Correct The Record Thursday August 14, 2014 Morning Roundup

From:burns.strider@americanbridge.org To: CTRFriendsFamily@americanbridge.org Date: 2014-08-14 11:32 Subject: Correct The Record Thursday August 14, 2014 Morning Roundup

*[image: Inline image 1]* *Correct The Record Thursday August 14, 2014 Morning Roundup:* *Headlines:* *The Advocate opinion: Allida Black: “Hillary Is Ready for Us” <http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/08/14/op-ed-hillary-ready-us>* “Hillary has always stood with me, Judy, and the entire LGBT community. And she always will.” *CNN: “Clinton dances between loyalty and self-interest” <http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/13/politics/clinton-obama-foreign-policy-distance/index.html?iref=allsearch>* “Correct the Record, an outside rapid response and communications group, began tweeting and writing about Clinton's accomplishments on a daily basis.” *Politico: “Open Mike: Inside Ready for Hillary” <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/inside-ready-for-hillary-110004.html>* “From this week’s Open Mike with Mitch Stewart, the Obama for America campaign veteran who's now a senior adviser to Ready for Hillary, the super PAC formed to encourage Clinton to run for president.” *Politico: “Media Matters’ David Brock expands empire” <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/david-brock-citizens-for-responsibility-and-ethics-in-washington-110003.html>* “David Brock is taking over a leading watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.” *Washington Post blog: Post Politics: “Hillary Clinton’s day on Martha’s Vineyard: signing books, promises of hugs” <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/08/13/hillary-clintons-day-on-marthas-vineyard-signing-books-promises-of-hugs/>* “At Clinton's first stop, the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, hundreds lined up outside for hours in the rain to meet the former Secretary of State” *Politico: “‘Hug summit’ for Obama, Clinton” <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/hug-summit-for-obama-clinton-110005.html?hp=f1>* “President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton mingled amiably at a party on the elite vacation enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, a day after the former secretary of state called the president to make clear she meant no ill will in a complex interview about foreign policy with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that was published over the weekend.” *Bloomberg: “Clinton-Obama Tension Rises as Political Interests Shift” <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-13/clinton-obama-tension-rises-as-political-interests-shift.html>* “Asked today whether it was a tough decision to call Obama after her comments set off a media firestorm, she said: ‘No.’” *The Atlantic: “How Money Warps U.S. Foreign Policy” <http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/how-money-warps-us-foreign-policy/376035/>* “Given these results, why do most commentators think Hillary’s hawkishness is politically wise? Because over the last year or so—as a result of the conflict in Ukraine and the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq—elite opinion has grown more hawkish even though public opinion at large hasn’t.” *The Hill: “Former Hillary aide sought to ‘neutralize’ greens on Keystone” <http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/215072-canadians-hired-ex-clinton-aide-to-neutralize-greens-on-keystone>* “A former spokeswoman to Hillary Clinton worked for the Canadian province of Alberta to ‘neutralize the environmentalist arguments’ against the Keystone XL pipeline, new filings with the Justice Department reveal.” *New York Times column: Gail Collins: “What’s Next With Hillary?” <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/opinion/gail-collins-whats-next-with-hillary.html?_r=0>* “Now that she’s brought up actual issues, the party’s rank-and-file deserves some more information.” *The New Yorker: John Cassidy: “Can Hillary Play This Game?” <http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/can-hillary-play-game>* "In short, Hillary remains a very formidable political figure, and she’s still the strong favorite to be the next President." *Vox: “Obama’s critics are suddenly sure Hillary Clinton is great” <http://www.vox.com/2014/8/13/5998197/obama-s-critics-are-suddenly-sure-hillary-clinton-is-great>* “When it comes to looking back on the disappointments of Barack Obama's presidency, the ‘other thing,’ particularly this week, is elect Hillary Clinton.” *The Hill blog: Lanny Davis: “The cure for punditry hyperventilation on Hillary Clinton — Try the facts” <http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/215062-the-cure-for-punditry-hyperventilation-on-hillary-clinton-try-the-facts>* “… If Clinton chooses to run for president, I know there will be other candidates for the nomination and I hope there is a vigorous debate on the issues and solutions to the nation’s most important problems.” *Articles:* *The Advocate opinion: Allida Black: “Hillary Is Ready for Us” <http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/08/14/op-ed-hillary-ready-us>* By Allida Black August 14, 2014, 6:00 a.m. EDT [Subtitle:] The Hillary this writer met while she was still first lady has always stood by LGBT people. I was holding hands with Judy, about to walk into the White House, where we had been invited to an event as a couple — a lesbian couple — by the first lady of the United States. It was 1993. You see, back then, even the general notion of homosexuality was still completely foreign to a lot of people — including my sweet parents, who like a lot of people hadn’t accepted us yet for who we were. For my mother in particular, having the first lady accept Judy and me made it easier to eventually do so herself. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words, and there was no bolder action at the time than for the first lady of the United States, Hillary Clinton, to recognize me and my partner as a couple and welcome us into the White House. And Hillary’s actions over the next three decades would further establish her as one of the country’s most visible and heartfelt supporters of the LGBT community. In the Senate, Hillary fought to expand gay rights and protect us from abuse and discrimination. She advocated for lifting the restrictions that block gay and lesbian couples from adopting children, a position that remains controversial today among many right-wing politicians, who for reasons I’ll probably never understand still don’t think we are capable of providing children a loving home. She repeatedly cosponsored the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation, and she cosponsored the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act to include LGBT individuals in federal hate crimes statutes. When Hillary became Secretary of State, she took her fight for gay rights across the globe. She made history as the first secretary of state to make promoting LGBT rights part of official U.S. government policy. She took groundbreaking steps to work with foreign leaders to change policies criminalizing homosexuality and to protect international LGBT groups combatting such laws. Within her first few months as Secretary of State, Hillary profoundly expanded the rights of the State Department’s LGBT employees by changing policies that denied same-sex diplomatic spouses the same rights and benefits as all other spouses. This had huge repercussions for employees working overseas. Before Hillary’s action, for example, diplomats working in a country that had become too dangerous would be evacuated, while their partner or spouse — if of the same sex — could be left behind to fend for themselves. Hillary announced the State Department’s new policy offering equal benefits and protections to LGBT diplomatic spouses in a memo in which she wrote, “Like all families, our Foreign Service families come in different configurations; all are part of the common fabric of our post communities abroad ... the department will provide these benefits for both opposite-sex and same-sex partners because it is the right thing to do.” Doing something because it’s the right thing to do? We could use more of that in America. While Hillary’s actions have always demonstrated her commitment to gay rights, her words have been powerful as well. Hillary’s historic 1995 speech in Beijing, where she declared that “women’s rights are human rights,” marked a significant turn in the women’s rights movement. In 2011, at a speech at the U.N. Human Rights Council’s headquarters in Geneva, Hillary made history once again with the following words: “Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights.” Gay rights are human rights. This simple statement is the principle underlying Hillary Clinton’s actions on behalf of the LGBT community — past, present, and future. It was the impetus behind another powerful action, announcing her full support for gay marriage, using more of her powerful words: “LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones…And they are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage.” Twenty years after Hillary welcomed us as a couple into the White House, Judy and I got married just a few minutes away at the National Mall. When we got home from our reception, we had a letter from Hillary congratulating us on our marriage. I’ll never forget the first few words written on her letter: “at long last.” Hillary has always stood with me, Judy, and the entire LGBT community. And she always will. *CNN: “Clinton dances between loyalty and self-interest” <http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/13/politics/clinton-obama-foreign-policy-distance/index.html?iref=allsearch>* By Dan Merica August 13, 2014, 7:52 p.m. EDT Hillary Clinton finds herself in an impossible position. She's seriously considering what some believe is an inevitable second run for the presidency. But the four years she spent as Barack Obama's secretary of state look a lot different today than when she left the administration more than a year ago. The surprise reset of Russian relations went awry over Ukraine and the promise of the Arab Spring collapsed amid worsening civil war in Syria and the brutal advances of the Islamic State in Iraq. Baghdad lapsed into