Harper’s Magazine Essay Fact Check
“Stop Hillary,” Harper’s Magazine, Nov. 2014: |
The Facts: |
| Harper’s: Dick Morris credits Hillary for backing both of Bill’s most important moves to the center: the balanced budget and welfare reform. “She has, in the past, been associated with women’s issues, with children’s issues — but she also encouraged her husband to sign the 1996 bill that put an end to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC), which had been in effect since 1935. Indeed, longtime Clinton adviser Dick Morris, who has now morphed into a right-wing pundit, credits Hillary for backing both of Bill’s most important moves to the center: the balanced budget and welfare reform.” | Fact: Dick Morris’s pronouncements on Bill and Hillary should be taken with a substantial grain of salt. “His [Dick Morris’] pronouncements on both Bill and Hillary should be taken with a substantial grain of salt. Their mutual-admiration society collapsed in 1996, when media reports about Morris’s frolics with prostitutes caused his expulsion from Bill’s reelection campaign. Since then, the uber-consultant has turned on his old patrons, flaying them in such books as Rewriting History (2004) and Because He Could (2004), and founding, in September 2013, a PAC called Just Say No to Hillary…. On the subject of Hillary, Morris was typically dismissive when we spoke in July.” [Harper’s, Nov. 2014] |
| Harper’s used an Obama quote about Reagan to argue Hillary is “more of the same.” “What Hillary will deliver, then, is more of the same. And that shouldn’t surprise us. As wacky as it sometimes appears on the surface, American politics has an amazing stability and continuity about it. Obama, widely viewed as a populist action hero during the 2008 campaign, made no bones about his admiration for Ronald Reagan. The Gipper, he said, ‘changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt [that] with all the excesses of the Sixties and the Seventies, government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.’” | Politico named that as one of “10 quotes that haunt President Obama.” Obama utilized President Clinton prominently in his 2012 reelection. “That quote, to the Reno Gazette-Journal in January 2008, was designed partly to taunt Hillary Rodham Clinton during Obama’s nomination fight against her. But it’s also plain that Obama really believed this. It often seemed like Obama and his top aides couldn’t decide what they disliked more — George W. Bush’s policies or Bill Clinton’s politics. David Axelrod, Obama’s top political adviser, thought Clinton stood for a small and contrived brand of politics, the kind that doesn’t make history. Obama has overcome his doubts. A TV commercial with Clinton endorsing Obama is among the most widely played of this cycle, and Clinton’s spirited address at last month’s Democratic convention played a central role in the bounce Obama enjoyed coming out of Charlotte. It was another lesson in humility for Obama, who learned that the 42nd president knew a few things about how a Democratic president can navigate in a country that still has a center-right political culture.” [“10 quotes that haunt President Obama,” Politico, 10/2/12] |
| Harper’s said that in “It Takes a Village,” Hillary compared her childhood to “Father Knows Best,” but it was not the stuff of sitcoms. “Hillary Rodham grew up in the affluent Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, Illinois. In her child-rearing manual, It Takes a Village (1996), she recalls that her family ‘looked like it was straight out of the 1950s television sitcom Father Knows Best.’ Hillary has a long history of being economical with the truth. One can forgive her reticence about sharing the traumas of her childhood, which included her father cutting down his brother’s corpse from a noose. But it was not the stuff of sitcoms. As Gail Sheehy reports, Hugh Rodham was an ‘authoritarian drillmaster,’ a reactionary who demanded austerity, discipline, and self-reliance. Displays of emotion were regarded as signs of weakness. Her mother, Dorothy Rodham, fought loudly with her husband — but ultimately put up with him, as Hillary would with her future husband.” | Hillary, in “It Takes a Village,” wrote “My family, like every family I know of, was far from perfect.” “When I brought home straight A’s from junior high, my father’s only comment was, “Well, Hillary, that must be an easy school you go to.” By raising the bar, he encouraged me to study even harder, and in fact, comments like that spurred me on. I realized later that this well-meaning motivational ploy could have had the opposite effect on a child of a different temperament than mine, who might have decided she could never live up to the expectations that had been set for her. As it happened, my father’s parenting tactics were harder on my brothers than on me, perhaps because they were boys. They idolized him, and he saw them as appropriate subjects for the training methods he had applied in the navy to prepare young men for combat…. My family, like every family I know of, was far from perfect. But however imperfect we were, as individuals and as a unit, we were bound together by a sense of commitment and security. My mother and father did what parents do best: They dedicated their time, energy, and money to their children and made sacrifices to give us a better life.” [It Takes a Village, 1996] |
| Harper’s story relies heavily on Gail Sheehy’s “Hillary’s Choice.” Harper’s uses Gail Sheehy’s book, to say Hugh Rodham was an “authoritarian drillmaster,” that at a young age she was “a hawk” and that since the 1970s, she thought Bill Clinton would be president of the United States. | Sheehy’s book has come under fire for accuracy. “Can anyone still take Gail Sheehy seriously? With the publication of ‘Hillary’s Choice’ this month, Sheehy has become suddenly ubiquitous, plugging the book in every media outlet in town. ‘The New York Observer’ gave it a rave review, while ‘The New York Times’ damned it with faint praise, and ‘The New Yorker’ and ‘Slate’ were bold enough to trash it. The critics have focused on the book’s lack of insight. But the real scandal is Sheehy’s reporting style. She plays fast and loose with the facts, twists quotes to fit her agenda, and allegedly violated a confidentiality agreement she made with Hillary Clinton.” [Village Voice, 12/14/99] |
| Harper’s said Hillary told Dems she would “demonize” people that opposed her on health care reform. “At a meeting with Democratic leaders in April 1993, Senator Bill Bradley suggested that she might need to compromise to get a bill passed. Hillary would have none of it: the White House would “demonize” any legislators who stood in her way. Bradley was stunned. Years later, he told Bernstein: ‘That was it for me in terms of Hillary Clinton. You don’t tell members of the Senate you are going to demonize them. It was obviously so basic to who she is. The arrogance. . . . The disdain.’” | Fact: This has been debunked. “When I read this story in the reviews and then in Bernstein’s book, something immediately seemed fishy to me. Would Hillary really have threatened members of Congress at a time when she was seeking their support? So I called six people besides Bradley who were present at the 1993 retreat, and in fact, none of them recalls Hillary making the threat … Bernstein acknowledges that he was unable to find any contemporary record or published account of the Senate retreat that refers to Hillary’s supposed threat. Asked if he had any sources besides Bradley, Bernstein told me that ‘several people between 2000 and 2003’ had described the 1993 incident to him, but he refused to divulge their names because he said he had agreed to keep them confidential. And Bernstein stands by the Bradley quotation about ‘arrogance’ and ‘disdain,’ saying that the former senator made those comments to him in a conversation in 2003 and that he wrote them down soon afterward.” [American Prospect, 9/24/07] |
