At some point you have to give the authorization of the president to actually be the president. If the president screws it up, it is the president’s fault.

Sen. Clinton should have better judgment in people, yet we all have our shortcomings and that’s one of hers. And quite frankly, the thousands of us who comment or blog everyday should be striking while the iron and still hot. The illegal nominee declaration and coerced endorsement only happened two weeks ago. It’s not like we can’t undo all that by blocking the entrance to the DNC, protesting the intimidation and extortion of Sen. Clinton, and demand that she represent those 18 millions voters like she promised she would.

IT’S CALLED ACTIVISM. As another blogger said recently – Anything worth fighting for usually involves some actual fighting. What’s wrong with us? Why aren’t we confronting the DNC over its fairy tale nominating process and shaming the party to the point that they’ll worry about losing their traditional base. Really, this isn’t rocket science, folks. Just turn off your computer, call some friends, get on a bus to Washington (if you live within striking distance), and then go block the entrance to DNC headquarters. And maybe get Martin Sheen or Susan Sarandon to join you.

Learning to accept people is 90% of life lessons, I think.

We all are OK. We all are entitled to our opinions. And that’s why, bottom line, I still love Democracy. It’s imperfect, for sure. But we still get our vote. And so do you, although I disagree with you entirely.

Fair enough. This sort of criticism is one I can live with. It is the sweeping generalizations according to which I am but a misogynist pig and a thoughtless simpleton that I think are over the top.

Too bad….

It cut the best person for the job right out of it.

Now, we’re stuck with a Republican president most likely who will probably not do a lot for 4 years.

Or….God forbid……the idiot whose foot is in his mouth every 10 minutes.

“Many Obama supporters firmly believe that he will have our troops out of Iraq starting immediatly.”

I am not one of those supporters. I actually was always very reassured about Samantha Powers’ presence in the Obama camp. She is a leading scholar on genocide, and this signaled to me from the start, even before her revealing Scottish interview, that she would not advocate early withdrawal unless prudent (which is to say, she would not advocate it). I believe the US has a responsibility to fix the mess it created in Iraq. I don’t support Obama because I want to see a quick return of troops but because I don’t wish to see another armed conflict, and because I want hawks to be held accountable, even not-so-hawkish and entirely wonderful people like HRC, who by my lights has indeed brought along in her campaign hawkish foreign policy advisors like Richard Holbrooke and Sandy Berger.

“It is just that the initial contact is done by the State Department, not the White House.”

It isn’t as though I don’t know this. As far as I am concerned, Barack Obama did not say that he would bypass normal diplomatic channels and just go have breakfast with Fidel Castro. He said that he would be willing to meet with enemy leaders without preconditions. A good faith reading of that assertion is that he would be willing to engage in dialogue even if before the proposed summit, the opposing party has not a priori agreed to some particular demands. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, after seven years of exactly the opposite approach, I’m happy to give it a chance.

You are right that Penn was not a foreign policy advisor. Awkward phrasing on my part. I meant to say that Clinton’s foreign policy advisors (Holbrooke, Berger) were as unseemly hawkish at the time as Mark Penn was, and he was one who accused dissenters of being unpatriotic.

As I said above in another comment, I do not hold the view that Hillary Clinton was a reactionary war-monger. That is a caricature of my position, as it is of many Obama supporters’ position, I am sure. Hillary Clinton did, however, emit a vote to authorize Bush to go to war, and that is a serious flaw in her resume. If I wish to hold her accountable for that, it is indicative of how seriously I take foreign policy, not an indication of thoughtlessness and misogyny.

Regarding the issue of ‘not talking to our enemies’ I hate to clue you but all governments talk to each other. It is just that the initial contact is done by the State Department, not the White House. Agendas are set and meeting parameters discussed and agreed to. Heads of state do not initiate they finalize. So, Obama is being disingenuous when he says that the Repubs or HRC would not talk to our enemies. You should note that Obama first said that he would talk to our enemies without pre-conditions- he has backpedaled on that one. Probably because someone told him it didn’t make sense. Point is DIPLOMACY is the baliwick of the SD not the POTUS. POTUS sets the poilicy, the SD implements it.

Obama has taken a Bush-like strategy in his bid to be the dem nominee in that he tilted his rethoric to the far left of the party and is now trying to move to the center for the GE. My initial impression of him was that he was all talk, no substance or action and watching him these last months only reaffirms that. But then again I am from Massachusetts and we have seen this show before because it is the same one David Axelrod ran for Deval Patrick in 2005 so my cynicism can be excused.

And by the way, Mark Penn is a marketing guy, not a foreign policy advisor. He is like David Axelrod just not as savy.

“Thanks for the thoughtful response, Pedro, but this whole, “Hillary was for the war” thing is just untrue. Read her speech on the Resolution.”

I did read her speech. As always, her intelligence shines. (Yes, I–an Obama supporter–think she is more articulate than Obama, and possibly more intelligent than both Obama and Bill Clinton.) And yet, she did vote for this resolution. Why?

“And perhaps my decision is influenced by my eight years of experience on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House watching my husband deal with serious challenges to our nation. I want this President, or any future President, to be in the strongest possible position to lead our country in the United Nations or in war.” (Hillary Clinton, from the speech.)

This deference to executive power is very troubling to me, especially when the executive gives every indication that it will use its full power to begin a war.

“And why is it that all of the MEN who voted for the Resolution got a pass? Kerry? Edwards?! ALl A-OK for them to have done it, but not Clinton. That makes no sense to me.”

I imagine you must be asking here whether it was okay for me that Kerry and Edwards voted for the war. The answer is that it wasn’t. Did I prefer the prospect of a Kerry administration to the prospect of a second Bush one? Yes, just like I would prefer a Hillary Clinton administration to a McCain one. But I do like the prospect of the change of attitude in US foreign policy that, perhaps a bit foolishly, I hope for in an Obama administration. Save for some remarkably silly recent statements of his at AIPAC, Obama’s rhetoric is significantly more appealing to me on the foreign policy front.

“Add to that Obama saying he doesn’t know WHAT he would have done, and then voting for funding consistently, weakens the whole argument, IMHO.”

Voting for war-funding is very different from voting to give the authority to start a war. I would have voted to fund the war, as Obama and Clinton did. In fact, I sympathize enormously with McCain’s embrace of the Powell doctrine: if you break it, it’s yours to fix, and I did not much enjoy hearing Obama promise quick troop withdrawals. (The strong presence of Samantha Power, noted genocide expert, in Obama’s camp, was very reassuring to me.)

“Clinton consistently had the most comprehensive policy ideas – apparently, Obama thought so, too, since he kept copying them. See, to me, I’d rather have the originator of the ideas than the one who “borrows” them, and then cannot speak abt them with any kind of comprehension.”

If Obama copies her policy proposals when they are good, that shows good judgment. He may not be as articulate as Clinton is, but Obama is surrounding himself with people who will surely equip him with interesting policy proposals. The fact that his team of advisors includes people who were ostracized for their opposition to the war when some of Clinton’s advisers thought it cool to question war opponents’ patriotism is just wonderful. That Sunstein, Power, and Goolsbee are in his camp is the gravy.

To summarize then: I gave much more importance to foreign policy than to anything else, and I took very seriously the identity of foreign policy advisers. War hawks ought to be held accountable, in my view, and Hillary Clinton took some of the most disagreeable ones on board in her team.

Obama has a vindictive streak — and he’s the type of personality who would order a bombing run on a whim — much like GWB was determined to bomb Iraq. These two are so damned much alike.