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He rips into jokes about President Bush's intellect as "another liberal snig that annoys me a lot these days," adding, "The fact has to be faced: the intellectual candlepower of this administration is a great deal brighter than the Clinton administration . . . [and] the level of professionalism is very much higher."

hitchens on the clintons

"My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.... there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president"
J. Bradford DeLong
professor of economics at Berkeley
veteran of the Clinton administration
Mindless rhinestone-studded-and-tented kleptocracy: by Mia T

John Podhoretz recently asked, "Whence comes hillary clinton's reputation for brilliance?" For the answer, he intuitively, rather brilliantly in fact, looked to her anatomy and noted,"This isn't the first time she's shot herself in the foot."

The above anatomical analysis supports the Podhoretz thesis. Notwithstanding The Pod's erroneous conclusions concerning ~~hillary~~ clinton's heart and nerve, he basically has it right. Anatomy is destiny...
Ian Hunter recently observed that our leaders are shrinking. "From a Churchill (or, for that matter, a Margaret Thatcher) to a Tony Blair; from Eisenhower to Clinton; from Diefenbaker to Joe Clark; from Trudeau to Chretien -- we seem destined to be governed by pygmies."
The pols understand their anatomical limitations well; they attempt to mitigate them with veneer. And so we suffer mindless alpha-beta-beelzebubba grotesquerie. . .


and rhinestone-studded-and-tented kleptocracy.

With all the media genuflecting before the press-conference podium of bill clinton, it bears remarking yet again that the clinton intellect (an oxymoron even more jarring than AlGoreRhythm and meant to encompass the cognitive ability of both clintons) is remarkable only for its utter ordinariness, its lack of creative spark, its lack of analytic precision, its lack of depth.
The clintons' fundamental error: They are too arrogant and dim-witted to understand that the demagogic process in this fiberoptic age isn't about counting spun heads; it's about not discounting circumambient brains.
Politicos and reporters are not rocket scientists . . .
Professions tend to be self-selected, intellectually homogeneous subgroups of Homo sapiens. Great intellects (especially these days) do not generally gravitate towards careers in the media or politics. Mediocre, power-obsessed types with poor self-images do.
Thus, clinton mediocrity goes undetected primarily because of media mediocrity. ("Mediocrity" and "media" don't come from the same Latin root (medius) for no reason.) Insofar as the clintons are concerned, the media confuse form with substance, smoothness with coherence, data-spewing with ratiocination, pre-programmed recitation with real-time analysis, an idiosyncratic degeneracy with creativity.
Jimmy Breslin agrees. In Hillary Is the 'Me-First' Lady, Breslin laments:

"At the end of all these years and years that are being celebrated this week, the national press of America consists of people with dried minds and weak backbones and the pack of them can't utter a new phrase for the language or show the least bit of anger at a business or profession or trade or whatever this business is that is dying of mediocrity."

Listen carefully to the clintons. You will hear a shallow parody of the class president. Not only do they say nothing; they say nothing with superfluous ineloquence. Their speeches are sophomoric, shopworn, shallow, specious. Platitudinous pandering piled atop p.c. cliché
In seven years, they have, collectively, uttered not one memorable word save, "It was a vast right-wing conspiracy," "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,"and, "It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."
Even the clintons' attempts at alliteration fall flat. Compare Agnew's (Safire's) "nattering nabobs of negativism" with clinton's "preachers of pessimism," an impotent, one-dimensional, plagiaristic echo (its apt self-descriptiveness notwithstanding).
Before they destroy their backs along with their reputations, media gentry genuflecting at the altar of the clinton brain should consider Edith Efron's, Can the President Think?
A wasted brain is a terrible thing.
ALSO:
HILLARY CLINTON LACKS COGNITIVE CAPACITY TO LEAD
TRIES TO GET QUESTIONS IN ADVANCE. . . AGAIN
Why bill "it was the TERRORISM, stupid" clinton would have been an utter failure even if he weren't a corrupt, cowardly, vacuous, self-serving, balkanizing, opportunistic RapistThug
And why the little missus deserves no less than half the credit

bttt

Bill Clinton is getting $12 million for his memoirs; Hillary is getting $8 million dollars for hers, for a total of $20 million. Not bad for a couple that for eight years swore under oath they couldn't remember anything.

Bttt!

Good afternoon Mia

MiaT - the writer you quote at the beginning misses the point entirely.

Hillary Clinton never did and does not intend to be President. Neither did Bill.

They intended to be, and were, and will be again unless God intervenes:

DICTATORS OF THE FIRST, STALINIST, ORDER!

The thought of her heinous back in our WH scares the hell out of me-on many levels. But as Professor DeLong above has said-her exposure during the health care debacle demonstrates the scariest trait she has...she does not listen, she DICTATES.

I remember a great deal about the health care plan tragedy---but I have NEVER read an account of how others, working with her, felt about her abilities, or LACK of abilities, as it were.

It is laughable that she accused Senator Moynihan of disloyalty when he pointed out problems with her horrendous plan to ruin the practice medicine in our nation. Scary, too.

I have often wondered how Patrick Moynihan has felt about relinquishing his senate seat to that horror of a human being.

Have even wondered if the klintons, thru their various devious and insidious actions, didn't 'encourage' ol patrick to resign. Probably not-but how convenient it was for her to choose NY-having never LIVED there-from which to launch her obsessive drive to the presidency.

Now I know she had reason to resent Moynihan...heck...just knowing this woman's past actions has turned me into a bona fide conspiracy buff.

Guess, fully honestly, I believe the klintons are capable of anything. Anything.

Great thread-interesting observations about hillary-lack of professionalism, lack of ability to accept constructive critcism, arrogance, dictatorial style, glaring inability to manage, etc.

The the Berkeley professor, who worked with her on the health care debacle ( and states she should be kept far from the WH , would be brought onto the major networks and interviewed. This is get down info.