with it? Why does your worldview rely so heavily on identity politics?

cubanbob said...

pm317 said...
I expect a lot of off the wall Hillary hate comments on this thread. And I wonder why that is. Is it because she is a strong woman who goes after what she wants even in the face of such hatred that you men here despise her? Why such hatred?

1/27/12 10:52 AM

Margaret Thatcher was a strong woman. Hillary not so much. I give her credit for the statement, it's her oblique way of saying the situation is so bad I don't want to be tied down to Obama's anchor by being the VP candidate. The only thing worse for her politically than being Obama's VP candidate is getting elected as Obama's VP. The resulting disaster of a second Obama Administration will blot out any positive achievements she has made to date. Better to have been a two term president's wife, a US senator and secretary of state. Besides it will be a huge pay cut for her considering the book and lecture fees she stands to earn after leaving office as secretary of state. I don't like her but I credit her with a degree of smarts. And Obama has loser written all over him so why go down with that ship?

Brian Brown said...

in the face of such hatred that you men here despise her? Why such hatred?


Nobody here said they "hate" Hillary.

Pointing out that she is a liar and incompetent is not "hate"

Nathan Alexander said...

I searched for "Workaholic Clinton" and got back 4 returns that referenced her on the front page, 2 of which were for this article. 1 was just asking the question. All were written in a supportive tone, absent the purported objectivity and/or confrontational nature of the press.

So I searched for "Workaholic Hillary", and got back 5 articles on the front page that referred to her...3 of which pointed to this article, one the aforementioned questioning article, and another that said she sometimes has workaholic tendencies.

I have never once thought of "Hillary Clinton" and "workaholic" as positively correlated. In fact, I noticed that as SecState, she has disappeared from the news for months at a time, whereas Rice, Powell, Allbright, et al, were always doing or saying something, never had the long stretches of absence like Hillary.

So why are they pushing this "workaholic" theme as if it were a fact?

Is it to try and provide rhetorical cover for the fact that age has not been kind to her appearance?

edutcher said...

pm317 said...

I expect a lot of off the wall Hillary hate comments on this thread. And I wonder why that is. Is it because she is a strong woman who goes after what she wants even in the face of such hatred that you men here despise her? Why such hatred?

Hate? Why would anyone hate her?

She was so incredibly incompetent that she allowed a first term Senator to take a nomination from her that was about to be handed to her on a silver platter and, in so doing, allow into the Presidency someone who has damned near ruined this country.

Her even greater incompetence as Secretary of State. Foreign policy reset, anyone?

It could have been HillaryCare instead of ZeroCare.

The Justice Department records in her bedroom.

No.

Nobody hates her. But plenty of people see her for the phony she is.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I'm just grateful for that cool reset button. Good thing the Radical Islamists are taking over Egypt and Iran is about to go Nuclear. Now, where's that button again?

Unknown said...

Requires a suspension of disbelief.

ken in tx said...

I don't like her or trust her, but she would have been a better president than what we have. I am pretty sure she knows how to pronounce 'corpsman' and knows that Austrians speak German, etc. Not to mention actual important stuff.

ricpic said...

I don't see it that Hillary is a workaholic. True that she's logged an immense number of miles in pursuit, successful and unsuccessful, of power. But work, in the sense of thinking, stopped a long long time ago. She has been politically frozen since her late teens. Hard leftist: all major issues settled. Frenetic coming and going and smiling for the camera does not work make.

Bruce Hayden said...

I expect a lot of off the wall Hillary hate comments on this thread. And I wonder why that is. Is it because she is a strong woman who goes after what she wants even in the face of such hatred that you men here despise her? Why such hatred?

Not hatred, but not respect either. She got where she is because of who she married, and has been plagued with financial scandals for a long time now - starting maybe with cattle futures, and extending through Madison federal, billing records, Whitewater, etc., extending up through trading pardons for campaign contributions for her Senatorial campaign, including the pardons of Puerto Rican terrorists, as well as Marc Rich.

And, if that isn't bad enough, there has been little indication or evidence through the years that she is the least bit nice. This is the woman, when she was living in the White House, would reputedly have any of the staff fired if they made eye contact with her. Rather, when she was walking down a hall, they were expected to line up out of her way on the side, with eyes lowered.

I don't know if she is bad or evil, but have seen no evidence over the years that she is either nice or good.

Thorley Winston said...

Is it because she is a strong woman who goes after what she wants even in the face of such hatred that you men here despise her?

I don’t “hate” Hillary Clinton nor do I consider her to be an example of a “strong woman” either.
She’s pretty much an example of someone who got where she is in life because she married the right guy. That’s not something that shows any evidence of intelligence, talent or strength but YMMV.

Richard Dolan said...

She looked terrible at the SOTU, really worn out. I take her at her word when she says she needs to find out just how exhausted she is.

Yes, she's a Clinton and cut from the same cloth as him. But this is one time where the evidence you could see every time the camera panned her way during the SOTU suggests that she is just being candid.

davis,br said...

I wonder that this time I took her at her word.

Little though I liked the Clintons, I would have voted for her over McCain though (which is more an indication how much I dislike McCain, than like her).

...but I admit that my un-realized vote choice, and the reasoning that led to it, did result in a slow change of attitude towards both Clintons since.

I now cut them some slack; what's done is done ...and we're living with worse (I don't only miss Bush, hell, I miss Bill).

And I suspect Hil' has mitigated some of the damage that O' would have caused, if one of O's Chicago crowd headed State.

Well done Madame Secretary.

...and this. From a stone cold conservative. Gah. I'm getting old.