Jennifer Hunter Watch
Skeeter found the Giuliani in Illinois stuff boring. He's right.
Here's Jennifer Hunter writing on a candidate's wife. Hunter's insights amaze,
But the family decided to say "yes" to the Democratic race partially to confront those fears, said Michelle. "I am tired of being afraid . . . I don't want my girls to live in a country that is based on fear."I've been spending lots of time in Hyde Park and Kenwood lately. My wife gets the creeps with those Police Boxes with the Blue Lights on top. Why don't we start making our home Chicago safe from the punks (and sadly some of the cops).
...she travels with her husband in part "to model what it means to have family values," adding "if you can't run your own house, you can't run the White House." She didn't elaborate, but it could be interpreted as a swipe at the Clintons.didn't elaborate ...could be interpreted.... How much does it have to be spelled out for Ms Hunter. This was a kick in the teeth.
My colleague Mary Mitchell asked Michelle how she was able to "snag Barack." But Obama knows he is the lucky one. At least he should know. Michelle is an incredible asset to his campaign.I was in a brawl once at a tavern in Berwyn started when my buddy's girl friend insulted a big guy about his tattoos.
The candidate's wife just got him into a brawl he didn't need either, and with an opponent who packs an awfully mean wallop. This is a bad fight to have picked and it will have no winners.
Having the oblivious Hunter flacking your campaign no winner either.
Update: Hunter explains today,
OK, but as I stood there in Atlantic, Iowa, listening to Michelle Obama talk and hearing the cadence of her speech, my immediate reaction was that she was obliquely referring to the Clintons.
Why did I think that?
Well, she said she and Barack were modeling "what it means to have family values in this country and we haven't seen that for a long time" [emphasis added]. Wasn't Bush the family values guy? What did Michelle mean by "we haven't seen that [family values] for a long time"?
Then she talked about the future president being someone who "respects family . . ." Did Bill Clinton show respect for his family with his bimbo eruptions? Did he consider the impact on his child, let alone his wife?
Michelle Obama added: "So our view is that if you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House."
Bang!
The Clintons certainly did have a hard time running the White House and their own house during the Monica Lewinsky affair as independent counsel Kenneth Starr and his henchmen began snooping around and President Clinton was impeached by Congress.
So you can see where I was going with this. It didn't take a huge leap of logic. My mistake was not grabbing Michelle Obama when she left to ask for further elaboration -- I was waiting to hear her husband speak.
But at least my column -- which is my own opinion -- did give the news shows something really important to talk about.
Bang is right. Bang is what happened to me in the tavern in Berwyn.
Some times those logical leaps best left unlept.
28 comments:
Five out of six posts are from Baar, and none of them worth a bit.
Is this really what Rich Miller had in mind with Illinoize?
Should she ignore all of Guiliani's divorces? Are you really claiming that Sen. Obama should be careful of Guiliani's "wallop"?
That being said, it may also be a swipe at the Republican from Arkansas [Huckabee] who needed a "wedding registry" when he left the gov's mansion, despite being married 20 years.
In politics, going after your opponent is considered reasonable, especially wnen they claim to be family values candidates.
Clinton's wallop Skeeter; she packs a mean one and she's perflectly right to deliver one square here.
When candidates talk family values my BS alarm goes off.
Everyone's divorces should be off limits.
Running a family and running the White House too vastly different things.
Why in the world would you interpret that as an attack on Sen. Clinton? She worked through her marriage difficulties, unlike the GOP frontrunner Guiliani who gets married more often than Romney goes hunting.
If you are going to be the "family values" party, of course your inability to maintain a family is an issue. And then you have Huckabee, who made a mockery of his marriage in order to evade ethics rules. The Huckabees are so dependent on the government that they needed to set up an ethics-bypass just to get basic stuff for their house.
Mrs. Obama had a point. These people need to run their own households before they try and run this country.
"These people need to run their own households before they try and run this country" like JFK, FDR Bill Clinton and Ike?
For what it is worth, and I am sure that Michelle Obama is no expert on the issue that she is spouting off about, the correlation between running ones own family and running the White House seems to be about nil.
The Obama's seem to do anything except talk about his partisan voting record and being part of the Emil Jones machine. Are they audacious enough to bring up an actual issue related to governing the country once in a blue moon?
JBP
JBP,
Are family values an issue or not?
For some reason, I recall Republicans raising that issue in the past.
When two of three of the GOP frontrunners have made a complete mockery of marriage as an institution (and the third belongs to a group that condones bigamy), it is a valid issue.
Family values generally seem like a red herring to me, as they were with Bill Clinton, Ron Reagan, Gerald Ford etc.
I would prefer that Michelle stick to her speciality, given her meteoric rise up the corporate ladder upon her husband's election, rather than making up non-issues.
JBP
Like a red herring?
That's a great position, now that it is a non-issue for the GOP.
I sure heard a lot about family values over the last 20 years or so from the GOP.
I don't know Skeeter. I remember Democrats (and I was one of them) making cracks about Reagan's Divorce and distance from his kids.
Only in response to his claims of being more "pro-family" than anyone in the Democratic Party.
Of course people made that response, since the GOP claimed to be the party of family values then also.
And this year, with Guiliani and Huckabee, the GOP claim is pathetic.
Mrs. Obama was right on: Those two need to run a household before they can run a country.
Well Skeeter, the women struggling to run families don't agree with you,
In the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, Clinton led Obama by a 2 to 1 margin among female voters. Her 15-point lead in the poll is entirely attributable to that margin. Clinton drew support from 51 percent of the women surveyed, compared with 24 percent who said they supported Obama and 11 percent who said they backed former senator John Edwards of North Carolina.
