Hillary's Final Strategy: Be Afraid - HuffPo

<snip>

Eldridge, Iowa - Barack Obama and John Edwards might want to change the world. But Hillary Clinton wants to protect you against it.

That's the unmistakable message that Senator Clinton is pounding out in this final phase of the campaign to capture the Iowa caucuses. In a world brimming with danger and uncertainty, she argues as she blitzes the Hawkeye State, there's no time to waste daydreaming about pie-in-the-sky promises of reform. Instead, the American people must choose a leader ready to immediately start fixing the problems that already exist and one who is immediately ready to face the inevitable and "unpredictable" crises looming right over the horizon. And that would be Clinton.

"We know some of the challenges that await the next president," Clinton told a packed crowd at a junior high school Saturday morning. "But no matter how much we know, we can't possibly anticipate all the problems."

The razzamatazz cheerleading, sloganeering style that punctuated her earlier campaign events has now been replaced by a sedate, somber, even grave tone coming from the podium. Clinton never raised her voice, never elevated the mood, and at times sounded like a concerned, responsible parent telling the kids that something terrible was taking place outside the door but not to worry because Mom and Dad - or in this case Hill and Bill- would take care of it.

Becoming president, she said in a hushed tone, is "an awesome responsibility. And it was thrown into relief with the events last Thursday with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto." "When that person gets into the Oval Office," she said, referring to the next president, "there will be a stack of problems already waiting: a war, another war to resolve, an economy that is faltering, housing values that have dropped 6% in some parts of the country...all of those millions, 47 million of them uninsured."

As is now customary among her leading rivals, Clinton didn't utter the words Obama or Edwards - the two candidates now in a dogfight for the mantle of change- but she drew a bright shining line between her position and theirs. They are the dreamers. She is the doer. All three are locked in a dead heat to win next Thursday's first-in-the-nation caucus.

"Everybody running is talking about change," Clinton said, sporting a royal blue blazer over black slacks. "Some people think you bring change by demanding it," she said, referring to Edwards. "Some people think you bring it by hoping for it," she continued in a clear reference to Obama. "And some people think you bring it by working very, very hard everyday. And that's what I've been doing for 35 years."

Even the name of this last-minute, multi-stop, week-long closing swing through Iowa carries the ultra-utilitarian title of "Big Problems, Real Solutions - Time to Pick a President."

<snip>

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/29/hillarys-final-strategy_n_78720.html

Gee... I wonder where she got the idea that this strategy might work.

:eyes:

Worry about the wheels falling off later.

Fear, fear, fear,

President Clinton is absolutely right that you never know the challenges a president might face.

In fact, he said that one of the reasons he has his daily schedules from his Presidential years at his library, is that so the American people can get a sense of all the different issues a President deals with in the course of a day. You might be dealing with Issue A at 9:00 AM, and then at 8:15 PM you're dealing with this issue...

There's nothing in his comments that suggest he wants to get the American people to vote based on fear. In fact, it's the very tactic he's rejected. He's said many times before that if you've got one candidate trying to appeal to your hopes, and the other trying to appeal to your fears....you know which candidate to go with.

Is he familiar with the 22nd Amendment?

:shrug:

and so was the article.

:shrug:

I can't stand reading most the crap over there.

Don

Interesting that we bite the hand that...

Nevermind.

:shrug:

(First off - the HuffPo article is quoteing Hillary Clinton, not Bill Clinton. but let's look at your post for a moment.)

You wrote:

He's said many times before that if you've got one candidate trying to appeal to your hopes, and the other trying to appeal to your fears....you know which candidate to go with.

Isn't Hillary negating that argument by dismissing Obama, who is trying to appeal to people's hopes?

Not trying to start a fight here, just asking.

- as

"There will be a stack of problems: a war, another war..."