Matt Drudge has posted this headline on his site: “Editor For SC Largest Paper: Edwards Is ‘A Big Phony.’” That claim may qualify as the understatement of the political year. John Edwards has gone from what U.S. News & World Report describes as “the happy-face centrist” to the Candidate from the World of Kos. Has any ’08 candidate traveled so far (to the left), so fast, and in such a transparently false manner?
There are the predictable flip-flops. Today Edwards says the Iraq war was a mistake; in 2002, he insisted that “Saddam Hussein’s regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies. . . . [W]e must be prepared to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, and eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction once and for all.”
Having been an early supporter of the war on terror, he now refers to it as a “bumper sticker.” John Edwards is now a passionate critic of NAFTA—after having had nice words to say about it just a few years ago. Once upon a time he expressed concern about government spending; today, he is a champion of it. He raged against “shameful lending practices” that are “devastating communities”—and then we found out he was employed in a firm that engaged in predatory lending practices. The multi-millionaire owner of a 28,000-square-foot home targets the rich in his speeches. On and on it goes.
Edwards is also leading the campaign against Fox News. He was among the first Democratic candidates to refuse to take part in Fox-sponsored debates, prompting this withering reply from Roger Ailes: “The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face al Qaeda.”
And sometimes what reveals the most about a candidate is not his stance on issues, but how he acts. John Edwards’s actions range from the funny (the high-priced haircuts and this widely-mocked video of the candidate’s carefully attending to his hair) to the disturbing. For instance, according to the political consultant Bob Shrum, during the 2004 campaign Edwards told Kerry a highly personal story about his son’s death. Edwards said it was a story about which he had told very few people. In Shrum’s account, Edwards told Kerry “that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body….” Shrum says Kerry was “queasy” because Senator Edwards had recounted that story before, in almost the same language.
This story, by itself, is unsettling. In the context of the Makeover of John Edwards, it is unnerving. One senses that Edwards is unanchored philosophically, that he is thirsting for political power and willing to remake himself in order to gain it.
He is Bill Clinton without the interns.
The CIA has been a failure for decades. It probably doesn’t matter who is on top of this thick-headed bureaucratic juggernaut.
Panetta is a good guy — smart, decent, moderate — but it does seem an odd choice for CIA.
Hmm. I wonder what Panetta’s status is with the Bund. The fact that Commentary is critical doesn’t mean the Bund is upset. Could be a head-fake, after all. It’s happened before.
So, Commentarians, is Panetta a fellow AIPACer? You’ll know. Save me the Googling, okay?
Prior to 9/11, during the Clinton Administration, as part of his duties at OMB, Panetta tried ceaselesly to obtain “peace dividends” by diminishing the budget at the CIA. I’ll get links if you aren’t already onto this from reading elsewhere, but Panetta is a poor choice vis a vis his cost-cutting Clintonian vision of how to protect Americans. A poor choice indeed.
Of course, to the Hartscheissers anyone named Leon gotta be one….
Above-mentioned link:
http://www.redstate.com/brianfaughnan/2009/01/05/obamas-cia-designee-sought-cia-cuts-threatened-director/
Panetta will enforce political correctness in an agency where it is already paramount. This could be a REDUNDANT appointment. CIA could do what Panetta would want them to do even without him around… birds of a feather…
I do wonder, though, what they’ll do without Bush to kick around anymore.
fwiw – i think this is a serious appointment that has a lot of potential…clearly, the man has decent organizational skills; clearly, the man understand what it means to manage information flow to the executive…i’ve heard panetta on cspan dozens of times and, while he is surely not intelligence ‘professional,’ he is clearly someone who is capable of being a fair arbiter of conflicting views on ambiguous data…
..is this an obvious or ‘safe’ choice? no…is this a stupid or political or hack choice…? no…
this nomination is exactly why there should be confirmation hearings – let’s give the man a chance to show his thinking and his savvy…
This pick shows the contempt Obama has for the intelligence community. We will see if this pick comes back to bite us in next 4 years. I pray he doesn’t follow through with this pick.
Darn, why couldn’t Obama have picked one of those waterboarding enthusiasts? That really would’ve gotten Jenny’s rocks off.
Little Jenny like to torture Ay-Rabs. Little Jenny the homophobe.
Harriet Myers.
This is Obama’s Harriet Myers moment.
Trust Fund Jenny. Did you torture the sorority chicks who got to date the cute guys?
Felate my, #14 (Paul A’Barge). Felate me long-time.
I seem to remember that when I first made a comment on this site I had to wait a few hours before it was posted. I gathered the editors wanted to screen comments to make sure they were appropriate, and that after the first few times they decided I was OK. If this is still being done—as I think it should be—I suggest reconsiderin the person who posted comments ##13, 15 and (especially) 16.