| Harper’s said Hillary’s work as First Lady was “all very high-minded, and good for her image, but of limited impact.” “Health-care reform was a conspicuous failure, and most of the blame has to fall on Hillary. Dusting herself off, she soon reinvented herself as a freewheeling ‘advocate.’ In Living History, she recalls changing gears to focus on ‘children’s health issues, breast cancer prevention, and protecting funding for public television, legal services, and the arts.’ She campaigned for changes in the adoption laws and for a bill to guarantee that newborns and their mothers wouldn’t be kicked out of the hospital sooner than forty-eight hours after the birth. It was all very high-minded, and good for her image, but of limited impact.” | FACT: Hillary was crucial in expanding health care for millions of children. FactCheck.org: Hillary Clinton deserved “plenty of credit” for helping pass SCHIP as first lady. “We review the record and conclude that she deserves plenty of credit, both for the passage of the SCHIP legislation and for pushing outreach efforts to translate the law into reality.” [FactCheck.org, 3/2/08]Ted Kennedy: “The children’s health program wouldn’t be in existence today if we didn’t have Hillary pushing for it from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.” “The effort [to expand health insurance coverage to children who had none] was revived, with Kennedy, Hatch and a coalition of advocacy groups ranging from the Children’s Defense Fund to the Girl Scouts lobbying hard. Kennedy made a special appeal to the first lady, who added her pressure anew. ‘The children’s health program wouldn’t be in existence today if we didn’t have Hillary pushing for it from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue,’ Kennedy told The Associated Press. President Clinton signed the bill in August 1997. While Kennedy is widely viewed as the driving force behind the program, by all accounts the former first lady’s pressure was crucial. ‘She wasn’t a legislator, she didn’t write the law, and she wasn’t the president, so she didn’t make the decisions,’ says Nick Littlefield, then a senior health adviser to Kennedy. ‘But we relied on her, worked with her and she was pivotal in encouraging the White House to do it.’” [Washington Post, 10/5/07] |
| Harper’s: “What of her more substantive legislative Senate achievements?” “And that was precisely the sort of issue that Hillary focused on after winning the election. In Condi vs. Hillary (2005), a strange book that Dick Morris wrote with his wife, Eileen McGann, there’s a list of her senatorial accomplishments. Drawing on Library of Congress records, the authors report that Hillary passed a total of twenty bills during her first five years in the Senate. Fifteen of them were purely symbolic: supporting Better Hearing and Speech Month, honoring Alexander Hamilton on the bicentennial of his death, congratulating the Le Moyne College men’s lacrosse team on a big win. Others encouraged the use of electric cars or high-efficiency lightbulbs. Granted, this is the stuff of retail politics. But what of her more substantive legislative achievements?” |
Fact: Sen. Clinton expanded access to the military’s Tricare health system. “Worked with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to add language to a fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill (PL 108-375) giving military reservists and members of the National Guard access to the military’s Tricare health system even when they are not deployed. Previously, reservists only got covered while on active duty and for a limited time afterward. The measure came at a time when about 40 percent of U.S. forces in Iraq were reservists. Was enacted as law as part of a broader defense authorization bill.” [PolitiFact, 3/28/08]Fact: Sen. Clinton co-wrote law compelling drug companies to conduct safety tests for products prescribed for children. According to PolitiFact, “Co-authored a 2003 law (PL 108-155) that compels drug companies to conduct pediatric safety tests when their products are prescribed for children. The measure strengthened an earlier law that awards manufacturers added patent protection, allowing them to market drugs exclusively for six additional months if they agree to test them for use on children as well as adults. The 2003 law bestowed the extra six-month extension even if the Food and Drug Administration orders the testing.” [PolitiFact, 3/28/08]
Fact: Sen. Clinton worked to keep the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station open. According to PolitiFact, Senator Clinton: “Worked with Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, R-N.Y., to insert language in a fiscal 2007 defense authorization measure (PL 109-364) keeping the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station open at a time when the Pentagon was closing bases. The move saved 800 upstate New York jobs.” [PolitiFact, 3/28/08]Fact: Sen. Clinton wrote section of No Child Left Behind authorizing funding for recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers. According to PolitiFact, Senator Clinton: “Wrote a section of the 2001 ‘No Child Left Behind’ education law (PL 107-110) that authorized funding for recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers and principals, citing a projected shortage of 2.2-million teachers by 2011.” [PolitiFact, 3/28/08]
Fact: Sen. Clinton sponsored a 2005 bill to distribute flu vaccines more efficiently. According to PolitiFact, Senator Clinton: “Sponsored a 2005 bill to distribute flu vaccines more efficiently, which inspired similar provisions in a 2006 law (PL 109-417) promoting adequate vaccine production and stockpiles to improve the nation’s responses to public health emergencies.” [PolitiFact, 3/28/08]
Fact: Sen. Clinton wrote law providing grants to pay for respite care services. According to PolitiFact, Senator Clinton: “Wrote a 2006 law (PL 109-442) providing grants to state and local governments to pay for respite care services for family caregivers. (Respite care is designed to give principal caregivers of sick or disabled individuals temporary relief in their caregiving obligations.)” [PolitiFact, 3/28/08]
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| Harper’s: Chuck Schumer did most of the heavy lifting on those 9/11 bills. “There was also legislation extending unemployment benefits for victims of 9/11 (what New York senator wouldn’t have pushed for something like that?). And according to Steven Brill’s exhaustive After: The Rebuilding and Defending of America in the September 12 Era, it was the state’s senior senator, Chuck Schumer, who did most of the heavy lifting on those bills.” | Fact: Clinton played a pivotal role in securing billions in federal aid for New York after 9/11. “For six years, Clinton has been attentive to the needs of the state, tougher on national security than are many of her Democratic colleagues and correct about such social issues as comprehensive immigration reform and raising the minimum wage. All while playing the national stage – heroine to many, villainess to many others. The bright lights have sometimes tended to obscure Clinton’s record. She played a pivotal role, for example, in securing billions in federal aid for New York in the dark days after 9/11. And she was way out front in fighting for health care funding for rescue and recovery workers. Earlier than most, she recognized that service at Ground Zero had rewarded many workers with tragic respiratory illnesses – and she continues to push the federal government to meet its responsibilities to the stricken.” [New York Daily News editorial, 11/1/06] |
| Harper’s: Hillary was nice to Republicans so they would soften their opposition to her presidential campaign. “What Hillary did do was make friends with her Republican colleagues. While ideologically dubious, it did have the long-term benefit of softening potential opposition to her future campaigns for the presidency. As Daniel Halper (a smart, nonrabid conservative) writes in his recent book Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine: ‘I spoke to many, if not all, of Senator Clinton’s biggest opponents within the Republican Party during her time as First Lady. On or off the record, no matter how much they were coaxed, not one of them would say a negative thing about Hillary Clinton as a person — other than observing that her Democratic allies sometimes didn’t like her.’ | Fact: GOP candidates did not soften their opposition to a Hillary Clinton presidency. “They mock her proposals, utter her name with a sneer and win standing ovations by ridiculing her ideas as un-American, even socialistic. She has become the one thing the Republican candidates for president can agree on. Hillary Clinton. Earlier this year, the senator from New York was the subject of an occasional laugh line from former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Now, the trickle has become a torrent as the leading GOP candidates seek to one-up one another in a Clinton-bashing contest aimed at energizing their party faithful. ‘The competition inside the GOP for who’s the most anti-Hillary is going to pay dividends,’ said Greg Strimple, a GOP pollster and consultant who is not working with any presidential campaign. ‘Looking for that piece of anti-Hillary energy is what you’re seeing right now.’ The attacks have come during the GOP debates, on the stump, in television interviews, and in campaign commercials traditionally reserved for criticism of primary-season rivals… In the first five GOP debates, stretching from early May to late September, the candidates and the moderators mentioned Clinton’s name eight times. During the first October debate, she came up 13 times. And at the Oct. 21 debate, she was the subject of conversation 29 times.” [Washington Post, 11/14/07] |
| Harper’s: “She buddied up to John McCain.” | Fact: When a supporter called Clinton a “bitch,” McCain smiled as the crowd laughed and said it was an “excellent question.” “On Monday night, when a woman at a town hall meeting asked how Republicans could beat Clinton — calling her a word that rhymes with ‘witch’ — McCain smiled as the crowd laughed and said it was an ‘excellent question.’ After citing a poll showing him beating her in a general-election matchup, the senator from Arizona said: ‘I respect Senator Clinton. I respect anyone who gets the nomination of the Democrat Party.’” [Washington Post, 11/15/07] |
