To: Interested Parties

From: Greg Craig, former director, Policy Planning Office, U.S. State Department

RE: Senator Clinton’s claim to be experienced in foreign policy: Just words?

DA: March 11, 2008

When your entire campaign is based upon a claim of experience, it is important that you have evidence to support that claim. Hillary Clinton’s argument that she has passed “the Commander- in-Chief test” is simply not supported by her record.

There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton played an important domestic policy role when she was First Lady. It is well known, for example, that she led the failed effort to pass universal health insurance. There is no reason to believe, however, that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton Administration. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the Situation Room. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy, nor did she have her own national security staff. She did not do any heavy-lifting with foreign governments, whether they were friendly or not. She never managed a foreign policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis. As far as the record shows, Senator Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue – not at 3 AM or at any other time of day.

The Clintons are trying to steal the nomination from Barack Obama — and he can’t let them.

The Clintons’ campaign attacks put Obama in a bind. If he doesn’t answer in kind, he’s toast. But if he does, they’ll have forced him off his winning message of hope and change from the bitter politics of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush eras.

If they pull him off his game and onto theirs, they can wrest away the Democratic convention victory that he’s earned. The solution for Obama is clear: Reply in kind, but do it through surrogates.

Hillary Clinton, conducting a dirty campaign.

Obama must answer Hillary’s negative attacks and make counter punches of his own to rock her back on her heels. His holier-than-thou posture is fine for the opening stages of a campaign, but when your opponent starts throwing mud, you’ve got to answer.

The Clintons’ campaign attacks put Obama in a bind.

If he doesn’t answer in kind, he’s toast.

But if he does, they’ll have forced him off his winning message of hope and change from the bitter politics of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush eras.

“Clintons trying to STEAL NOMINATION FROM BARACK OBAMA”

If they pull him off his game and onto theirs, they can wrest away the Democratic convention victory that he’s earned.

The solution for Obama is clear: Reply in kind, but do it through surrogates.

“His message is empty”, they say. “He has no experience,” they repeat after very experienced Hillary Clinton pulls every string, consults every voodoo instrument and asks for assistance from anyone who could make Obama darker, uglier, incoherent or anything, please, that will make her look better. (Every time I see her I reach for my rosary and big bottle of Holy Water) She’s beginning to look scary, screaming in her squeaky tone and gesturing like Chucky’s Bride because her candy is being taken away. How could the Clintons even imagine that a younger, much better politician, and on top of that with a unifying and positive message, would take away her pivotal moment, her arrival to the gates of power, her throne? Where is this guy coming from? Obama? What Obama? His name reads like a nightmare for Hillary, and it’s not going away. It must be stopped. It must be erased from the map.

The last few weeks Barack Obama has been under attack by her and her friends at the press, those she claimed were bias for Obama. CNN has displayed some interesting Obama Bias Fever. Last Tuesday Harvard Ph.D. and political commentator, Bill Schneider almost had a nervous breakdown with giggles and undeniable pleasure right on live TV after his outside polling revealed that she would win Texas as well as Ohio. Wolf Blitzer didn’t know what to do, jump or roll on the floor, when he realized Schneider was having a political orgasm with Hillary’s upcoming victories. In a somewhat similar situation as the Republican illumination they had also seen the light: they could beat Obama. They could stop Obama from darkening-could it be tainting- the democratic nomination. Obama and his peace pipe can go to hell: Hillary is now Da’ Man.

Since the “momentum” is on her side, the Republicans, terrified of the possibility that 300 million Americans- especially themselves- could witness a catastrophic McCain-Obama debate, are also on her side, just for a little while, just enough time to make sure that Obama is out of the picture so they could download the 500 million megabytes of dirt they have on Hillary and her pathetic husband-of sorts.

The Republicans are very white and rich and all that but they are not stupid. You have to be a super genius to make people believe that George Bush is a politician. To place him in the presidency takes unexplainable intelligence. So it’s easy for them to figure out that Obama is the problem, Hillary could also win but they can “work” with her, plus the fact that she’s very white really helps. This is America. White counts. The color of your skin in this country doesn’t stop you from being successful but the less dark you are the wider the doors open. Being white is a privilege that, in most cases, overrides other qualities like decency, commitment, kindness, loyalty or any other commodity of the human race.

