Posted on 11/13/2002 8:39:38 AM PST by Dallas
Condoleezza Rice will defeat Hillary Clinton for the presidency in 2008, New York Times political columnist William Safire predicted during a stop in Ypsilanti Monday.
Safire was the featured speaker at an annual fund-raiser of the Jewish Federation of Washtenaw County at the Ypsilanti Marriott Hotel.
Asked if he, a political columnist, misses Bill Clinton in the White House, Safire answered: "Desperately."
"He enlivened my life," said Safire, who awaits the day Hillary Clinton stops being a quiet, respectful freshman senator. He then predicted she will run for president in 2008, but will be defeated by Rice, who is now Bush's national security adviser and will by then be governor of California, he said.
Safire, 72, spoke to an audience of 600 people Monday night without benefit of notes, which surprised no one. After all, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist was a speech writer in the Nixon White House, and is the most widely read writer on the English language.
"So it just comes out," Safire said of his writing during a press conference earlier in the day.
During his speech and question-answer period that followed, Safire talked about the upcoming election in Israel, the approaching political scene here, and U.S.-Israeli relations.
Calling himself a good Republican, he said he nonetheless likes a divided government.
"Gridlock is great," he said. "My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.' "
The fact that so many Jews vote Democratic is "against all common sense," quipped Safire, who is Jewish, as the audience laughed.
The soft-spoken Safire reminded the crowd that there was a time people doubted Japan and Germany could ever become democracies. "It can happen anywhere if people give it a chance," he said, referring to the Middle East.
During the press conference, Safire, whose column appears in the Ann Arbor News, noted that last week's election results can partly be blamed on Democrats who opposed the war, but not too stridently; and opposed Bush's tax cuts, but were fearful of saying so. In addition, too much money was spent trying to beat Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida that could have been spent on other Democrats across the country.
Safire, a conservative Republican at a newspaper written largely by liberals, is a hawk who hopes the result of a war with Iraq will be the spreading of democracy in the Middle East.
He said the election proved people support Bush's foreign policy.
"Conservatism is better for the country than liberalism," he said, "because it's more tuned to individual freedom."
Bill Zirinsky of Ann Arbor is a regular reader of Safire's column and was interested in what he'd have to say Monday night. "Though he's a Nixon Republican, he manages to write an original column with interesting idea two times a week, and he's been doing it for 30 years," said Zirinsky.
"Ann Arbor has the highest per-capita readership of The New York Times outside of New York," said Jeff Levin, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Washtenaw County. "So we knew that Safire would be a recognized and intriguing personality to present to the community."
Safire, who lives in Chevy Chase, Md., and works at his paper's Washington bureau, looks back on an exciting and varied career as a reporter, columnist, correspondent, novelist, TV producer and historian.
But nothing beats what he does right now.
"Writing about politics for The New York Times is the greatest job in the world," he said.
Neither is pathetic. Rice is a non-politician; Giuliani has more stature than any non-president in the GOP. Name someone who stands taller.
Giuliani didn't stand around LOOKING important after 911, HE WAS IMPORTANT. He was the indispensable man.
The dysfunctional denizens of NYC were looking for their daddy after 9/11. They found it in Guiliani.
Dysfunctional? Daddy? True and true. But in light of what New York enbdured on 911, in taking a hit for the entire nation, those criticisms become oh-so-petty. You can mock New York, because the rest of the country didn't have to find out how it would have stood up. Giuliani and New York stood up for the entire country.
Most of the rest of the country is a little more grown up than to elect him to the Presidency. Guiliani is a adulterous liberal pro-abort traitor to the party (remember that endorsement of Cuomo in 94?).
The only criticism that sticks is his endorsement of Cuomo. He had been living apart from his wife for years, before he took up with Judi Nathan. The abortion issue is a non-starter, because the GOP is not going to do ANYTHING about abortion.
Where's he going to get the votes from to put him on the Republican ticket?
Where? Everywhere!
Also, I seem to recall while living in Manhattan that Guiliani and wife were living in Gracie Mansion together when he carried on his public and notorious affair, and that he had the class to let her know he wanted a divorce by holding a press conference on the subject.
America will surely be blessed by electing a guy like him.
Guiliani is a cop, not a President. Don't mistake the two.
She's excellent, and perceived as a threat by gutter leftists--witness the attacks of late.
No doubt orchestrated by Das Butch der Buchenvald.
MEGA DITTOS !
Being an American does not mean docilely accepting genocides decreed from above by unelected judges. It means fighting for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - not standing by while the most innocent are deprived of life.
BLACKMUN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and DOUGLAS, BRENNAN, STEWART, MARSHALL, and POWELL, JJ., joined. BURGER, C. J., post, p. 207, DOUGLAS, J. post, p. 209, and STEWART, J., post, p. 167, filed concurring opinions. WHITE, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which REHNQUIST, J., joined, post, p. 221. filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 171.
Rice is poison - she's good at what she does: helping us kill our enemies. We don't need her in the White House helping us kill our children.
Then how come no one is crying "Bush/Wolfowitz in 2004"?
Dr. Rice is indeed brilliant and accomplished, but if she were a white male she would just be another one among 500 brilliant and accomplished defense policy analysts, mostly white men. She is not a politician and has no particular qualifications to be President, other than that many Republicans think she can neutralize a potential tidal wave of female and black votes for Hillary Clinton. I'm not so sure Dr. Rice can do that - too many blacks already think she is a freak show act who is "unrepresentative" of their community, and the kind of women who think Hillary is wonderful will disdain her candidacy.
It is our individual performances, no matter how humble our place in life my be, that will in the long run determine how well ordered the nation/world may become
Or how civilized we will become...action, take action within your own state for starters; know your legislators well before you vote them into office for this is where change will begin.
# 33 says this... my favorable view of Condi has nothing to do with her being either female or black. My sentiments also. She is brilliant no doubt about it, but not presidential material in the need-to-be political sense. Hillary Clinton is tarnished beyond repair except for editorialists like Wm. Saffire and the mainstream press, who will for the sake of a story keep the ignominious Clintons alive. They many be amused, but I’m not!
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