| Harper’s: “Even Newt Gingrich has good things to say about her.” | In the 2007 campaign, Newt Gingrich called Senator Clinton “a nasty woman.” “Newt, by contrast, knows how to get conservative hearts racing. Take his little chat with the New York Post: ‘Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich yesterday called Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ‘a nasty woman’ who runs an ‘endlessly ruthless’ campaign machine.” [Washington Post, 3/2/07] |
| Harper’s said Hillary failed to read the National Intelligence Estimate. “Oh, and she voted for the Iraq war, and continued to defend it long after others had thrown in the towel. She cast that vote without having read the full National Intelligence Estimate, which was far more skeptical about Iraq’s armaments than the bowdlerized version that was made public — strange behavior for someone as disciplined and thorough as Hillary.” | Clinton was “fully briefed” on the classified intelligence report on Iraq before her vote. “Sen. Clinton explained to Tim Russert, ‘I was fully briefed by the people who wrote [the NIE]. I was briefed by the people from, you know, the State Department, the CIA, the Department of Defense.’ Sen. John Kerry, a supporter of the Obama campaign, echoed these sentiments saying, ‘I didn’t read the full report because I got it from them straight.’ The Obama campaign also fails to mention that news outlets have reported that only a handful of senators chose to read the classified NIE, rather than rely on in person briefing by its authors. A number of those who say they read the NIE, including Sens. Rockefeller (D-WV) and Feinstein (D-CA), also voted for the war authorization.” [Clinton campaign press release, 1/30/08 (via archive.org)] |
| Obama never allowed her much power in the Secretary of State post and “often deferred to military and intelligence personnel.” “To be fair to Hillary, Obama never allowed her much power in that post. An unnamed ‘former high-ranking diplomat’ told Halper that the president ‘brought her into the administration, put her in a bubble, and ignored her.’ Foreign policy was run mostly out of the White House by people with little experience in the area, and Obama, fearful of appearing soft, often deferred to military and intelligence personnel.” | Clinton enhanced the State Department and became an increasingly influential voice within the Obama administration. “All at once, and with disciplined follow-through, she had enhanced the State Department ….From the outset she demonstrated a deep understanding of the levers of power within the American government and in international politics. As a result, she became an increasingly influential voice within the Obama administration, moving from the realm of campaign-trail rival to valued counselor and executor of the president’s will.” [HRC: State Secrets, 2014]Clinton worked to bring State’s power back from the Defense department. “The purpose of the State Department is to conduct diplomacy and execute the president’s foreign policy. Ideally, America’s international footprint looks more like the sole of a wingtip than a combat boot. But during the Bush administration, the ever-growing Pentagon had taken over for State in global hot spots, most notably Iraq and Afghanistan. Both Gates and Hillary believed that the Pentagon was playing too much of a role in providing civilian aid, which both usurped the diplomatic role in foreign policy and distracted the military from its core defense mission.” [HRC: State Secrets, 2014] |
| Harper’s: Hillary “made a campaign-trail promise in 2008 to ‘totally obliterate’ Iran.” “For her own part, Hillary was less of a diplomat and more of a hawk, who had made a campaign-trail promise in 2008 to ‘totally obliterate’ Iran in the event of an attack on Israel. Part of this may have been pure temperament, or an impulse to prove that she was tougher than a man. But she may also have been reacting against public perception of the job itself. As the feminist scholar Cynthia Enloe, who specializes in gender and militarism, told me in a 2004 interview, there’s a ‘long history of trying to feminize the State Department in American inner circles.’ Diplomats are caricatured as upper-class pansies instead of manly warriors. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld even attempted to feminize Colin Powell, she argued, ‘which is pretty hard to do with somebody who has been a general.” | Hillary actually said, “we would be able to totally obliterate them.” “‘I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel),’ Clinton said in an interview on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.’ ‘In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them,’ she said. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic,’ Clinton said.” [Reuters, 4/22/08] |
| Harper’s: Hillary’s tough talk on Iran in 2008 may have been a reaction against public perception of the job of Secretary of State. “For her own part, Hillary was less of a diplomat and more of a hawk, who had made a campaign-trail promise in 2008 to ‘totally obliterate’ Iran in the event of an attack on Israel. Part of this may have been pure temperament, or an impulse to prove that she was tougher than a man. But she may also have been reacting against public perception of the job itself. As the feminist scholar Cynthia Enloe, who specializes in gender and militarism, told me in a 2004 interview, there’s a ‘long history of trying to feminize the State Department in American inner circles.’ Diplomats are caricatured as upper-class pansies instead of manly warriors. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld even attempted to feminize Colin Powell, she argued, ‘which is pretty hard to do with somebody who has been a general.” | Fact: In April 2008, Hillary Clinton did not know she would be Secretary of State. |
| Harper’s said Clinton backers stress her skimpy resume by pointing to miles traveled. “On the other hand, Hillary and her backers might well stress her skimpy résumé as a peacemaker. Correct the Record, a pro-Hillary PR organization also run by David Brock, informs visitors on its website that she traveled 956,733 miles as secretary of state. This fact then links to a list of her accomplishments at the State Department. For instance, she helped to restore America’s “leadership and standing in the world,” though the only metrics offered to support this are the miles logged and meetings taken with “foreign leaders in 112 countries.” |
Sec. Gates: Sec. Clinton “made a singular contribution to strengthening this country’s relationships with allies.” Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: “In a world that is ever more complex, turbulent and dangerous, Secretary Clinton, 64, has made a singular contribution to strengthening this country’s relationships with allies, partners and friends; rallying other countries to join us in dealing with challenges to the global order, from Libya and Iran to the South China Sea; and reaching out to people in scores of countries to demonstrate that America cares about them. She has developed, for the first time, long-range, comprehensive strategies for diplomacy and development that will strengthen the critical civilian contribution to America’s national security abroad.” [Robert Gates, Time Magazine, 4/18/12]Ambassador of major U.S. ally said Clinton had done a very impressive and important job by improving the image of the U.S. around the world. According to Politico’s Roger Simon, “And the ambassador of a major ally to the United States did tell me he thought Clinton had done a very impressive and important job as secretary of state by improving the image of the United States around the world after eight years of decline under Bush.” [Roger Simon, Politico, 3/4/14]
When Sec. Clinton left office, the world viewed the United States more favorably than it did before she took office. A Pew Research poll measuring favorable opinions of the United States found that the international community’s opinions of the United States were higher when Sec. Clinton left office than it was before she took office
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| Harper’s criticized a Gaza cease-fire that averted an Israeli ground invasion. “She worked to avoid all-out war in Gaza (oops)…” | Sec. Clinton helped avert an all-out war in Gaza by negotiating a cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians. According to Politico, “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got a Gaza cease-fire right at the moment hope seemed dead for a rapid end to the violence — and next time, President Barack Obama will probably have to do it without her.” [Politico, 11/21/12]The Gaza cease-fire “halted eight days of bloody conflict” between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas. According to the New York Times, “Under intense Egyptian and American pressure, Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas halted eight days of bloody conflict on Wednesday, averting a full-scale Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip without resolving the underlying disputes.” [New York Times, 11/21/12] |