political chaos, violence flared anew in Libya, Benghazi remains under scrutiny, and the perennially tense situation between Israel and Hamas exploded in violence again in Gaza. Much of this reached crisis stage after she left the State Department, but Clinton is on the hook for a lot of Obama's foreign policy legacy. And many experts say she needs to distance herself from it before launching any campaign for the White House. But the strategy for that is complex and risky. The primary problem: Clinton recently published "Hard Choices," a 656-page volume about her experiences as America's top diplomat that is noticeably thin on disagreements with Obama. Yes, Clinton writes about conflicting opinions over arming Syrian rebels and some smaller differences on drones. But she largely balked at her chance in the book to break with Obama. It was a perfect opportunity to do so. If anything, Clinton's aides and outside supporters responded to Republican criticism of her record at the State Department and drew her closer to her boss's foreign policy. Correct the Record, an outside rapid response and communications group, began tweeting and writing about Clinton's accomplishments on a daily basis. It touted her book as a success, highlighted her work in the Middle East and heralded Clinton's "pivot to Asia." At the same time, Clinton and her advisers retooled her promotional bio and worked out an answer for the question, "What did you accomplish as secretary of state?" *The world blew up during the book tour* Instead of stumbling on the question -- something Clinton did more than once during the book tour -- she began to breeze through it. She highlighted a checklist of accomplishments and victories shared with Obama. "Thanks in large measure to Hillary's leadership, people were finally able to say: 'America's back,'" reads her new promotional bio. But a cascading series of world events that seemed to coincide with the book tour or the buzz around it challenged America's interests abroad in a big way and tested its influence. New and more difficult questions emerged. Obama's foreign policy was under fire on a number of fronts. Acutely aware of the changing narrative, Clinton has been trying to selectively distance herself from some of the messy foreign developments. But this week, she put it into clearer political context. In an interview with The Atlantic, Clinton trashed the Obama mantra that reflects his cautious approach to foreign policy: "Don't do stupid stuff." She said that was "not an organizing principle" and labeled the President's decisions in Syria, with which she has long disagreed, a "failure." This all appeared to cause more harm than good. David Axelord, Obama's former top adviser who now acts as his biggest defender outside the White House, took her to task with a tweet, referencing her 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq War. And liberals in her party spoke up about the quickness with which she broke with Obama in favor of hawkish rhetoric. Clinton reached out to Obama this week to assure him that her comments did not represent an attack on his policies or his leadership. People close to Clinton argue she used the interview to only articulate what she wrote in the book about Syria. On the festering civil war, Clinton writes that "the President's inclination was to stay the present course and not take the significant further step of arming rebels," while hers was to arm the rebels. "No one likes to lose a debate, including me. But this was the President's call and I respected his deliberations and decision," she writes. As secretary of state, though, Clinton publicly expressed doubt with arming the rebels. "What are we going to arm them with and against what," Clinton told CBS in February 2012. "You are not going to bring tanks over the borders of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan — that's not going to happen. So maybe at the best you can smuggle in, you know, automatic weapons." *Few hints of disagreement* But there was little indication that she disagreed with Obama on other big issues during her time in his Cabinet, including the pivot to Asia, a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza the last time around, and working to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. One former Clinton aide said what Clinton told The Atlantic reflected what she wrote in the book and that there's no indication she's being a "Monday morning quarterback." "I think it is wrong to assume that the fact things are going to sh** abroad, that is why she is coming out so forcefully against him," said a former Clinton campaign aide. "The timing of this book, the timing of these interviews is coincidental." Republicans see Clinton distancing herself from Obama as a boon for them. Not only might it reinforce their anti-Obama efforts, but it enables them to amplify their claims that Clinton's just expedient. "She is cold and calculating and a hyper-positioning politician," said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist. He was excited about the prospect of the GOP exploiting Clinton's "voluminous" and "overwhelming" record of working with Obama. The Republican National Committee also sees an opening. "Hillary Clinton spent four years executing Barack Obama's foreign policy and in year five of Obama's term, it's ridiculous for Hillary to try to swindle voters into thinking what's happening around the world isn't a product of Obama-Hillary diplomacy," said Kirsten Kurkowski, spokeswoman for the RNC. *Politico: “Open Mike: Inside Ready for Hillary” <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/inside-ready-for-hillary-110004.html>* By Mike Allen August 13, 2014, 10:39 p.m. EDT From this week’s Open Mike with Mitch Stewart, the Obama for America campaign veteran who's now a senior adviser to Ready for Hillary, the super PAC formed to encourage Clinton to run for president. ALLEN: Lightning strikes and Secretary Clinton decides not to run. What happens to ready for Hillary? STEWART: If she were to decide not to run, I think that a lot of that work would be transferable to whomever the nominee is. So I think it is to say that it is still additive to Democratic politics as a whole. ALLEN: What do we already know is going to be different from 2016 from 2012? STEWART: If you just look at the census right now and follow, if you want to say a linear path, in 2016 it will probably be 30 or 31 percent non-white. So number one the electorate will be way more diverse. And second is, its harder and harder to communicate with voters. You know the disparate view or opportunities to gather information is continuing to expand. So you can’t just focus on TV, you can’t just focus on print, you can’t just focus on online, you can’t just focus on off-line. You’re going to have to be much more creative in actually engaging people. ALLEN: There is a huge potential for an enthusiasm cap getting people as excited for Hillary Clinton as they were for Barack Obama. That’s going to be a job. STEWART: That’s what people said about 2012 and 2008. Actually, if you want to look, we had about 1.2 million volunteers in 2008. We had 2.2 million volunteers in 2012. *Politico: “Media Matters’ David Brock expands empire” <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/david-brock-citizens-for-responsibility-and-ethics-in-washington-110003.html>* By Kenneth P. Vogel August 13, 2014, 9:26 p.m. EDT In a major power play that aligns liberal muscle more fully behind the Democratic Party — and Hillary Clinton — the self-described right-wing hitman-turned-Clinton enforcer David Brock is taking over a leading watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Brock was elected chairman of the group’s board last week after laying out a multifaceted expansion intended to turn the group into a more muscular — and likely partisan — attack dog, according to sources familiar with the move. The ambitious plans, which began being implemented this week, also seem to cement Brock’s role as among the leading big money operatives in all of American politics. Brock confirmed the basics of the shakeup in an interview. The reconfigured CREW, which is searching for a new executive director, will add a more politically oriented arm, expand its focus into state politics and donor targeting and will operate in close coordination with Brock’s growing fleet of aggressive Democrat-backing nonprofits and super PACs — Media Matters, American Bridge and the American Independent Institute. “CREW gives us some potentially powerful tools in the tool box,” said Brock, who founded his flagship organization Media Matters in 2004. “We have been in the accountability for 10 years very successfully. It is kind of a one-stop-shop now.” And Brock’s army will be supplemented still further by the formation of a new overtly partisan watchdog group called The American Democracy Legal Fund, which is already preparing complaints against high-profile Republicans, including Michigan GOP Senate candidate Terry Lynn Land. That group will be run by Brad Woodhouse, the president of American Bridge, and will be registered under section 527 of the Tax Code — allowing it to engage in more political activity than CREW’s traditional portfolio. CREW has operated as a nonprofit registered under a section of the Tax Code — 501(c)3 — that prohibits partisan activity; under Brock’s leadership it will add a new more politically oriented arm registered under section 501(c)4. CREW was founded in 2003 by former federal prosecutor Melanie Sloan and white-collar lawyer Norm Eisen, who went on to serve as President Barack Obama’s chief ethics lawyer and is now his ambassador to the Czech Republic. It carved out a reputation as a leading watchdog by relentlessly pursuing litigation and ethics complaints against primarily — though not exclusively — Republican public officials. It had its heyday during the Bush administration, when its complaints and investigations played major roles in the Jack Abramoff scandal and the downfalls of powerful GOP Reps. Tom Delay and Bob Ney. But under the stewardship of Sloan, who serves as CREW’s executive director, the group went out of its way to demonstrate that it would not pull punches when it came to Democratic corruption. It boasts in a mission statement on its website, “we work to ensure government officials — regardless of party