Considering this, Barack Obama has been able to overcome olympic hurdles and survive. Can he make it to the finish line? It’s up the American people.

The other race, the one for the White House, has also been drawn with subliminal undertones into the racial mud. “If Hillary loses, I’ll vote for McCain” or “I’ll never vote for that black guy”, Democrats tell me on a daily basis. “You must be crazy supporting a black guy,” I am often told by people who aren’t precisely white, since I began supporting Obama’s candidacy.

In two months, Obama has been labeled a Muslim, a Communist, an empty head and a terrorist among other things. He has been endorsed by Fidel Castro, Genghis Khan, Stalin and Satan. His contributors and close political allies are being investigated. His wife has to read from a manual to answer a question, to express and opinion. She has been almost lynched by that moral authority Bill O’Reilly, you know, the one with the falafa or falufa and a vibrator in his pocket. Even Florida wants to get into the act now. That’s all we need at this point- another CHAD War that would probably drag the primaries another year. Florida residents should take a basic elementary math test in order to vote. If these guys can’t count, what’s the use of voting other than the CHAD thing that no one understands? It’s like a tribal ritual where symbolic pieces of paper are sacrificed with sharp instruments. Obama doesn’t get a break. It’s like the man has killed your goldfish and raped your cat or something like that but that’s not the problem. The Problem in his life has a name: Hillary Clinton. The Clinton plague, the power hungry monster machine has declared him public enemy, and he’s in danger of becoming another statistic in the Clinton book of victims.

It is precisely his message of hope his best bet to defeat Bill and Hillary’s incredibly aggressive and negative political machine. The message of Hope is now the main target of the evildoers (oops I might have to resign my US citizenship for this) who bite their nails every time Barack Obama fills another stadium with 20 thousand people and opens his mouth. We can only imagine her turning away when he speaks of Hope and a united country, inspiring millions of voters of all ages with his exceptional oratory. His words must hit like daylight in her eyes. She insists for solutions from Obama; in the eight years she was in power (I guess) she doesn’t have two square feet of solid ground to stand on in the matter of solutions. Her most significant achievement was almost destroying the national healthcare system as well as having the ability to survive a dozen scandals.

Solutions will come when we place Barack Obama in the presidency of the United States. She should be more cooperative, she should be more of a team player, she should make an effort to help Obama get there. By being herself she is doing her part; she’s fulfilling her role as a hatemonger, showing how little she cares for anything else but her greed and her power. By coming across as cruel, cold, and mean, she helps us understand. She helps us see the light. The same light that the Republicans are now recognizing as danger while John McCain takes another nap.

When the 2008 presidential campaign began, I lacked strong feelings for or against Hillary Rodham Clinton. I knew, of course, that many people loathed the former first lady and that many other people adored her. But I’d never felt the large emotions she seemed to stir in others. New York’s junior senator wants to be president? Fine, I thought. Let’s hear her pitch. Because she was still a relative newcomer to government service, I assumed that, more than most presidential candidates, Clinton would recognize the need to give voters a reason to vote for her. I waited expectantly to discover what that reason might be.
I never dreamed the reason would be “experience.” More astonishing still, the public seems to be buying it. According to a new New York Times/CBS News poll, 79 percent of all Democratic primary voters believe that Hillary Clinton has “prepared herself well enough for the job of President,” compared with only 40 percent for Obama. “Experience Counts” declared the headline of a Jan. 9 editorial in the Boston Globe about the New Hampshire victories of Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “The results suggest that, at the least, New Hampshire voters put more stock in the length of a candidate’s track record than Iowa voters did,” the Globe said. But the paper never got around to explaining what, in Hillary’s case, that experience consisted of.
Let’s be clear. If you’re a Democrat, experience isn’t on this year’s menu. The most experienced among the major candidates seeking the Democratic nomination were Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware and Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. They have now dropped out. The remaining major candidates—Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.—all lack lengthy records in government.