| Harper’s criticized the pivot to Asia. “…[Clinton] developed the ‘pivot to Asia’ strategy, which ‘will probably be Obama’s most lasting strategic achievement’ (though it would be hard to describe just what that is).” |
Defense Sec. Gates: When it came to countering China’s influence in Asia, “Secretary Clinton was very much in the lead.” In his book Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, Robert Gates wrote, “In its disputes with neighbors, China always prefers to deal with each country individually. They are easier to intimidate that way. Thus the United States looks for opportunities to encourage countries in the region to meet together, including with China, to address these disputes. The Obama administration was particularly active in pursuing this tack, including our own participation wherever possible. Secretary Clinton was very much in the lead. A major step forward in this regard was her planned official visit to Vietnam in July 2010, followed immediately by her participation in the Association of Southeastern Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional forum in Cambodia (where her comments on the South China Sea disputes and the multilateral criticism of China’s aggressive behavior would surprise and anger Beijing).” [Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, pg. 417, 2014]
Sec. Clinton was “a key part” of the pivot to Asia, pushing back on “China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea.” According to an op-ed by Brookings Institution senior fellow Michael O’Hanlon, “Lost amid the clamor over Hillary Clinton’s book tour are some of her views on China, where–despite challenges from Ukraine to the Middle East–her legacy as secretary of state is arguably the most consequential. Mrs. Clinton was a key part of the ‘pivot to Asia,’ a process that arguably began with visits to Beijing and Hanoi in 2010 during which she pushed back against China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea. She accelerated the effort with a ForeignPolicy.com article in October 2011, and President Barack Obama traveled to Asia the next month.” [Michael O’Hanlon, Wall Street Journal, 7/28/14]Sec. Clinton’s “chief great-power legacy” was the Asia rebalance. According to Brookings’ Michael E. O’Hanlon, “Hillary’s chief great-power legacy was indeed the rebalancing of U.S. interests toward Asia, and it has been vastly underappreciated by the chattering class. […] The reason the rebalance worked is that, led by Clinton but surely with very important input from leadership at the Pentagon and the president himself, the military measures were interwoven into a broader set of policies that was well articulated and clearly conveyed.” [Michael O’Hanlon, Brookings, 12/13/13] |
| Harper’s: Hillary’s emphasis on women’s rights “seems to have had little impact in… ‘deeply reactionary cultures.’” “She elevated the cause of women’s rights — which is entirely laudable, but seems to have had little impact in what the website refers to as ‘deeply reactionary cultures.’” |
On trips abroad, Sec. Clinton pressed “the twin challenges of women’s rights and abuse with political leaders.” According to the Christian Science Monitor editorial board, “When Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to Africa last month, she visited war-racked eastern Congo to speak out against widespread rape by militias. She choked up after meeting with two rape victims and promised more US help – $17 million for medical treatment and security for victims. Now she’s taking the issue to the United Nations, where the US is leading an effort to shore up a resolution to end sexual violence against civilians during armed conflict. The Security Council passed Resolution 1820 last year, but follow through is sorely lacking. Women’s rights are becoming a signature issue for America’s top diplomat. In her official travels, Mrs. Clinton talks with women, meets with female activists, and presses the twin challenges of women’s rights and abuse with political leaders. She wants US development aid to focus more on women, and has appointed the first US ambassador for global women’s issues.” [Editorial, Christian Science Monitor, 9/11/09]Under Sec. Clinton, the State Department launched the “first U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally.” According to Sec. Clinton’s remarks on making human rights a human reality, “Because so much violence against women and girls takes place within their homes and communities, and often in the form of harmful traditional practices like female genital mutilation and so-called ‘honor crimes,’ we’ve launched the first U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally.” [Remarks on Making Human Rights a Human Reality, state.gov, 12/6/12]
Sec. Clinton’s Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society project brought activists in the Middle East and North Africa together to discuss “how to further women’s political and economic engagement.” According to a press release from the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, “Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer arrived on a four-day visit to Jordan today. While in Amman, Ambassador Verveer will host a regional convening of the Working Group on Women’s Empowerment. Under Secretary Clinton’s Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society, the Working Group brings together activists from across the Middle East and North Africa to discuss how to further women’s political and economic engagement in the region.” [U.S. Embassy Jordan, 6/24/12]Under Sec. Clinton, the Asian-Pacific partners of APEC agreed to the “San Francisco Declaration,” an agreement to take concrete actions to realize the full economic potential of women. In 2011, Secretary Clinton brought together representatives from APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) nations to agree to the “San Francisco Declaration.” The Declaration stated, “We, APEC ministers and senior government officials, along with private sector leaders, met in San Francisco, California, September 16, 2011 for the High Level Policy Dialogue on Women and the Economy, under the Chairmanship of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. […] In 2011 and beyond, APEC economies will take concrete actions to realize the full potential of women, integrate them more fully into APEC economies, harness their talents, remove barriers that restrict women’s full economic participation, and maximize their contributions towards economic growth.” In 2012, Sec. Clinton traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, where she “led the U.S. Delegation to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s Women and the Economy Forum (WEF). During this event, participants focused on leadership and skills and capacity building, two main areas of the San Francisco Declaration on decreasing barriers to women’s economic participation, as they relate to innovation, STEM, entrepreneurship, and healthy lifestyles.” [APEC.org, 9/16/11; state.gov, 6/30/12]
Sec. Clinton continued to work throughout her vacation following her return from the Congo to “see what could be done for the women of the refugee camps.” In the book HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, authors Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen wrote, “The way Hillary mourns, friends say, is to pour her emotion into healing and fixing, an approach deeply rooted in the teachings of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. That’s what she did when she returned from the Congo, even though she was supposed to have some downtime. She reached out to a wide circle of friends, aides, and spiritual advisers to see what could be done for the women of the refugee camps. ‘She was so mortified by what she heard, she was emailing everybody while she was on vacation,’ said one State Department source.” [HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, pg. 167, 2014]
“Just by going there, Secretary Clinton will shine further light on the sexual predation, perversion and incalculable brutality taking place in Congo.” According to an op-ed by Bonnie Erbe for CBS News, “Sexual violence as thought of in the West does not begin to describe what the Congolese women endure. Not only are they raped repeated and physically brutalized, they are forced to watch their infants slaughtered upon birth. […] Just by going there, Secretary Clinton will shine further light on the sexual predation, perversion and incalculable brutality taking place in Congo. The sooner it is brought to an end, the better.” [Bonnie Erbe, CBS News, 7/31/09]
