Mrs&Mr Bill or Mrs&Mr Hillary or …

December 2007
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Mrs&Mr Bill or Mrs&Mr Hillary or …

11 December 2007

George Rebane

Here we have a measured response from ‘Dick’ Dickenson to an op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal titled ‘Two Presidents in the White House’ by Sally Bedell Smith. The small but growing band of regular RR readers will recognize Dick (please google ‘James R. Dickenson’) as the self-declared New Deal Democrat, and now journalist emeritus and author. With his permission, his thoughts on various issues will appear here from time to time. In her piece Bedell Smith writes –

We now face the extraordinary possibility of having two presidents in the White House who are married to each other. That prospect is something that never occurred to our nation’s founders, and is only now beginning to catch the attention of the public, with Hillary Clinton’s position as front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Imagine being asked to serve as her running mate, knowing that her husband would be far more influential than any vice president. What would a potential secretary of state face now that Sen. Clinton has already said she would use her husband as ambassador to the world? As a former president, would Mr. Clinton read the daily intelligence briefing? His unofficial portfolio would potentially overlap with everyone in authority, without his being subject to Senate confirmation.

In our email discussion of this novel situation Dick responds –

"As a political reporter my response is that having Bill as a political adviser would, like most things, be a two-edged sword. He could be valuable some times and he could be a liability at others. Not least of the liability factor is the uneasiness/suspicion that his presence would cause. I assume that as intelligent, well-meaning people they would try to make it work but human fallibility being what it is no one can predict. Similar concerns were voiced when JFK named Bobby as his attorney general but the historical judgment on that has been favorable. It is widely noted that during the Cuban missile Bobby was a wise counselor whom Jack could consult in guaranteed privacy and it was Bobby who advised responding to the conciliatory letter Khrushchev sent rather than the bellicose one, which the Joint Chiefs among others favored. The result was the narrow miss on nuclear holocaust.

I pretty much discount the WSJ piece. Of all the Clinton haters in this country the WSJ editorial page was certainly one of the most, if not the most, vitriolic and unreasoning that I know of; I privately considered them a bunch of "journalistic mad dogs" when it came to Bill Clinton as president. God know there was ample cause for criticism, alarm, contempt, etc., but the Journal went beyond the Pale. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed anything like it in the mainstream press in my lifetime. I’m not alone–friends and colleagues from my Dow Jones days (the National Observer) plus friends and colleagues who have retired from the Journal and stayed here in Washington and own valuable blocks of stock agree. Several canceled their subscriptions (half price for them) as a result. I’m not surprised by other reports I hear that the Journal editor page editors are almost frantic in their dismay at the possibility of having Bill Clinton in their lives again. My advice to them is: Get a life."

Posted in Our Country

5 responses to “Mrs&Mr Bill or Mrs&Mr Hillary or …”

Jeff Pelline

11 December 2007

YOUR SPELLING ERROR
The article didn’t “disappear” from The Union’s Web site. You misspelled the man’s last name, so you couldn’t find it in the paper’s data base (double check the spelling in The Union and NPR):
http://www.theunion.com/article/20071208/NEWS/112080178
It requires a stiff upper lip to read some of the local blogger’s sites: misspellings like this, math challenged engineers (Russ’s latest math error – corrected at least – on the item about bus transportation). “Soft skills” for engineers would help, too, especially the way you cast stones at others without having your own house in order. Geeze.

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Jeff Pelline

11 December 2007

George, I still notice no correction on the egregious spelling error on the item “Older Fighter Corps.” You drew a inaccurate conclusion about The Union from your inaccurate spelling. Russ does a good job correcting his errors, at least when you call them out. He scores them out with a note. You might take a look. It’s a good practice. I also haven’t heard a peep about local bloggers disclosing their conflicts of interest.

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Russ

11 December 2007

Hey Jeff,
Yes corrected on the front page, not buried some where in the ads. One nice thing about blogs is that one gets audited in real time. Thus, the errors can be corrected in real time. I think a bloggers credibility increases when they admit a error and fix it. I could be wrong. Now some…. oops let’s not go there.

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Jeff Pelline

12 December 2007

That’s not a correction on “Old Fighter Corps.” It just changed the spelling error that I brought to your attention. It still didn’t cop to making an inaccurate conclusion based on the spelling mistake. (A much bigger and more unforgivable mistake). Also, it doesn’t link to the article. Again, here’s the link: http://www.theunion.com/article/20071208/NEWS/112080178
Also, just fixing a mistake doesn’t necessarily increase your credibility. The ones I’ve seen in the past week are egregious, because you use them to draw inaccurate conclusions about The Union’s professionalism.
You have a tolerance for your own mistakes that many readers (and newspaper editors) do not. In a newsroom this would not be tolerated for very long. It underscores the concerns people have about some blogging. It underscores my bigger concern that “people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”

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Santo Paulini

12 December 2007

I’ve read thousands of blogs in the last 5 years, and I can safely say I’ve never seen such a gap between the excellence of the posts and the crap of the comments. Astounding.
Peline, I don’t know who you are in your burg, but from the perspective of a third party like me, you are being rude. Your comments have so far been pointless and mean spirited. And you reveal a real lack of understanding of blog etiquette and what it means to be a blogger. I think if you engage in constructive, mature dialogue, people in your town will come to respect you. If you maintain this pace of vitrol, only the small clutch who speak to your face will tell you they respect and support you, but you will have a dark and accurate sense that just beyond the veneer of 20 people, you are generally disliked and disregarded. That’s a sad way to go. Peace be with you.
George, thanks for your considered thoughts. I don’t always agree with you, but I do find myself agreeing with you more a few days after reading your stuff.

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