affiliation — act with honesty and integrity and merit the public trust,” and it also pursued broader good-government initiatives. CREW wins media attention each year with its annual “Most Corrupt Members of Congress” report, which it started in 2005 and which has included 25 Democrats among its 88 featured members. It called for the resignations of embattled New York Democratic Reps. Anthony Weiner and Charlie Rangel, and has pending requests for investigations into the Obama administration, including its use of private emails to conduct government affairs. Its unwillingness to toe the party line miffed some Democrats, including, sources say, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, whose members occasionally found themselves in CREW’s cross hairs. That bipartisan focus gave CREW credibility in the watchdog community and made Sloan a go-to quote for reporters, leading Ms. Magazine to ask in 2007 whether she was “The Most Feared Woman on Capitol Hill.” But the take-no-prisoners approach may have complicated efforts to raise money from wealthy Democratic donors. And, in February 2012, the group was demoted from the top tier of recipient organizations recommended by the Democracy Alliance rich liberal donor club during a reshuffling seen as boosting super PACs and other groups closely aligned with Democrats. On the other hand, Brock seems to have a golden touch with rich Democrats, including billionaire financier George Soros. Brock’s personal evolution is a compelling selling point with the monied class. He began his career as a leading conservative attack journalist in the 1990s, penning stories and books strafing Anita Hill and the Clintons, among other conservative targets, before publicly renouncing the conservative movement and embracing the left. His groups now are at the leading edge of several Democratic causes celebre — declaring war on Fox News and the conservative billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, while defending Hillary Clinton against mounting Republican attacks as she prepares for a possible 2016 presidential run. Brock’s groups have the cash to support such a wide portfolio. They have a combined budget of about $25 million a year and 170 employees, compared with CREW’s $2.7 million 2014 budget and 15 staffers, almost all of whom will be able to stay on, Brock suggested. Neither CREW nor most of Brock’s groups disclose their donors — something that led to charges of hypocrisy against CREW and other liberal-leaning watchdogs. But anecdotal evidence suggests that there’s a bit of overlap between the donor pools, since Brock’s groups have found great success raising money from Democracy Alliance members. In the CREW shakeup, two donors close to Brock — San Francisco investor Wayne Jordan and Washington-based consultant David Mercer — also joined CREW’s board. The Huffington Post in its Wednesday afternoon newsletter reported that Media Matters was “acquiring” CREW and quipped “Will It Survive DOJ Antitrust?” but didn’t offer any details on the moves. Brock deflected when asked if CREW, under his leadership, would continue pursuing complaints against Democrats. “No party has a monopoly on corruption and at this early juncture, we are not making categorical statements about anything that we will and won’t do,” he said. “Having said that, our experience has been that the vast amount of violations of the public trust can be found on the conservative side of the aisle.” Brock also had high praise for Sloan, who resigned from CREW’s board and announced her intention to step down as executive director when Brock names a replacement. “Under Melanie’s leadership, CREW emerged as an effective voice for the kind of honesty and integrity we deserve in our public officials,” he said, promising to “build on her record of success, expanding the portfolio to scrutinize more activity in states, and political organizations that wield just as much influence over our policies as our politicians do, if not more.” Sloan, who aborted plans to leave CREW in 2011, declined to discuss why she was leaving, but predicted that CREW would fit well into Brock World. “Given David’s track record of building high-impact sustainable institutions, I am confident that CREW will continue to thrive under this new governance,” she said in a statement released by CREW. *Washington Post blog: Post Politics: “Hillary Clinton’s day on Martha’s Vineyard: signing books, promises of hugs” <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/08/13/hillary-clintons-day-on-marthas-vineyard-signing-books-promises-of-hugs/>* By Katie Zezima August 13, 2014, 7:54 p.m. EDT VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. - Hillary Clinton swept onto Martha's Vineyard Wednesday amid drenching downpours -- and a flood of speculation ahead of her first meeting with President Obama after her criticism of his foreign policy earlier this week. And if the skies hadn't exactly cleared over the island, both the Clinton and Obama camps insisted the storm clouds that seemed to loom over her relationship with the president after she disparaged his foreign policy philosophy in an interview with The Atlantic had parted. At Clinton's first stop, the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, hundreds lined up outside for hours in the rain to meet the former Secretary of State. They were treated to a brief explanation of her interview comments -- and a personal confirmation that she would, as her spokesman had promised, "hug it out" with Obama at a party here tonight. "Absolutely," Clinton said, when asked about the much-anticipated embrace. "Yeah. Looking forward to it. Going to be there tonight." Clinton said the decision to call Obama after the interview and apologize wasn't a difficult one. "We agree," she said. "We are committed to the values and the interests of the security of our country together. We have disagreements as any partners and friends, as we are, might very well have." Obama has articulated his foreign policy as such: don't do stupid stuff. Clinton said in the Atlantic interview that it wasn't enough. “Great nations need organizing principles — and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle," Clinton said in her Atlantic interview. Asked at the bookstore Wednesday if she disagrees with Obama's policy on Iraq, Clinton decided to answer a different question entirely. "I'm excited about signing books," she said. That would seem to be a prerequisite for an event like this one: The bookstore said it had ordered 1,000 copies of "Hard Choices," the number Clinton's people have said she can sign in two hours. Clinton, sporting a dusty rose-colored textured jacket, greeted people who shuffled by the table where she was signing. As each person -- many of them sporting ponchos or soaking wet hair -- filed by, an aide slid a copy of "Hard Choices" to Clinton, the front cover open. "I'll be voting for you," a woman said to Clinton. "Bless your heart," she replied. Clinton made small talk about Martha's Vineyard, telling one attendee that she is "not here long enough," and trying to get a high-five out of six-year-old Audrey Lamb-Wilson when the girl wouldn't take a photo with her. Audrey obliged. "Thank you for coming, staying out in the rain," Clinton said to the crowd, some of whom were sporting "Ready for Hillary" stickers. "The potential to meet the first woman president of the United States!" Audrey's mother, Alycia Lamb of Seattle, said. "It's pretty monumental." Quentin Heyward of Philadelphia shuffled toward the exit after meeting Clinton, who he said had "re-energized" him. "She is the Merkel of the Americas," Heyward said. "She's cutting edge, she's respected, she's trusted." There was little mention of the other major political figure on the island: President Obama, here for a two-week vacation. Over the days since Clinton's initial comments, speculation in Washington has run rampant: How would Obama respond? Would it affect their relationship? Are they friends, or enemies -- or a bit of both? And exactly how awkward would their first post-comment meeting, and the promised Hug of Reconciliation, really be? "Pool reporter better get in there with a tape measure to determine official hug distance," tweeted Democratic strategist Donna Brazile mockingly in the hours before the event. "We have a right to know. Agree? #huganalysis" The frenzy over the Clinton comments, and looming embrace, reached fever pitch at the White House press briefing Wednesday, where reporters pressed deputy White House press secretary Eric Schultz over the state of the Obama-Clinton relationship -- and pushed for access to the pair's formal rapprochement. "They have a close and resilient relationship," insisted Schultz, who added that Obama had "appreciated" Clinton's call. "...I’m not sure anyone in this room would contest that [not] doing stupid stuff is a good idea, but I also don’t think anyone at the White House would assert that that is the -- how we would describe our approach to foreign policy." Schultz did concede that Obama and Clinton have disagreed on several fronts, including the question of whether and when to arm Syrian rebels -- but he downplayed the distance between them. "They continue to agree on a broad majority of issues confronting our country, even if they have the occasional policy difference," Schultz said. As to the hugs: No big deal, he insisted -- the two have been there before. "I believe the president and Secretary Clinton have had many hugs over the past few years," Schultz said, informing reporters that the latest embrace would go undocumented. "I suspect many of them have been caught on camera." *Politico: “‘Hug summit’ for Obama, Clinton” <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/hug-summit-for-obama-clinton-110005.html?hp=f1>* By Maggie Haberman and Carrie Budoff Brown August 14, 2014, 12:27 a.m. EDT The “hug summit” finally took place Wednesday night. President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton mingled amiably at a party on the elite vacation enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, a day after the former secretary of state called the president to make clear she meant no ill will in a complex interview about foreign policy with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that was published over the weekend. The two saw each other at