Sec. Clinton “insisted that the United States would not turn back the clock on Afghan women.” According to a Boston Globe editorial, “This week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted that the United States would not turn back the clock on Afghan women. If so, the State Department needs to react strongly to the most dramatic examples of the repressive double standards in Afghan life.” [Editorial, Boston Globe, 12/10/11]
Sec. Clinton began tracking every country’s marriage laws in order to fight child marriage. According to Sec. Clinton’s remarks on making human rights a human reality, “One of our top priorities is eliminating child marriage. Beginning next year, the State Department will track every country’s legal minimum age of marriage and the rate of marriage for underage girls and boys.” [Remarks on Making Human Rights a Human Reality, state.gov, 12/6/12]
Sec. Clinton strengthened the State Department’s reporting on female genital mutilation. According to a State Department fact sheet on advancing the status of women and girls around the world, “In August 2012, the U.S. released the first U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence Globally, accompanied by a Presidential Executive Order directing its implementation. The strategy sets out concrete objectives and actions to marshal U.S. expertise and capacity to address and prevent gender-based violence, and represents a multi-sector and whole of government approach. As part of this strategy, beginning in 2013, the Department of State’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices will strengthen reporting on female genital mutilation/cutting, child marriage, and gender-biased sex selection.” [“Advancing the Status of Women and Girls Around the World,” state.gov, 3/8/13]
Sec. Clinton launched the Secretary’s International Fund for Women and Girls to invest in improvements to education, health, and economic opportunities. According to a State Department release, “Secretary Clinton announced the launch of the ‘Secretary’s International Fund for Women and Girls’ this morning during remarks for the Summit on Entrepreneurship. The Fund is a State Department-led public-private partnership committed to providing flexible, rapid, targeted, and high-impact grants to nongovernmental organizations working to meet the critical needs of women and girls around the world. It is administered by the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues. The Fund invests in efficient and innovative solutions to combat violence, improve health and education, promote climate change solutions, and create economic and political opportunities for women and girls.” [“Secretary Clinton Announces the ‘Secretary’s International Fund for Women and Girls,’” state.gov, 4/28/10]
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| Harper’s: Since leaving the State Department, Hillary has devoted herself to what we can only call Clinton, Inc. “Since leaving the State Department, Hillary has devoted herself to what we can only call (echoing Halper’s title) Clinton, Inc. This fund-raising, favor-dispensing machine is key to understanding her joint enterprise with Bill. Unlike the Bush family, an old-style WASP dynasty for all W.’s populist bluster and blunder, the Clintons are arrivistes who approach politics in a highly neoliberal manner. That means nonstop self-promotion, huge book advances, and fat speaking fees (Hillary has now joined Bill in the six-figure club). It means the various Clinton foundations, which were led first by Bill, but now include Hillary and Chelsea. According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, they’ve collectively raised between $2 and $3 billion since 1992, three quarters of it from business interests, with finance the leading sector. |
FACT: Since leaving the State Department, Secretary Clinton has focused on early childhood development, full global participation for women, electing Democrats, and her family. Secretary Clinton’s Too Small to Fail initiative “aims to help parents and businesses take meaningful actions to improve the health and well-being of children ages zero to five.” “Too Small to Fail aims to help parents and businesses take meaningful actions to improve the health and well-being of children ages zero to five, so that more of America’s children are prepared to succeed in the 21st century. We are working to promote new research on the science of children’s brain development, early learning and early health, and we will help parents, businesses and communities identify specific actions, consistent with the new research, that they can take to improve the lives of young children.” [ClintonFoundation.org, Accessed 10/20/14]Secretary Clinton’s No Ceilings project “will help chart the path forward to accelerate full participation for women and girls in the 21st century.” “No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project is an effort led by Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Clinton Foundation to bring together partner organizations to evaluate and share the progress women and girls have made in the 20 years since the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. This new effort will help chart the path forward to accelerate full participation for women and girls in the 21st century. The full participation of women and girls is critical to global progress, development, and security.” [ClintonFoundation.org, Accessed 10/20/14]
Secretary Clinton has campaigned and helped raise money for at least 13 Democratic candidates thus far in 2014 and she is already publicly scheduled to help four additional ones before Election Day. [CNN, 9/29/14]
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| Harper’s: Hillary “claimed that she’s always been against Iran’s right to enrich uranium (though in 2010 she actually said otherwise)” “And with an eye to the presidency, Hillary has also kept up her line of neocon patter, while carefully separating herself from Obama. In a notorious interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, she declared her enthusiastic support for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and for Israel’s pummeling of Gaza. She claimed that she’s always been against Iran’s right to enrich uranium (though in 2010 she actually said otherwise).” | Hillary said “they can enrich uranium at some future date once they have demonstrated that they can do so in a responsible manner in accordance with international obligations.” “Well, we told them that they are entitled to the peaceful use of civil nuclear energy. But they haven’t yet restored the confidence of the international community, to the extent where the international community would feel comfortable allowing them to enrich, which is why with the Bushehr plant that Russia has helped build, Russia is not letting them enrich. Russia is taking the spent fuel out and reprocessing. Iran has to come to the table recognizing that they have lost the confidence of even longtime supporters and allies or those who believed them, took them at face value. They can do this, and then they can enrich uranium at some future date once they have demonstrated that they can do so in a responsible manner in accordance with international obligations.” [Clinton Interview With Kim Ghattas of BBC, 12/3/10] |
Parroting Right-Wing Talking Points
“Stop Hillary,” Harper’s Magazine, Nov. 2014: |
The GOP: |
| It’s hard to find any substantive political argument in [Hillary Clinton’s] favor. | RNC Chairman Reince Priebus: Sec. Clinton’s “career over a long period of time is insignificant in accomplishment.” In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said, “I think her career over a long period of time is insignificant in accomplishment… I think she gets an F as Secretary of State. Whether it is Russia, Iran sanctions…and now obviously Benghazi. Go to her Senate seat… what is there? I don’t know. Her days as first lady, granted some turbulent times…what does she have there?” [Fox News’ Fox News Sunday, 6/1/14]America Rising: Sec. Clinton “doesn’t have a ‘clear idea’ what she would do as president and what her campaign message would be.” According to America Rising, “Despite being in politics for over 3 decades, spending 4 years as Secretary of State, and having run for president once before, Hillary Clinton still doesn’t have a “clear idea” what she would do as President and what her campaign message would be according to Bill Clinton. In an interview with CNN, Bill Clinton indicated that Hillary doesn’t know what her message for a 2016 campaign would be and still needs time to develop it. […] Clinton told CNN’s Anna Coren. ‘Now that the book is done, she wants time to think about that and work through it.’” [America Rising, 7/21/14] |