Clinton is drawing especially strong support from lower-income, lesser-educated women -- voters her campaign strategists describe as "women with needs." Obama, by contrast, is faring better among highly educated women, who his campaign says are interested in elevating the political discourse.
I used to think the Dem primary was going to be real close and brokered to give us Gore / Obama.
Now with Jennifer Hunter handing this Family Values mumbo jumbo to Drudge, it's a landslide for Clinton.
Good for her.
her meaning Sen Clinton of course..
What does Senator Clinton have to do with Mrs. Obama's comments? Why bring her up? She has never had problems running a household. In fact, unlike the Republicans, she did a great job running her household.
The two Republicans, on the other hand, have made a mockery of the way they run a household.
What does Senator Clinton have to do with Mrs. Obama's comments? Why bring her up?
Hunter did,
She didn't elaborate, but it could be interpreted as a swipe at the Clintons.
If Hunter had written ...the Clintons, the Giulianis, the McCains, and so on...
...it would have been a different sort of story.
But Hunter didn't write that.
It could be interpreted a lot of ways.
You seem to think that the target was Sen. Clinton.
What makes you think that? Do you believe that Sen. Clinton had problems running her household?
picked up on Hunter's interpretation. The only interpretation Hunter offered.
I think public service puts a huge strain on a public servant's personal life.
I'm surprized if they can keep their family life in balance because of what the country demands of them.
Your comments sure seem to indicate that you bought Hunter's interpetation. Am I mistaken?
Also, how does keeping the family life in balance lead to using your marriage to evade ethics rules, as Huckabee did?
Finally, you seem to advocate ignoring an opponent's record. That seems cowardly to me.
Bill, you wrote:
"I was in a brawl once at a tavern in Berwyn started when my buddy's girl friend insulted a big guy about his tattoos.
The candidate's wife just got him into a brawl he didn't need either, and with an opponent who packs an awfully mean wallop. This is a bad fight to have picked and it will have no winners."
Your analogy sucks, much like most of the crap you post. I hope you got your butt kicked in Berwyn too.
Let's wait and see how Sen Clinton cleans Sen Obama's clock before we judge that.
Berwyn's a window to the world. All one needs to know about life can be learned there.
Obama's sure not going to be Clinton's VP for sure.
Skeeter,
Why does everyone who disagrees with you represent the GOP? Can't something think the family values debate is miserable without having some partisan agenda?
I am of the opinion that the Obama's would rather talk about pretty much anything but the issues, as Sen Obama is way too Left for the voters, and way too much into the Chicago Machine to stand much scrutiny. So they pout about Audacity and Family Values rather than nationalization of the auto industry and reimposing the death tax to feed the voter rhetoric rather than substance.
JBP
JBP,
Who made "family values" an issue?
Was it the Democrats?
No, it was the GOP. Act like a man and admit that.
That same GOP has family values into a farce, and Mrs. Obama was correct to raise the issue.
When the GOP thought they could win by calling Democrats anti-family, that is all we heard.
Now? Not a word. And that silence is important because it shows a complete lack of values in the GOP.
Face it: Mrs. Obama was right. The GOP frontrunners need to learn how to raise a family and run a house before they can claim to be able to run our country.
I'd say FDR did ok running the country and a lousy job with his family.
I'm glad he was President when he was though.
All I know about running the country is from presidential bios, but as a Father and Husband I'm guessing the two roles don't share much.
Maybe I missed something.
Was the Democratic Party back in 1932 -1994 talking about "elect us because we believe in family virtue while our opponents are godless commies who want to destroy families"?
I read a lot of history, but I haven't come across that one.
The GOP, on the other hand, sure spends a lot of time talking about their great family values and how the Democrats will come in and destroy traditional marriage.
If you are going to use that line, you need to live up to it. The GOP sure talks about family, but from I'm reading lately, they actually practice multiple marriage, they use their marriage to avoid ethics rules, a lot of them have "youthful indescretions", one of them belongs to a group that, depending on who you believe, either merely condones or actually practices marriage of one man to multiple women, and at least one of the current GOP senators seems to really like hookers.
Those aren't values shared by the rest of the country, despite all the GOP's "family values" talk.
Typo -- that should read 1932 - 1944, and not 1994.
Still don't buy it. Some effective Presidents had zilch for "family values".
The statement that Michelle Obama made was not that "in the name of partisan bickering, I am going to get those Republicans back for ever claiming to be in favor of family values", it was "if you can't run your own house, you can't run the White House." , which is exactly not true, and completely useless to making sense of any serious issue.
The "I am tired of being afraid" statement is bewildering coming from Hyde Park, with its frequent muggings and beatings. Her husband has represented the district for years now, why didn't he do something about it?
JBP
Let me get this right, JBP:
According to you, if Mrs. Obama is going to attack Republicans, she should start out by saying "This is an attack on Republicans."
If not, according to you, she is just providing general information, and you disagree with that general premise (despite Republican attacks on President Clinton and his issues with fidelity)?
Is that really your point?
Also, are you now disclaiming any attacks made by the GOP on President Clinton? Are you admitting that his personal life was not relevant to his performance in the White House?
No,
My point is that Mr. and Mrs. Obama is spouting out drivel rather than addressing issues.
I did not like it when the GOP went after Clinton's personal life either. There is much more important stuff than this for politicans to do.
JBP
I'm not clear.
The original post doesn't mention a single word said by Sen. Obama. Only his wife's words are mentioned. Where in the original post do you find Sen. Obama "spouting out drivel?"
With regard to Mrs. Obama: She said basically "convert yourself first." If your are going to talk about Family Values, you should live a life that shows strong Family Values.
I don't think that is drivel at all. In fact, I think it is outstanding advice for all of us. It is something I hope I can teach my children.
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