a party thrown by longtime Clinton friend Vernon Jordan and his wife, Ann, on Martha’s Vineyard, where Clinton held a book-signing for her memoir “Hard Choices,” and where Obama and his family are vacationing. According to a read-out from White House officials, the party was a birthday celebration for Ann Jordan at the Farm Neck Golf Club with about 150 guests, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. President Obama gave the first toast, followed by Hillary Clinton and Vernon Jordan. It was unclear if the two actually hugged, as a statement from Clinton press aide Nick Merrill had joked they would. But they certainly made clear that they were moving past a controversy that both sides described as overblown by the media. “The president and first lady also were happy to have the chance to spend time with Secretary Clinton and former President Clinton,” said a White House spokesman. The dinner took place amid a somber backdrop nationally, as riot police in Ferguson, Missouri, the site of a police shooting of an unarmed black man over the weekend, used tear gas to hold protesters at bay. Obama put out a statement on the shooting Tuesday, and on Wednesday night, a White House official said Obama was briefed on the ongoing situation by senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Attorney General Eric Holder. In Obama’s toast, he joked that he met Vernon before he met his wife but that he liked Ann more, and “a good time was had by all,” the spokesman said. According to POLITICO’s Mike Allen, attendees included Holder, Jarrett, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy and American Express head Ken Chenault. The Obamas danced to nearly every song. So did the Clintons. Hillary Clinton and Obama sat on either side of Ann Jordan. Earlier in the day, as she signed books at the Bunch of Grapes bookstore in Vineyard Haven, Clinton made clear that she had in no way intended her criticisms related to policy toward Syria, the president’s overall approach to global affairs — “Don’t do stupid stuff,” as his aides have said — or her view of the role of Hamas in the Gaza conflict as an attack on the president. A White House spokesman said the president “appreciated Secretary Clinton’s call, as he does every opportunity to chat with the former secretary of state,” in an earlier briefing with reporters. “They have a close and resilient relationship.” At the book signing, Clinton began by briefly addressing the issue of the flap over foreign policy, saying the decision to call Obama on Tuesday was not “a hard choice.” “We agree,” she said. “We are committed to the values and the interests of the security of our country together. We have disagreements as any partners and friends, as we are, might very well have.” Asked about Obama’s current approach to Iraq, which includes surgical airstrikes, she replied, “”I’m excited about signing books.” *Bloomberg: “Clinton-Obama Tension Rises as Political Interests Shift” <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-13/clinton-obama-tension-rises-as-political-interests-shift.html>* By Jonathan Allen and Angela Greiling Keane August 13, 2014, 10:47 p.m. EDT Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are caught in a rift-and-repair cycle. Their political camps spar. Then make up. It’s a recurring sequence that won’t end until he leaves the White House or her presidential aspirations come to an end, political experts say. At the moment, the two are in the making-up stage. Clinton, at a book-signing on Martha’s Vineyard, said she was “looking forward” to seeing him at a party tonight -- three days after her criticism of Obama’s “don’t do stupid stuff” foreign policy mantra was published in The Atlantic. White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz told reporters on the island earlier today that Obama and Clinton, his former secretary of State, have a “close and resilient” relationship. Schultz wouldn’t say how the president reacted to her remarks; Clinton later called Obama to smooth things over. The two sat at the same table at the dinner tonight at a golf club on Martha’s Vineyard where they celebrated the 80th birthday of Ann Jordan, who with her husband Vernon Jordan, is a Democratic donor. “The president and first lady also were happy to have the chance to spend time with Secretary Clinton and former President Clinton,” the White House said in a statement after the party with about 150 attendees. *Shotgun Wedding* From the time of their shotgun wedding after the 2008 campaign -- Obama vowing to keep his primary adversary close and Clinton promising to serve him loyally as head of his State Department -- they’ve kept the partnership of the two most powerful brands in Democratic politics from tearing asunder. That will increasingly be a challenge, given their differences in approach and policy and the shifting of their interests from mutual to distinct, as Obama works to burnish his legacy while Clinton lays the groundwork for her political future. Asked today whether it was a tough decision to call Obama after her comments set off a media firestorm, she said: “No.” “We agree. We are committed to the values and interests of the security of our country together,” she said. “We have disagreements, as any partners and friends might very well have. But I’m proud that I served with him and for him and I’m looking forward to tonight.” *‘Natural’ Tension* Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University professor of history and public affairs, said that “by putting herself physically in the same place, she obviously amplifies the story of difference but also might be sending a reminder to her party, including the left, that she and Obama are still on the same team or, in this case, on the same island.” The tension is “natural when a two-term president is coming to an end and a potential candidate needs to distinguish themselves from a predecessor,” Zelizer said. Similar dynamics were on display when former Vice President Al Gore put distance between his 2000 presidential campaign and his former boss, President Bill Clinton, and they date back in the country’s history. The great friendship between Republican presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft frayed so badly during Taft’s first term in office that Roosevelt, who had been commander in chief from 1901 to 1909, tried to wrest the party’s nomination away in 1912. *Personal Invective* Roosevelt, who formed the Bull-Moose party after losing the nomination, said Taft had veered away from progressivism and toward the “forces of reaction and political crookedness.” Nothing Obama or Clinton has said about the other since their primary campaign in 2008 approaches that level of personal invective. The genesis of the Obama-Clinton conflict is twofold: his poor poll ratings and her interest in the presidency. He’s been upside down, with more Americans disapproving than approving of the job he’s doing, for more than a year in Gallup’s daily tracking polls. In surveys taken from Aug. 9 through Aug. 11, he rated a 41 percent approval level, with 55 percent disapproving of his handling of the presidency. Clinton must show distance from a flagging president while making sure not to alienate the Democratic base that picked him over her in 2008. Her two-months-and-counting book tour, which produced the latest round of recriminations and reconciliation, isn’t helping matters. *Clinton Book* In her memoir, published in June, Clinton writes glowingly of Obama, while making clear exactly how and how often she disagreed with him on foreign policy issues when she was his chief diplomat from 2009 through early 2013. In one instance, she recounts how Obama overruled her and others in his administration who advocated arming moderate rebels in Syria. While she publicly stood by the president’s decision not to do that, she has said since leaving the State Department that the “failure” to intervene gave space for the Islamic State to rise in Syria and Iraq. It was a question from Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic about foreign policy that led to Clinton saying “don’t do stupid stuff” is not an “organizing principle” and touching off the back-and-forth with the White House. Obama’s longtime political adviser, David Axelrod, responded with a Twitter message that alluded to Clinton’s vote to authorize the Iraq War. The exchanges highlight how a divide in the Democratic Party serves neither Obama nor Clinton. His poll numbers are propped up by nearly unified support from his partisan allies. Her chances of winning the presidency rely on the goodwill of Obama donors and voters who grew to accept her because she served him loyally. Neil Levesque, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College, said “it’s definitely going to get worse” between Clinton and Obama. “It’s hard to say there’s risk when her numbers are so much better than his,” Levesque said. *The Atlantic: “How Money Warps U.S. Foreign Policy” <http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/how-money-warps-us-foreign-policy/376035/>* By Peter Beinart August 13, 2014, 4:53 p.m. EDT [Subtitle:] The key divide on America’s role in the world is no longer between Democrats and Republicans. It’s between elites and everyone else. On Sunday, when Hillary Clinton used an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg to take pointedly more hawkish stances than President Obama on Syria, Iran, and Gaza, observers chalked it up to her presidential ambitions. As one Democratic operative told Politico, Clinton’s advisors are “good poll readers.” On Tuesday, when Rand Paul declined to oppose U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, commentators interpreted it the same way. The assumption that hawkishness is politically smart is deeply ingrained in the media’s coverage of the 2016 presidential race. But it’s bizarre. Because in both parties, the polling data is overwhelming: Americans think U.S. foreign policy is too hawkish already. Foreign policy has always been more elite-driven, and more insulated from public opinion, than domestic policy. But today’s elite-mass gap is the largest in decades. And regardless of your foreign-policy perspective, that’s a problem for American democracy. Think about the issues on which Hillary put distance between herself and Obama. She was particularly