| [Hillary Clinton] has… become increasingly hawkish on foreign policy. | WSJ: “Rand Paul Targets Hillary Clinton in Hawk Criticism.” “Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.),stepping up his criticism of U.S. policy in response to the rise of Islamic militants, Thursday criticized Hillary Clinton for suggesting that a more aggressive U.S. policy supporting rebels in Syria might have impeded the militants’ rise. ‘To interventionists like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, we would caution that arming the Islamic rebels in Syria created a haven for the Islamic State,’ said Mr. Paul in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, referring to the militant group sweeping through Syria and northern Iraq that is also known as ISIS. ‘We are lucky Mrs. Clinton didn’t get her way and the Obama administration did not bring about regime change in Syria. That new regime might well be ISIS.’”[“Rand Paul Targets Hillary Clinton in Hawk Criticism,” [WSJ, 8/28/14] |
| There’s an interesting hint of Hillary’s future in her characterization of Alinsky’s thinking. | Rush Limbaugh: “Her mentor was Saul Alinsky.” On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh said, “Let me tell you, if Hillary’s elected president, the Democrats aren’t gonna have any losses. Look, here’s the bottom line. If Hillary gets elected, it’s only gonna get worse. She believes in everything Obama believes. Her mentor was Saul Alinsky. She believes in the same stuff. She and Bill are just a little bit less — I don’t know, what’s the word — obvious about it. If they coulda done what Obama’s doing today, they would have done it. Hillary is just gonna continue this. She’s not gonna change anything, roll it back, revise it. What has she ever fixed? Everything that she gets hold of is broken. (interruption) Don’t give me that. She didn’t fix education in Arkansas. It turned out to be number 49 or 50 in the state after she got a hold of it. She’s not fixed anything. She didn’t fix Benghazi. She presides over disasters. Hillary Clinton breaks things. She doesn’t fix anything. Good grief.” [Rush Limbaugh, 12/13/13]The Washington Free Beacon reported on two letters that “shed light” on Sec. Clinton’s relationship with Saul Alinsky. According to the Washington Free Beacon, “Previously unpublished correspondence between Hillary Clinton and the late left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky reveal new details about her relationship with the controversial Chicago activist and shed light on her early ideological development. Clinton met with Alinsky several times in 1968 while writing a Wellesley college thesis about his theory of community organizing. Clinton’s relationship with Alinsky, and her support for his philosophy, continued for several years after she entered Yale law school in 1969, two letters obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. The letters obtained by the Free Beacon are part of the archives for the Industrial Areas Foundation, a training center for community organizers founded by Alinsky, which are housed at the University of Texas at Austin.” [Washington Free Beacon, 9/21/14] |
| Hillary went from the legal clinic to the Rose Law Firm, which represented the moneyed interests of Arkansas. It did not hurt her prospects at the firm that her husband was the state’s chief legal officer. | America Rising criticized Sec. Clinton “for her work as a corporate attorney at the Rose Law Firm.” According to America Rising, “Today Hillary Clinton will receive a medal from the Bar Association for her work as a corporate attorney at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas. It’s unclear why she would want to highlight this resume. Maybe she will give a passionate speech about the time she challenged a ballot initiative supported by ACORN that gave low-income Arkansans a break on their utility bills in court. Or the time she defended Coke when they were denying a disabled man named Ronnie Weeks his retirement benefits? Or our favorite, the time she defended a canning company that had rats rear ends in their pork and beans.” [America Rising, 2/6/14] |
| The community-organizing group ACORN… got a ballot measure passed that would lower electricity rates for residential users in Little Rock and raise them for commercial users. Business, of course, was not pleased, and filed a legal challenge… Hillary’s [friend] was shocked to see her arguing the case in court. And not only did she argue the case — she helped to craft the underlying legal strategy, which was that the new rate schedule amounted to an unconstitutional “taking of property.” This is now a common right-wing argument against regulation, and Hillary was one of its early architects. | America Rising: Sec. Clinton “challenged a ballot initiative supported by ACORN that gave low-income Arkansans a break on their utility bills in court.” According to America Rising, “Today Hillary Clinton will receive a medal from the Bar Association for her work as a corporate attorney at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas. It’s unclear why she would want to highlight this resume. Maybe she will give a passionate speech about the time she challenged a ballot initiative supported by ACORN that gave low-income Arkansans a break on their utility bills in court.” [America Rising, 2/6/14] |
| [Bill], Hillary, and Morris together decided that the best way to conduct politics was through a permanent campaign. Policy and polling would be inseparable. | Newt Gingrich: Hillary Clinton runs an ‘endlessly ruthless’ campaign machine. “Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich yesterday called Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ‘a nasty woman’ who runs an ‘endlessly ruthless’ campaign machine.” [Washington Post, 3/2/07] |
| Always suspicious of the media, she shut off reporters’ access to the West Wing of the White House. | RNC: Sec. Clinton “made closed-press appearances the norm as she considers a bid for the White House.” According to the RNC, “Hillary Clinton is barring the press from her speech to 22,000 people at the National Association of Realtors conference in San Francisco. […] Clinton has made closed-press appearances the norm as she considers a bid for the White House […] Clinton receives at least $200,000 for every speech she makes, most of which are closed press.” [RNC research release, 11/5/13] |
| Health-care reform was a conspicuous failure, and most of the blame has to fall on Hillary. | America Rising: Sec. Clinton’s “failed 1993 health care reform push…laid the foundation for ObamaCare.” Hillary Clinton’s failed 1993 health care reform push also had an employer mandate for “qualifying employees” that worked 120 hours per month, or 30 hours per week on average[.] This is just the latest example of how Hillary, the ‘Mother Of ObamaCare,’ laid the foundation for ObamaCare.” [America Rising, 4/4/14] |
| While [Whitewater] was certainly not the diabolical conspiracy Republicans made it out to be during the fevered days of the Clinton impeachment, it was not nothing. In short: A sleazy and well-connected pal of the Clintons, Jim McDougal, came to them in 1978 with a proposal to invest in a piece of undeveloped riverfront land in the Ozark Mountains that he hoped to turn into vacation homes. They took the bait — and paid almost no attention afterward, which turned out to be a mistake… The fact that they appear to have lost money on Whitewater, and were never convicted of any criminal behavior in connection with the scandal, hardly excuses this farcical round-robin of ethical conflicts. | America Rising saw pushing Whitewater as a “necessary” part of their strategy. According to CNN, “‘We are very conscious of the fact that there is a big slice of the electorate that does not have a full picture of Hillary Clinton’s record,’ Miller said. ‘I think that with the Clintons would like to rely on is a nostalgic strategy with regards to their time in the White House in the ‘90s and don’t want to get down into the details.’ Miller, whose super PAC has a cadre of researchers diving into the Clinton record, said there will be an obvious focus on what younger voters need to know about her time in the White House. Miller added that while he doesn’t think the 2016 election will be won or lost on issues like Whitewater and other Clinton White House scandals, he does think informing young voters, especially, about them is necessary. ‘I do think that for the generation that didn’t live through that, that there is some value having the discussion,’ he added.” [CNN, 5/22/14] |
| Although it’s been more than thirteen years since the Clintons left the White House, it’s amazing how little there is to say about Hillary’s subsequent career… Alas, of all her senatorial accomplishments, this one arguably had the biggest impact. The rest were the legislative equivalent of being against breast cancer. | RNC: Sec. Clinton struggled “to point to a significant accomplishment” since leaving the Obama administration. According to the RNC, “One year later, Hillary is still struggling to point to a significant accomplishment […] The most important and toughest foreign policy issues weren’t resolved under her tenure […] and Benghazi is still the defining moment of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.” [RNC research release, 2/1/14] |
