Obama on Hillary’s qualifications
Well, I have to admit I’m cheating a little here, because Obama was actually talking about how wonderful he is (a topic dear to his heart), and it was before Hillary ever went to work for him as Secretary of State.
On the other hand, he was talking about Hillary. The quote appeared in this post of mine from April of 2008., and it’s from a statement Obama made in San Francisco in answer to a question about what qualifications he was looking for in a running mate:
I would like somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I’m not as expert on. I think a lot of people assume that might be some sort of military thing to make me look more Commander-in-Chief-like. Ironically, this is an area—foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain.
It’s ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags ‘I’ve met leaders from eighty countries’–I know what those trips are like! I’ve been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There’s a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then–you go.
You do that in eighty countries—you don’t know those eighty countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa–knowing the leaders is not important–what I know is the people. . . .
I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college–I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . .
Of course, we all know how that’s worked out.
Yeah. Two foreign policy geniuses, Barack and Hillary. All that smart power has worked out great.
Q: How, Oh how will this country, just only beginning it’s fundamental transformation, and with so far yet to go, survive without HIM at the helm? (cue to wailing and gnashing of teeth) /S
A: Barry, don’t let the door hit something on your way out.
You would know this better than I do neo-neocon, since I have no liberal friends, but I always imagined the thing that would burst the Obama worship bubble would be foreign policy.
That liberals loved to think of themselves as cosmopolitan and would not tolerate being made to look like rubes to the rest of the world (especially Europe).
Have your liberal friends become embarrassed over Obama’s foreign policy blunders?
There is not much to add. Obama clearly had a low opinion of Hillary’s qualifications at that time. She had done nothing to enhance her qualifications since.
Matt_SE:
Blunders?
What blunders??
I am very serious. They either don’t follow things closely or don’t see them as blunders at all. And some of these people are very intelligent. They just have a very different worldview.
I explained what one of these people (someone I respect highly) thought of the Iran deal, for example, here.
Boy, with all that expertise in foreign affairs coming into the “presidency,” just think where we’d be if he’d had none!
. . .
By the way, didn’t I hear Hair say more or less the same thing not too long ago?
Julie near Chicago:
Yes, narcissists think alike. Trump is also a huge narcissist, even larger than Obama in my opinion.
🙁
Yet she was well-qualified to be his Secretary of State?
Neo:
“I explained what one of these people (someone I respect highly) thought of the Iran deal, for example, here.”
I reiterate what I said in the comments there:
The prerequisite for changing your liberal friends’ minds’ “very different worldview” about Obama’s course-setting handling of the Iraq disengagement, Iran nuclear deal, Libya intervention, and the Syria crisis, among the broader record of Obama’s foreign affairs, is re-laying the foundation of their conception of current events by setting the record straight on the legal-factual basis of the epochal Iraq intervention.
Right now, your liberal friends’ worldview of current events is anchored in a readily demonstrably false narrative of Bush’s decision for OIF. It’s no coincidence that Trump employs the same demonstrably false narrative of OIF to anchor the “worldview” of his followers.
Once they understand at premise level that the Bush case versus Saddam is in fact substantiated and, as such, Bush’s decision for Operation Iraqi Freedom demonstrably was correct, and building upon that basis, OIF was a critical strategic victory until wrecked by Obama’s course deviation, then you’ll have the foundation to construct the sequence of other mind changes on current events.
But before you can build the rest of it, it’s necessary to 1st lay the foundation by setting the record straight on the why of OIF for your liberal friends in the political discourse, the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game.
Obama and Trump, legends in their own minds. Almost certainly from a very young age.
Eric,
You keep reiterating the belief that “setting the record straight on the why of OIF” will open liberal minds by showing the narrative they accept as false. It will not.
The Left’s kool-aid reaches much deeper than whether Bush acted legally and correctly. The liberal world view rests upon much deeper psychological foundations than justification for war.
The Left’s panaceas, memes and narrative are compelling for those inclined toward them because they resonate on a basic level with how liberals and leftists view reality.
All “isms” on the left, to one degree or another, reject key aspects of human nature and basic operative principles of the external reality within which they exist.
People who are willing to reject reality have no problem ignoring the fact that they have been embracing a “demonstrably false narrative”. Once they fall asleep, the “liberal reset button” is activated (we’ve all encountered it) and the false narrative gradually reasserts itself because that is what they WANT to believe. And, their psychological dysfunction centers upon wants superseding any other consideration because their sense of self-worth is based in what they wish to be true, whether it be playing the victim or playing the benefactor.
Yep, I agree with GB 100% on that.
@ Eric:
There is no possible way to explain to a liberal that they are mistaken about OIF. That’s like explaining to a Catholic why their faith is “wrong.”
It’s just not gonna happen.
Which makes me think that you’ve never tried this tactic out on any hardcore leftists.
GB@8:16pm,
I agree, not only have you described the left; you have perfectly described trumpians.
(Back from Nova Scotia, paying attention once again to the choice between two greater evils.)
Obama and Clinton remain popular among the Internationalist Tribe, including European elites, who remain more class-conscious than we do even now, though American elites don’t mention it. (American journalists consider themselves part of it, though they seem rather brittle and insecure about that. For whatever reason, the stratification of European society is off the radar in public discussion here.) That group does not believe that Obama and Clinton have done much wrong. When Syria or Libya or Egypt or Iran are in the news they are uncomfortable, because they aren’t quite happy with what has happened, but “at least it’s not Bush lying us into an expensive unwinnable war…”
They trust the other elites they have hired to do foreign policy for them, and so pretty much believe that what the Democrats are doing about China or Russia or North Korea or South America or whatever just MUST be right. Don’t bother me with details. I’m sure it’s better that whatever Bush/Republicans/Conservatives would have done. Because they are bad people and we’re not. At root, most people’s political thinking doesn’t rise much above that.