sharp in her criticism of the president’s reluctance to arm Syria’s rebels. But this supposedly shrewd political maneuver puts Hillary in the company of a mere 20 percent of the population. The last time the Pew Research Center asked Americans whether they support military aid to Syria’s rebels, 20 percent said yes and a whopping 70 percent said no. When respondents were asked in the same poll to evaluate a series of statements about Syria, the most popular was the “U.S. military is already too overcommitted.” Hillary also took a harder line than Obama on Iran’s right to enrich uranium—a harder line that would make it harder to reach a final nuclear deal with Tehran. As with Syria, many commentators considered Hillary’s more hawkish stance to be politically astute. But again, the public is actually closer to Obama. According to a University of Maryland poll in July, 61 percent of Americans support a deal that would limit—but not prohibit—Iranian enrichment, while only 35 percent support increasing sanctions in an effort to eliminate Tehran’s enriched uranium altogether. In general, Hillary made it clear that she supports a more interventionist foreign policy. Unlike Obama, she rarely talks about the financial burden of America’s foreign wars, and the need to balance America’s overseas commitments with its domestic resources. But, here again, the public is on Obama’s side. A Pew poll last year found that 51 percent of Americans believe their government is doing too much overseas, while only 17 percent say it is doing too little. This doesn’t mean Americans want to retreat from the world entirely. A full two-thirds, according to that same Pew poll, support greater American involvement in the global economy. Americans aren’t isolationists; they just don’t want to police the world. According to Pew, only 12 percent of Americans want the U.S. to be the “single world leader,” while 52 percent would prefer the U.S. share global leadership with other countries and be only “as active as others.” Given these results, why do most commentators think Hillary’s hawkishness is politically wise? Because over the last year or so—as a result of the conflict in Ukraine and the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq—elite opinion has grown more hawkish even though public opinion at large hasn’t. When it comes to foreign policy, in fact, the key divide is no longer between Democrats and Republicans. It’s between the elites of both parties and their rank and file. When asked about arming Syria’s rebels, an Iran deal that allows some uranium enrichment, and whether America should do more or less in the world, both Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly take the more dovish view. On each question, the partisan divide is five percentage points or less. The real gap emerges when you compare ordinary Americans to elites. According to Pew, for instance, rank-and-file Republicans are 34 percentage points more likely to want America to do less overseas. Rank-and-file Democrats are 31 points more likely to want America to do less. Members of the prestigious, bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations, by contrast, are 20 points more likely to say America should do more. This helps explain why Rand Paul is shifting in a more hawkish direction as well. In recent weeks, Paul has substantially toughened his line against Russia, ruled out containing a nuclear Iran (a position with which he had previously flirted), pledged support for U.S. aid to Israel (another flip-flop), and remained open to bombing Iraq. He’s also hired one of John McCain’s foreign-policy advisors. Paul is not staking out these positions to win over actual voters. Given that ordinary Republicans oppose arming the rebels in Syria, want a negotiated deal on Iran, and want America to refrain more from intervening militarily overseas, Paul would probably gain greater public support by sticking with a more dovish line and thus distinguishing himself in a multi-candidate field. What’s motivating him is not the New Hampshire primary but the invisible primary. Paul has been ardently wooing GOP donors, who tend to be far more hawkish than Republicans as a whole, and who have threatened to mobilize against his candidacy. And according to Politico, he’s told several of them that his foreign-policy views are “evolving.” Hillary Clinton’s hawkishness is more sincere. She’s been on the hawkish end of the Democratic spectrum since entering electoral politics a decade and a half ago. Still, were it not for the influence that moneyed elites wield over the presidential process, it would be much harder for her to take views so at odds with most Democratic voters. Clinton lost in 2008, after all, in large measure because she had backed the war in Iraq while Obama had not. If a credible progressive challenger in 2016 tied Hillary’s current interventionism to her past interventionism under the rubric “she still doesn’t get it,” they’d find a receptive audience, especially in Iowa, where Democratic caucus-goers are particularly dovish. Yet there’s little evidence that any serious challenger is considering taking this approach. That’s partly because Democratic primary voters, while overwhelmingly dovish, are not focused on foreign policy in the way they were during the Iraq War. And it’s partly because even progressive Democrats like Elizabeth Warren are influenced by the more hawkish perspective common among party donors. That’s especially true on the Middle East. Polling shows that rank-and-file Democrats are fairly critical of Israel’s recent war in Gaza, for instance. But last month, even progressive firebrands like Warren supported a Senate resolution so hawkish that it did not even acknowledge that any Palestinians in Gaza had died. It’s worth analyzing the current moment in historical perspective. For a century, Americans have responded to disillusioning wars by demanding a less interventionist foreign policy. It happened after World War 1, after Korea, after Vietnam, and it’s happening again in the wake of Afghanistan and Iraq. The difference between this moment and past ones is the role of money in politics. As on so many issues, politicians’ need to raise vast sums from the super-rich makes them ultra-responsive to one, distinct sliver of the population and less responsive to everyone else. The way campaign finance warps the political debate over financial regulation is well known. What we’re witnessing this year is a case study in the way it warps the foreign-policy debate as well. In 2008, Obama was elected president in part because he had deviated from a hawkish, largely bipartisan, elite foreign-policy perspective that facilitated the war in Iraq. Six years later, Obama is still deviating, and so are the American people. Yet the elite consensus is stronger than ever, and in the run-up to 2016, that consensus—more than public opinion—is driving the presidential debate. No wonder Americans are cynical. *The Hill: “Former Hillary aide sought to ‘neutralize’ greens on Keystone” <http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/215072-canadians-hired-ex-clinton-aide-to-neutralize-greens-on-keystone>* By Megan R. Wilson August 13, 2014, 4:13 p.m. EDT A former spokeswoman to Hillary Clinton worked for the Canadian province of Alberta to “neutralize the environmentalist arguments” against the Keystone XL pipeline, new filings with the Justice Department reveal. Hilary Lefebvre, who served as the director of broadcast media for Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, was paid $53,725 during the 10-week contract, according to the documents. The contract was officially signed with FeverPress, a PR firm Lefebvre co-founded with David Press, though disclosure documents say it was Lefebvre who worked on the account. Lefebvre, who spent seven years in broadcast journalism working for CNN and ABC's “Nightline,” reached out to print, radio and TV journalists who could provide "top-tier features with cable news amplification" about Keystone, according to the contract. “We recommend recasting the debate so that it is no longer perceived as environmentalists vs. Canada, good vs. bad," one contract document said. “In fact, it is important to reframe this as an American issue so that it starts to take on more positive currency in the media.” The efforts were specifically aimed at drumming up publicity for former Alberta Premier Alison Redford during one of her many visits to the United States last year to rally support for the multibillion-dollar project. The PR firm was hired specifically to book media interviews during a trip in April 2013. One memo obtained separately by Republic Report detailed efforts to land interviews with Charlie Rose, Andrea Mitchell and news programs such as “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, “The Lead with Jake Tapper” on CNN and “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS. The PR campaign is likely to raise eyebrows among environmental advocates, who have pushed Clinton to take a stand against the pipeline, which would carry oil sands from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries. Clinton has repeatedly declined to weigh in on Keystone, saying it would be inappropriate for her to comment since she was involved in reviewing the project as secretary of State. That stance risks alienating green advocates, who are generous backers of the Democratic Party and would be allies should Clinton run for the White House in 2016. Lefebvre isn’t the only former Clinton aide with ties to the controversial pipeline. Paul Elliott, a lobbyist for project developer TransCanada, also worked on Clinton’s 2008 campaign. Aside from Lefebvre’s ties to Clinton, the timing of the contract disclosure could draw scrutiny. Any person or firm that performs PR, advocacy or consulting work for a foreign government, state-owned corporation or international business is required to file paperwork to DOJ within 10 days of signing a contract. The contract with the Canadian government was signed on March 15, 2013, and lasted until June 2013 but appeared in a Justice Department database for the first time on Tuesday. FeverPress did not respond to a request for comment about the DOJ filing. The Justice Department, which rarely prosecutes violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), did not respond to