| [Sec. Clinton] supported the intervention in Libya… | Rand Paul “labeled the conflict in Libya ‘Hillary’s war.’” According to The Washington Post, “Paul is out-organizing his would-be 2016 rivals, building a network of loyalists in Iowa and other early-voting states while others lag behind and visit less often. He also sounds like a candidate, spitting out lines attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton, the potential Democratic nominee. He labeled the conflict in Libya ‘Hillary’s war,’ and said the former secretary of state’s handling of the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, should preclude her from becoming commander in chief.” [Washington Post, 8/4/14] |
| [Correct the Record claims Sec. Clinton] developed the “pivot to Asia” strategy, which “will probably be Obama’s most lasting strategic achievement” (though it would be hard to describe just what that is). | RNC: The “Much-Touted” Pivot Policy, Has Been “Bungled” And Frictions With China Are “Destined To Be Commonplace” [RNC, 6/10/14] |
| [Correct the Record claims Sec. Clinton] negotiated free-trade pacts with Colombia and South Korea, despite her newfound reservations about NAFTA during the 2008 campaign. | RNC: Sec. Clinton “turned against her husband’s signature trade deal, NAFTA, despite having consistently supported it in the past.” According to the RNC, “Clinton even turned against her husband’s signature trade deal, NAFTA, despite having consistently supported it in the past. Clinton said NAFTA, signed by President Clinton, had ‘hurt a lot of American workers.’” [RNC research release, 4/24/14] |
| Unlike the Bush family, an old-style WASP dynasty for all W.’s populist bluster and blunder, the Clintons are arrivistes who approach politics in a highly neoliberal manner. That means nonstop self-promotion, huge book advances, and fat speaking fees… | The RNC criticized Sec. Clinton for “exorbitant pay days” and “charging hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak at universities.” According to the RNC, “Clinton found herself in hot water over her exorbitant pay days and travel requirements […] Clinton has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by at least 8 universities […] Clinton is charging hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak at universities across the county. (sic)” [RNC research release, 10/13/14]The RNC launched a website to “document the lavish speaking fees Hillary demands.” According to an RNC press release, “Today, the RNC is launching PoorHillaryClinton.com, a clearinghouse for all of Hillary Clinton’s out-of-touch comments about her wealth (and her perceived lack thereof). PoorHillaryClinton.com will also document the lavish speaking fees Hillary demands, including those from UNLV, where students are facing significant tuition increases, and from the University of Buffalo, which we learned about just last week.” [RNC press release, 7/21/14] |
| In a revoltingly laudatory Washington Post review of Henry Kissinger’s new book, Hillary distinguishes between the president’s first term, during which they “laid the foundation” for a new approach to international relations — and the “crises of the second term,” as if the world suddenly changed when she strolled out of the State Department. | RNC: Sec. Clinton attempted “to distance herself from the Obama foreign policy.” According to the RNC: “ATTN: Reporters covering Hillary’s attempt to distance herself from the Obama foreign policy[.] According to the State Department website, state.gov, ‘The Secretary of State, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, is the President’s chief foreign affairs adviser. The Secretary carries out the President’s foreign policies through the State Department….’ Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.” [RNC research release, 8/12/14] |
| For what it’s worth, though, [Dick Morris has] assigned Elizabeth Warren the same sort of spoiler role he gave to Condoleezza Rice in the 2008 contest. Morris told me that if the Massachusetts senator “or some genuine figure from the new populist left of the Democratic Party” were to challenge Hillary, “they could upend her in much the same way that Obama did in 2008.” Warren, meanwhile, swears she doesn’t want to run, even as Hillary dons the mantle of inevitability for the second time. | RNC: Iowa Democrats were “searching for an alternative to Hillary Clinton.” “Democrats in Iowa are still searching for an alternative to Hillary Clinton […] One Iowa Democrat said he was ‘not completely convinced’ that Clinton was his choice and that the door remains ‘open.’ […] Another Iowa Democrat said democrats needed to return to their ‘liberal roots’ and that she would like to see a campaign debate between Clinton and Elizabeth Warren.” [RNC research release, 9/15/14]America Rising: Prominent “liberal activists, bloggers and commentators are organizing for a possible Elizabeth Warren presidential run.” According to America Rising, “As Clinton travels the country running for president and her shadow campaign sends staffers to early-nominating and swing states, an anti-Hillary movement is starting… and it is not being run by Republicans. E-mails obtained by The Hill show that liberals are so unenthused by the prospects of a Clinton presidential run that they are attempting to draft a ‘true progressive’ into the Democratic primary. Perturbed that Clinton is ‘too cozy with Wall Street,’ ‘like Obama’ and voted for Iraq War, prominent liberal activists, bloggers and commentators are organizing for a possible Elizabeth Warren presidential run.” [America Rising, 9/18/14] |
1990s Economy
Attack |
Facts |
| ATTACK: President Clinton’s economic policies increased inequality.Pres. Clinton “kept the party going” following Pres. Reagan’s “strange, unequally distributed” economic boom. “Appropriating some of the language of the left about revolution and the promise of the future, he [President Reagan] unleashed what he liked to call the magic of the marketplace: cutting taxes for the rich, eliminating regulations, and whittling away at social spending. What Reagan created, with his embrace of the nutty Laffer curve and his smiling war on organized labor, was a strange, unequally distributed boom that lasted through the early 1990s. After the caretaker George H. W. Bush administration evaporated, Bill Clinton took over and, with a few minor adjustments, kept the party going for another decade. Profits skyrocketed, as did the financial markets.”Strong economic expansion under Pres. Clinton was a “byproduct” of the dot-com bubble. “Still, she [Hillary Clinton] bragged that during the Clinton era, ‘welfare rolls had dropped 60 percent from 14.1 million to 5.8 million, and millions of parents had gone to work.’ Of course, those gains came during the strongest economic expansion of the past several decades, which was itself the byproduct of the unsustainable dot-com bubble. In August 2014, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published a report on how the Clinton welfare regime, officially designated as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), had worked out over the longer term. They found that TANF is serving fewer families despite increased demand, that the value of benefits has eroded to the point where beneficiaries can’t meet their basic needs, and that it does far less to reduce poverty than its predecessor, AFDC.” |
FACT: President Clinton’s economic policies helped people. Most U.S. job growth in the past 40 years occurred under Pres. Clinton and Pres. Reagan. “Most of the job growth of the past 40 years occurred during the presidencies of Mr. Reagan and Mr. Clinton. It’s more or less impossible to resolve whether Mr. Clinton’s policies juiced the economy as opposed to him just getting lucky with the post-Cold War tech boom. Others would argue that Mr. Reagan’s tax cuts paved the way for the 1990s boom in jobs. Perhaps Mr. Reagan and Mr. Clinton both were beneficiaries of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker setting the stage for growth by squashing the inflation of the 1970s and setting up an era of falling interest rates. These debates can (and do!) go on for years and they won’t be resolved by this post, which will just examine the numbers.” [Real Time Economics, Wall Street Journal, 6/18/14]
Nearly 23 million jobs were created during Pres. Clinton’s two terms. “Pointing to a series of charts and graphs, Clinton noted that nearly 23 million jobs were created during his two terms and nearly 8 million people emerged from poverty. But he said the benefits were not apparent at first and attributed Republicans winning control of Congress in 1994 in part because of unhappiness with his economic plan.” [AP, 4/30/14]