an inquiry about whether it urged the disclosure from FeverPress. The contract documents, some of which are marked “PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL” and “NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION,” provide a revealing glimpse into the messaging and political difficulties facing Keystone supporters. “The challenge is that President Obama has championed his commitment to the environment early on in his second term and is beholden to the environmental constituency for their support in the last election. The current debate gives the president little political cover to support the pipeline without looking like he is turning his back on his pro-environment agenda,” one contract document says. “We do not have to win the environmental argument; we just need to add context and complexity to it so that we can blunt the current arguments against the Pipeline,” the document says. “Again, winning the war here is providing enough political cover for the U.S. government to greenlight the project — not winning over the environmentalists.” The existence of the PR contract was first reported by Republic Report, which in May obtained the separate documents from the Canadian government. Those documents included a memo that the PR firm sent to the Alberta government officials warning that media interest in Keystone might waning due to Congress’s focus on the economy, gun control and immigration reform in the spring session. “We therefore recommend a slight change in our strategy to secure the interest of our bigger targets (e.g. Charlie Rose, Piers Morgan, etc.), which have expressed initial interest but have expressed some hesitations,” it said. NPR and Politico appear to be the only news outlets that interviewed Redford that April, according to the DOJ filing. *New York Times column: Gail Collins: “What’s Next With Hillary?” <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/opinion/gail-collins-whats-next-with-hillary.html?_r=0>* By Gail Collins August 13, 2014 Well, let’s hope that’s over. President Obama was in Martha’s Vineyard, playing golf. Hillary Clinton arrived, ready to sign books. They were headed for the same birthday party where, a Clinton aide said, they intended to “hug it out.” Peace was declared. Extraordinary! You would think they were both professional politicians. As the whole world now knows, Clinton gave an interview to The Atlantic last week in which she took issue with President Obama’s “don’t do stupid stuff” foreign policy mantra, pushed a harder line than the White House on Iran, and disagreed with Obama’s refusal to arm the rebels in Syria. The Clinton camp insists she had no intention of breaking with the president. But if that’s the case, then the former secretary of state had trouble saying precisely what she wanted to say about foreign policy. That just doesn’t sound like Hillary Clinton, who is a great conversationalist off the record, yet has an absolute genius way of saying nothing exciting whatsoever when the tape recorder is running. Some people think that after years on the diplomacy trail, she may have lost her edge. “I don’t know if her political instincts are in top shape,” said a Friend of Obama. But then, you know, F.O.B. Given all the options, I’d prefer to think it was a minor betrayal. Loyalty may be an overrated virtue in high-level politics. Really, nobody cares if a president back-bites a former colleague or dumps a best friend. Just keep the country running and we’re good. Anyway, he forgives her! Hugs scheduled for the birthday party for Vernon Jordan’s wife. It’s only been six years since Obama and Clinton ran against each other, but, wow, does it feel longer. Watching Obama, I remembered a time during the 2008 campaign when he told a story about a woman who’d “seen some years,” adding: “She’s maybe close to 60.” Some of the middle-aged women in the crowd started to hiss. Now, the president himself looks as though he’s seen some years. He’s long since gotten his first AARP mailings. And Clinton has been heir apparent — forever. Democrats have gotten so used to thinking of her as the next president that they’ve stopped seriously evaluating her as a candidate for their nomination. The Atlantic interview sort of bounced everything back into perspective. Liberals with dovish leanings raced to Google to see whether any high-ranking Democrats have been sighted at the Iowa State Fair. What does Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley think about uranium enrichment negotiations with Iran? (We always describe him as “Maryland governor” because nobody outside of his home state knows who Martin O’Malley is.) Has Elizabeth Warren totally ruled out running? (Yes.) Hillary’s still got the virtues her base has always admired: intelligence, experience, remarkable ability to take a punch and keep on running. Everybody loves the woman who showed up on “The Colbert Report” the other night, having a name-dropping contest with the host. Everybody remembers her determination to lift up women’s rights in Asia and Africa, her unflagging energy as secretary of state (956,733 miles traveled; total travel time, 2,084 hours). But now that she’s brought up actual issues, the party’s rank-and-file deserves some more information. Back in the 2008 primaries, Obama was arguing that with the right leadership in the White House, America could get rid of the old brain-dead partisanship of the past and reach a new era of bipartisan cooperation. Hillary, working off long experience, said the real world was tougher and more complicated than that. After the election, as Washington ground to a hopeless, vicious, zombified halt, she was proved right. In foreign affairs, too, Clinton reflected what she’d learned when her husband was president. Airstrikes worked in Kosovo. Bill Clinton brought Israel and the Palestinians right to the edge of a peace deal, but the Palestinians backed away. The president failed to intervene in Rwanda, and regretted it forever. The bad guys only understood a firm hand. During the debates, she refused to say that during her first year in office she’d be open to meeting with leaders of countries like Cuba or North Korea. If the Iranians declared nuclear war on Israel, she told an interviewer, as president she would “totally obliterate” them. This is the Hillary who popped back up this week. She was probably being neither politically calculating nor blundering in the Atlantic interview, but simply being unusually clear about what she believes. And we need to hear more, not less. Does she really think the Syrian disaster could have been averted if the United States had helped the rebels? In The Atlantic, she was a little oblique on that point. Maybe a debate with Joe Biden. ... “I’m excited about signing my books,” Clinton said Wednesday night, when a reporter asked how she feels about Obama’s Iraq policy. It’s August, everybody’s friends, and we may not hear another serious conversation on these matters until 2015. *The New Yorker: John Cassidy: “Can Hillary Play This Game?” <http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/can-hillary-play-game>* By John Cassidy August 13, 2014 In the past few months, as Hillary Clinton has embarked on what has often looked like a soft launch of her 2016 Presidential campaign under the guise of publishing a memoir about her four years as Secretary of State, she’s demonstrated some of the attributes that would make her a formidable candidate. She’s racked up more endorsements from prominent Democrats, her poll ratings have remained favorable, her fund-raising ability has been highlighted, and she has demonstrated an uncanny knack for dominating the headlines. That last ability has proved double-edged, however. Several days after The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg delivered a lengthy interview with Clinton to an unsuspecting public, the aftershocks are still being felt. At one point in the interview, Clinton appeared to criticize President Obama’s cautious approach to foreign policy, sharply dismissing the phrase “Don’t do stupid stuff,” which is often attributed to him. On Tuesday, Clinton called the President to explain to him that, in the words of her spokesman, “nothing she said was an attempt to attack him, his policies, or his leadership. … Like any two friends who have to deal with the public eye, she looks forward to hugging it out when they see each other tomorrow night.” Evidently, the “hugging it out” will take place on a golf course on Martha’s Vineyard, where, on Wednesday evening, Clinton and Obama will both be attending party organized by Vernon Jordan, the venerable Friend of Bill. As I’m writing this, it’s not clear whether any reporters will be allowed to witness this coming together. In the meantime, though, the media jackals—by all accounts, that’s pretty much how Hillary views journalists—are happily feasting on the meat that she and Goldberg kindly provided. Writing in Wednesday’s Times, Maureen Dowd noted that the former First Lady had demonstrated “the diplomatic finesse of a wrecking ball.” That was about the nicest thing Dowd had to say. Suggesting that Clinton was deliberately seeking to distance herself from an unpopular President, a suggestion that other commentators have also put forward, she concluded, “Obama is learning the truth of another unofficial slogan in politics. ‘The Clintons will be there when they need you.’ ” Dowd is a longtime antagonist of the Clintons, as is the neoconservative Weekly Standard, which, as Dowd noted, reprinted some of Hillary’s comments from the interview with Goldberg, billing them as a “guest editorial.” But it isn’t just the Clinton bashers in the media who are piling on. On his Twitter account, David Axelrod, one of President Obama’s top advisers, wrote, “Just to clarify, ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ means stuff like occupying Iraq in the first place.” (Just in case you’ve forgotten, Clinton voted for the war.) Indeed, this is a flap that has captivated much of the political world. One of several Politico articles devoted to the interview was headlined “Cocktail chatter with Barack and Hillary.” The Washington Post and the Times had plenty more. Even in today’s hyperactive, always-on media world, that’s pretty good going—especially for mid-August. Most likely, things will die down once Clinton and the President make up, which is surely what will happen. But, even though the immediate storm will blow over, it has raised anew a nagging question that has been lingering over Clinton since her rough book launch, and, indeed, since the defeat that she suffered in 2008—a campaign in which she started out as the front-runner: Can she play this game at this level? As I intimated up top, the obvious answer is yes, of course she can. While running for the Senate in 2000 and 2006, she oversaw faultless campaigns, and racked up big victories both times, albeit not over the strongest of opponents. As a globetrotting Secretary of State, she was a very popular figure; even today, her aura and reputation are such that she has scared off any serious opposition for the Democratic nomination. Thanks to her unique set of experiences, she also has other advantages. The Clinton political operation remains a formidable one, with vast reservoirs of money and talent that it can call on, including her husband, whose mere presence is a significant plus. (According to a new statistical study by the political scientist Jordan Ragusa, every time that Bill Clinton’s approval rating goes up a point, Hillary’s goes up half a point.) In short, Hillary remains a very formidable political figure, and she’s still the strong favorite to be the next President. (At the British betting sites, the odds on her winning in 2016 are about 5-4.) All that said, though, she has some issues to address going forward. One goes to the substance of her chat with Goldberg, in which she struck a tone that was hawkish, interventionist, and fiercely pro-Israel. The reactions to what she said have been interesting, and it’s not clear whether they are what the Clintonites hoped for. The editors of the Weekly Standard loved the interview, and David Brooks also approved. James Fallows and Kevin Drum expressed serious reservations; so did I. If Clinton’s intention was to extend her political reach and attract the support of conservatives, she succeeded. If she was seeking to present a foreign-policy vision attractive to progressives and centrists, she might need to think again. The second, and more immediate, issue is Clinton’s tendency to make verbal gaffes. When, in June, she told Diane Sawyer that she and Bill had emerged from the White House “dead broke,” how did she think it would be taken? In December, 1999, the Web site Politifact pointed out, the Clintons paid $1.7 million for a house in Westchester. The following year, they bought another house, in Washington, for $2.4 million. Yes, they had mortgages and big legal bills incurred while fending off G.O.P.-inspired investigations, but they also had enormous earning power. By 2004, according to her public disclosures, Clinton was worth between ten million dollars and fifty million dollars. Clinton’s public dismissal of the phrase “Don’t do stupid stuff” was similarly ill-advised. In the full transcript of the interview, to be sure, she makes clear that she doesn’t believe this phrase is a fair or complete characterization of Obama’s approach to foreign policy. At one point, she even talks about it favorably, or semi-favorably, remarking, “That’s a good lesson, but it’s more complicated than that.” However, rather than leaving things there and expounding on her own views in isolation from those of the President, she brings up the phrase again, of her own volition, stating, “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” For a professional politician, these are rookie errors. For a politician who has been under intense scrutiny for more than twenty years, they were almost inexplicable. The benign explanation is that, since leaving the State Department, Clinton’s gotten a bit rusty, and that’s why she went out on book tour: to sharpen up and get her errors in early. As anybody who has seen her perform in public can testify, she is knowledgeable, brimming with energy, personable, and even, on occasion, funny. Once she regains her sea legs, the optimistic argument goes, these attributes will come across to the public at large, and she’ll be fine. That may well happen. But she’s been “out there” for quite a while now, and this was another self-inflicted blow. Does she still have the self-discipline and determination that it takes to stay on-message twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for an entire Presidential campaign? The answer isn’t immediately obvious. In an appearance at George Washington University back in June, Lissa Muscatine, one of Clinton’s former speechwriters, suggested that, these days, she appeared to be willing to speak her mind. That was true, Clinton acknowledged. Maybe it was because of the “wonderful wealth of experience” that she’d accumulated, she said, and, “Maybe it’s because I am totally done with, you know, being really careful about what to say because somebody might think this instead of that. It just gets too exhausting and frustrating. And it just seems a whole lot easier to just put it out there and hope people will get used to it. Whether you agree with it or not, you know exactly where I come from, what I think, what I feel.” Coming from an author—or practically anybody else, for that matter—these would be admirable sentiments. We all say that we want people, especially politicians, to be honest and forthright. But Presidential candidates inhabit a world in which it’s essential to balance forthrightness with the likelihood—nay, the certainty—that every word they utter will be scrutinized and, if possible, used against them. As a candidate, you should be honest, but you also have to make darn sure that your words can’t be misrepresented—or, worse, accurately represented—to your disadvantage. If you “just put it out there” without any self-editing or consideration of the consequences, disaster frequently ensues. Joe Biden discovered that in 1987, when he used a speech plagiarized from one by Neil Kinnock, the leader of the British Labour Party; Mitt Romney discovered it in 2012, when he made his unguarded comments about the “forty-seven per cent” at a Republican fund-raiser. The depressing truth is this: modern political campaigns are wars of attrition, and the victor is often the one who makes the fewest mistakes. As a veteran of many such battles, Hillary Clinton knows this all too well. Assuming that she sets her mind to it and makes the transition from likely runner to an officially declared candidate, she will almost certainly suppress her qualms about the campaign process and follow its restrictive rules. For now, though, she still seems a bit out of step. *Vox: “Obama’s critics are suddenly sure Hillary Clinton is great” <http://www.vox.com/2014/8/13/5998197/obama-s-critics-are-suddenly-sure-hillary-clinton-is-great>* By Ezra Klein August 13, 2014, 3:30 p.m. EDT In 1988, the BC show "Yes, Minister" outlined Politician's Logic. It goes like this: 1. We must do something. 2. This is something. 3. We must do this! There is, however, a reverse of Politician's Logic, which might be called Pundit's Logic. It goes like this: 1. Something was done. 2. The problem isn't fixed. 3. We should have done the other thing! When it comes to looking back on the disappointments of Barack Obama's presidency, the "other thing," particularly this week, is elect Hillary Clinton. For instance, Megan McArdle writes that "when Obama beat Hillary, we all lost." The basic argument is that if Hillary Clinton had won in 2008, "at the very least, she would not be facing the same level of vehement opposition in Congress." This is because, McArdle says, the emotional engine of the Tea Party was Obamacare, and Hillary Clinton would have spied the intensity of Republican opposition to health reform and turned back. "So there's my counterfactual for the summer," McArdle concludes. "If Hillary Clinton had won, Obamacare wouldn't have happened, and Democrats — and the country — would be better off." (Curiously, there is no mention of the millions of people who gained or will gain insurance through Obamacare, most of whom would presumably be much, much worse off in this counterfactual.) Is McArdle right? Maybe! But it's a perfect reversal of the argument Clinton's supporters made on her behalf in 2008. Back then, the case for Clinton was that she understood full well that doing big things would mean fighting — and winning — an all-out partisan war, and that the problem with Obama was his naive insistence on bipartisanship ensured he would turn back when the partisan fury began to singe. "Anyone who thinks that the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation is living in a fantasy world," wrote Paul Krugman in a 2007 column criticizing Obama. Meanwhile, the argument for Obama was precisely that Republicans hated him less than Clinton, and so a vote for Obama was a vote for a less partisan future. "Clinton will always be, in the minds of so many, the young woman who gave the commencement address at Wellesley, who sat in on the Nixon implosion and who once disdained baking cookies. For some, her husband will always be the draft dodger who smoked pot and wouldn't admit it. And however hard she tries, there is nothing Hillary Clinton can do about it," wrote Andrew Sullivan in an essay endorsing Obama. Sullivan went on to note that "polling reveals Obama to be the favored Democrat among Republicans." All of which is to say it is very easy to imagine a world where Hillary Clinton won the election, party polarization is as bad or worse than it is today, and pundits are looking back to 2008 and wishing Obama had won. The same is true for the argument between Clinton and Obama on Syria. There, the issue is that Syria continues to be an absolute human disaster: more than 160,000 have died in the country's civil war, and the radical, brutal group ISIS fought through the chaos and built a powerful statelet that they used as a base of operations to expand into Iraq. So the question is: could America have done more? Inside the administration, Clinton was an advocate of doing more, and doing it earlier. In particular, she wanted to try and identify, train and arm more moderate factions of the opposition. She lost that argument, and it's a loss that she and her supporters emphasize today. The idea is that if Clinton had won — if Obama had feared the risks of inaction more than the risks of action — then Assad might have been ousted by now and ISIS might never have gotten their foothold. The conservative Weekly Standard found this so self-evident that their editorial this week is nothing but edited excerpts of Clinton laying out her foreign policy differences with Obama. There's a part of Clinton's comments on Syria that they leave out, however. "I can't sit here today and say that if we had done what I recommended, and what [Ambassador] Robert Ford recommended, that we'd be in a demonstrably different place," she told the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg (the aggression of Clinton's criticisms of Obama has been wildly played-up by the media). And then there's the possibility that we would be in a different place — a worse one. America does not have a very successful record arming insurgent groups. As political scientist Marc Lynch concludes in a review of the relevant literature: “In general, external support for rebels almost always make wars longer, bloodier and harder to resolve (for more on this, see the proceedings of this Project on Middle East Political Science symposium in the free PDF download). Worse, as the University of Maryland's David Cunningham has shown, Syria had most of the characteristics of the type of civil war in which external support for rebels is least effective.” The reality in Syria is horrible, and so regret is mounting that we didn't do the other thing we considered doing. But it's entirely possible that if we had done the other thing that the reality in Syria would be even worse (and much, much worse for America). Pundits have no choice but to consider counterfactuals; there's no other way to think about the world and the choices America makes within it. The problem is when the counterfactual is used less to evaluate reality than to lament it. The fact that something turned out badly often means that it's a hard, and sometimes impossible, problem to solve. George W. Bush ran as a uniter and Barack Obama ran as a post-partisan and each sincerely hoped to heal the widening divisions in American political life, but those divisions are widening because of powerful structural factors that easily overpowered, and ultimately co-opted, both men's presidencies. Syria is a hellish problem that America very likely can't solve. Sometimes the problem really is that we should have done the other thing. But sometimes the problem is that we don't know how to solve the problem. *The Hill blog: Lanny Davis: “The cure for punditry hyperventilation on Hillary Clinton — Try the facts” <http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/215062-the-cure-for-punditry-hyperventilation-on-hillary-clinton-try-the-facts>* By Lanny Davis August 13, 2014, 3:16 p.m. EDT I have read a slew of comments by pundits, columnists and self-described "progressive" organizations criticizing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her comments in The Atlantic to reporter Jeffrey Goldberg about (a) her disagreement with President Obama on the issue of early aid to moderate opposition elements in Syria to the Assad regime; and (b) her comment that "don't do stupid stuff" does not a foreign policy make. It's one thing for writers on the liberal side of the spectrum, or organizations that describe themselves that way, to disagree with Clinton on her point of view and debate the facts and differing opinions based on those facts, on substantive or policy grounds. But that is not what happened. Instead, what we have seen is a series of ad hominem attacks, mostly going to Clinton’s real "motives" or the use of labels — labels like "hawkish" or "anti-interventionist" — devoid of facts and, as Shakespeare once wrote, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Let's look at three facts to put to rest this pseudo flare-up over Clinton’s interview during the slow news month of August. 1. The characterization that Clinton's comments show that she is truly a "hawk" who is defying the "anti-interventionist" Democratic liberal (a label used by a spokesperson for MoveOn.org, a self-described progressive organization) is inaccurate. Since Clinton's early years in politics when she supported and worked for the most anti-Vietnam War candidate for president, Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D.), who went on to become the Democratic Party's nominee for president in 1972, she has been a skeptic of overreliance on American military power, especially unilateral military intervention. Clinton's record as senator and as secretary of State shows that she remains so to this day. Her remark to Mr. Goldberg critical of the "avoid the stupid stuff" concept meant that she prefers an affirmative, forward-looking policy — not just one that avoids making mistakes. She spells out that affirmative and proactive concept in detail in her book Hard Choices and its specific application during her four years as secretary of State. She called it using "smart power": a combination of "soft power," using economic, cultural, trade, educational and other human rights assistance and communicating better America's democratic and humane values, and tougher measures such as economic sanctions and the option of military power as a last resort, but seriously taken. Her approach to Iran's threatened development of The Bomb is a good example of this proactive policy of smart power. Secretary Clinton was a key player in orchestrating and implementing the tough economic sanctions on Iran that many would say brought it to the negotiating table. But like Obama, she won't take the military option off the table. (Regarding President Obama: he, too, strongly supported using this "smart power" combination. He also supported military intervention in Afghanistan during his 2008 presidential campaign and since. Yet I don't recall anyone from MoveOn.org accusing him for that reason of defying the "anti-interventionist" Democratic Party base. 2. One of Obama's former senior White House officials and political advisers tweeted that "stupid stuff" was "occupying" Iraq under former President George W. Bush. He allegedly was referring to Clinton's vote supporting the resolution authorizing intervention in Iraq. But the tweeter omitted at least two facts: first, that the Iraq War resolution was supported by 28 other Democratic senators, including then-Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and current Vice President of the United States Joe Biden; and second, that Secretary Clinton has described that vote as a mistake. (Personal footnote: I don't read too much into this tweeter's quick shot at Clinton in response to the Goldberg interview. I know I have regretted many times some of my own impulsive tweets, with limited letters available. I happen to admire this tweeter very much. I know he also likes and appreciates Clinton for her loyal service to Obama during her four years as secretary and that, to his credit, Obama always encouraged disagreement and debate on various issues he faced during his presidency.) 3. Finally, the notion that Clinton can be challenged from the left because of a "vacuum" regarding her positions on the issues is simply contradicted by the facts. Her progressive positions on issues and her voting record in the U.S. Senate over eight years are indisputable: pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-civil rights and human rights, pro-gun control, pro-Affordable Care Act, pro-increasing the minimum wage, pro-Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (having praised Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren many times for this regulatory body in the wake of the abuses that caused the 2008 Near Great Depression), etc. etc. This hardly suggests there is a "vacuum" on her left in the Democratic Party. See the latest proof of this from Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight. Indeed, every poll shows Clinton has overwhelming support from liberal Democrats. There are some in the Democratic Party, however, who mistake substance for a willingness to work with members of the other party to get things done — which is why Clinton was described by many Senate Republicans in such positive terms, or as, as the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) put it, "a work horse, not a show horse." So despite the pundits looking to create a contest in the Democratic Party between the "left" and the "center" or some such labeling to get the juices going to make for a bitter, divisive and therefore entertaining Democratic contest for the nomination in 2016, if Clinton chooses to run for president, I know there will be other candidates for the nomination and I hope there is a vigorous debate on the issues and solutions to the nation’s most important problems. We need that debate as Democrats. What we don't need are invented differences based on innuendo and labels, rather than facts and substance. *Calendar:* *Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official schedule.* · August 16 – East Hampton, New York: Sec. Clinton signs books at Bookhampton East Hampton (HillaryClintonMemoir.com <http://www.hillaryclintonmemoir.com/long_island_book_signing2>) · August 28 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes Nexenta’s OpenSDx Summit (BusinessWire <http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140702005709/en/Secretary-State-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton-Deliver-Keynote#.U7QoafldV8E> ) · September 4 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton speaks at the National Clean Energy Summit (Solar Novis Today <http://www.solarnovus.com/hillary-rodham-clinto-to-deliver-keynote-at-national-clean-energy-summit-7-0_N7646.html> ) · October 2 – Miami Beach, FL: Sec. Clinton keynotes the CREW Network Convention & Marketplace (CREW Network <http://events.crewnetwork.org/2014convention/>) · October 13 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton keynotes the UNLV Foundation Annual Dinner (UNLV <http://www.unlv.edu/event/unlv-foundation-annual-dinner?delta=0>) · ~ October 13-16 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes salesforce.com Dreamforce conference (salesforce.com <http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF14/keynotes.jsp>) · December 4 – Boston, MA: Sec. Clinton speaks at the Massachusetts Conference for Women (MCFW <http://www.maconferenceforwomen.org/speakers/>)