Over seven million people were lifted out of poverty during Pres. Clinton’s administration. “Critics have accused Mr. Clinton of trying to be all things to all people and said that some of his policies, namely the trade agreements and legislation that allowed the commingling of commercial and investment banks, might have exacerbated the current inequality. Others point out that the Internet boom coincided with his presidency. ‘You can say, ‘Oh, Clinton was lucky, he caught the tech boom.’ ‘Clinton was lucky, he came out of a recession,’ ‘Mr. Clinton said on Wednesday. He pointed to a chart that showed that 7.7 million people were lifted out of poverty during his administration, compared with 77,000 during the Reagan years.” [New York Times, 4/30/14]
Under Pres. Clinton, median income increased by 17%, the “most rapid increase” since the 1960s. “Under Clinton, job growth was about 30 million – the most since the 1970s. The poorest quintile gained 24%, which was slightly more than the richest quintile gained under Reagan. And under Clinton the richest quintile gained 20% – slightly less than what the bottom quintile gained. Meanwhile, median income increased 17% – the most rapid increase since the 1960s. Under George W. Bush, median income would fall again – substantially more for the bottom quintile than the top quintile.” [MSNBC, 5/2/14]
The 1990s were the longest period of growth in U.S. history and saw large job growth. “Since 1970, the American economy has doubled the number of jobs, from 70 million to about 140 million. Most of that job growth occurred during two extraordinarily long economic expansions in the 1980s and the 1990s. The 1990s and 1980s, in fact, were the longest and third longest period of growth in U.S. history, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The factors driving economic growth and job creation are complex, and among the key determinants of how long expansions last are changes in the nation’s demographics, the shifting structure of the economy from manufacturing to services, international stability and global trade, and the success (or failure) of Federal Reserve policies. But, of course, different eras have different presidents, who are quick to claim credit for successes under their tenure or explain away failures that the previous guy caused.” [Real Time Economics, Wall Street Journal, 6/18/14]
Pres. Clinton’s “major contribution” to the economic growth in the 1990s was passing the 1993 budget bill which reduced “chronic string of federal deficits.” “Clinton’s major contribution was pushing through the 1993 budget bill, which began to reduce what had become a chronic string of federal deficits. Republicans denounced it as the ‘largest tax increase in history,’ though in fact it was not a record and also contained some cuts in projected spending. Republican Rep. Newt Gingrich predicted: ‘The tax increase will kill jobs and lead to a recession, and the recession will force people off of work and onto unemployment and will actually increase the deficit.’” [FactCheck.org, 12/7/07]
Pres. Clinton pushed through a large upper-class tax increase in his first year in office. “The Clinton years showed the effects of a large tax increase that Clinton pushed through in his first year, and that Republicans incorrectly claim is the ‘largest tax increase in history.’ It fell almost exclusively on upper-income taxpayers. Clinton’s fiscal 1994 budget also contained some spending restraints.” [FactCheck.org, 2/11/08]
Pres. Clinton agreed to lower capital gains taxes to improve children’s health care and education spending. “Clinton said he was criticized by liberals as a ‘slug’ for agreeing to lower taxes on capital gains in exchange for bolstering children’s health care insurance and boosting education spending. But he said both policies helped millions of people.” [AP, 4/30/14]
Even without Social Security taxes, 1999 and 2000 saw budget surpluses under Pres. Clinton. “Clinton’s large budget surpluses also owe much to the Social Security tax on payrolls. Social Security taxes now bring in more than the cost of current benefits, and the ‘Social Security surplus’ makes the total deficit or surplus figures look better than they would if Social Security wasn’t counted. But even if we remove Social Security from the equation, there was a surplus of $1.9 billion in fiscal 1999 and $86.4 billion in fiscal 2000. So any way you count it, the federal budget was balanced and the deficit was erased, if only for a while.” [FactCheck.org, 2/11/08]
Denying the Clinton administration credit for policies that helped fix the economy and helped the poor would be “unfair.” “It would be unfair to deny credit to the Clinton administration for ushering in a set of policies that both helped fix the nation’s finances, bolstered the nation’s economy and helped the poor. Achievements like the expansion of the earned-income tax credit have played a central role in lifting people out of poverty.” [Washington Post, 5/1/14]
The dotcom bubble and stock market boom of the 1990s “had a big role to play” in the rise of inequality during Clinton’s administration. “But looking back on that era, it’s also true that inequality did rise during the Clinton years. For most of the administration, the top 1 percent of earners captured a fast increasing slice of national income. Most of this was out of Clinton’s control: The dotcom bubble and stock market boom had a big role to play.” [Washington Post, 5/1/14]
Pres. Obama was “more willing to stand up to Wall Street” but results compared to Pres. Clinton were not “all that different.” “President Obama has been more willing to stand up to Wall Street—for example, by signing the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. But in fairness to Clinton, the results so far haven’t been all that different. According to Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, between 2009 and 2012, the most recent year for which data are available, incomes grew 31% for the top 1% and 0.4% for the bottom 99%. The 1% has captured fully 95% of the economic recovery. That’s a situation that will be hard for any president who might follow Obama—including Hillary Clinton—to turn around.” [MSNBC, 5/2/14]
Pres. Clinton presided over eight years over economic growth and left office with unemployment at 3.8 percent. “Here’s another way to look at the record: Clinton presided over eight years of economic growth that averaged better than 3.5%. When he left office in 2001, unemployment was only 3.8%, a handsome number by any standard. The recession that followed lasted eight months and drove unemployment to a high of 6.4%. It was the shortest, mildest recession of modern times; by the end of 2003, the economy was growing at 3% again and unemployment was falling.” [Doyle McManus, LA Times, 2/18/13]
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| ATTACK: Hillary Clinton supported welfare reform that did not reduce poverty. The Clinton “regime” welfare product, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, currently serves fewer people despite demand increases. “In August 2014, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published a report on how the Clinton welfare regime, officially designated as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), had worked out over the longer term. They found that TANF is serving fewer families despite increased demand, that the value of benefits has eroded to the point where beneficiaries can’t meet their basic needs, and that it does far less to reduce poverty than its predecessor, AFDC.” | Clinton supported targeted measures to achieve welfare reform. “In all these ways, the bill we are introducing today comes a long way from what has been proposed in the past, and brings us much closer to what we need to do to redeem the promise of genuine reform. It may not have everything that each of us wants — I am going to cosponsor other, targeted measures that come closer to some of the goals we are working toward: Senator Dodd’s Access to High Quality Child Care Act, the Children First Act by Senators Kerry and Bingaman, and Senators Breaux and Chafee’s Transitional Medical Assistance Improvement Act. I also look forward to working with my colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee on the legislation outlined by Senators Breaux and Snowe earlier today.” [Senator Clinton press release, 5/6/02 (via archive.org); S. 2524, 5/15/02; S. 2117, 4/11/02; S. 2070, 3/22/02; S. 1269, 7/30/01]Senator Clinton urged HHS to fulfill its responsibility to submit its annual report to Congress on the wellbeing of children in families that have lost assistance due to time limits. “HHS is required, by statute, to submit to Congress an annual report on the well-being of children in families that have lost [TANF] assistance due to time limits. This report should contain information on such children showing the percentage who have dropped out of school, are employed, have been convicted of a crime, have children out of wedlock, are receiving public assistance, have health insurance, and other information. This report has never been submitted to Congress, yet would yield valuable information on the impact the time limit is having on some of our nation’s most vulnerable children. I ask that you look into this matter at your earliest convenience.” [Senator Clinton press release, 10/23/03 (via archive.org)] |