Incidentally, Paul A’Barge (#14) made exactly the comment that I had in mind when I logged on to the comments section.
Well, Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for this pick. They allowed the nutroots to demonize anyone who had any remote connection to the war against terrorism under the Bush Administration. To them, this pick must be great, but to the rest of the sane individuals in America there can be nothing but trouble if Leon Panetta gets confirmed. Panetta better bone up on national security and foreign policy and the GOP better come prepared with some hardnosed questions (such as: Do you support FISA and, if so, do you think that in its current form that it is flexible to meet the demands of today’s technologies? If not, what do you propose to do to update FISA so that it can meet this present-day demands?).
#17 … you can shove your racist and homophobic views right up your pooper.
I’m a long time lurker and first time poster (be easy on me) but doesn’t it seem like a whole lot of Clinton era people are getting jobs? Maybe the price of Hillary! not contesting the Obama nomination was to get herself and her people plum jobs in the new administration.
My theory for why Obama is going to the Clinton people: He doesn’t have anyone else. Three years ago he was a state senator and national security was definitely not in his pay grade, nor was any kind of executive responsibility. Since then he’s mostly spent his time running for president. And as someone noted above, he owes the left a lot. So where can he find good administrators whom he knows and trusts, especially for the foreign-policy side of his administration? The Panetta appointment speaks volumes about the shallowness of Obama’s experience and preparation for the job.
We may be missing something obvious here: the connection of some of the most senior civilians in the national intel community with key Senate Democrats — and their likely preference for a non-intel bureaucrat who won’t interfere with the fiefdom they’ve built in the DNI bureaucracy, in the wake of the big 2005 Reorganization.
What the nomination of Panetta tells me is that there will be no change in the intel community to upset the leadership alignment that produced the 2006 NIE on Iran. We can expect names like Thomas Fingar and Richard Immerman, senior DNI officials who have relentlessly opposed Bush’s policies because of their political leanings, to be able to continue filtering and presenting intelligence as seems best to them, without fear of an independent, professionally expert voice erupting from CIA.
#19: Good point. I’d overlooked that.
The appointment of Leon Panetta to head the CIA rivals in its total inappropriateness the naming of Amir Peretz to the position of Israeli Defense Minister. Ahmadinejad must be laughing.
Even the Clintons?? I as recall, the Clintons had a boatload of contempt for certain US institutions, the military and CIA prominent among them. Clinton threw a bone to the hawks in his party by appointing James Woolsey director and then proceeded to ignore the man’s existence for the next two years. But, at least Woolsey had had some salient experience. Panetta is hard to figure unless it’s a move made strictly to protect Obama’s flanks. God knows the CIA is a cesspool. But Obama should be used to that.
This is an extraordinarily disturbing appointment on almost every count:
– If Obama feels forced by his left wing to avoid everyone with any experience at CIA or the IC over the past eight years, he’s giving the back of his hand to thousands of smart, dedicated intelligence officers who’ve worked hard and successfully to keep Americans safe during that time.
– If Obama is sending Panetta to “reform” CIA of its supposedly “excessive” practices, one has to wonder where he thinks he’ll find again the resourcefulness of CIA officers who swooped into Afganistan after 9/11 and put al Qaeda and the Taliban on the run within weeks — at minimal cost. As for the “extraordinary rendition” about which so many Obama fans are exercised, would it not have been just such a rendition if CIA had been allowed to execute its plan to kidnap bin Laden from Khandahar in 1996 or 1998? And while we’re on the subject, where did Panetta, as Chief of Staff, stand on the decision not to implement that plan?
– If the IC is still in need of broader reform that would improve its efficiency, a good place to start would be to reconsider the creation of the Office of DNI as an added and largely superfluous and wasteful layer of intelligence bureacrats. But Panetta is being appointed to CIA, where he’ll be subordinate to the DNI and unable to promote such a change.
– No where else in government would the appointment of a neophyte be acceptable to anyone. Imagine proposing an attorney general who had not practiced law; an FBI director with no experience in law enforcement; a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who had not put at least 20 years into the military; a Secretary of the Treasury with no business or financial experience.
It’s a disgrace and a grave mistake.
This is an extraordinarily disturbing appointment on almost every count:
– If Obama feels forced by his left wing to avoid everyone with any experience at CIA or the IC over the past eight years, he’s giving the back of his hand to thousands of smart, dedicated intelligence officers who’ve worked hard and successfully to keep Americans safe during that time.
– If Obama is sending Panetta to “reform” CIA of its supposedly “excessive” practices, one has to wonder where he thinks he’ll find again the resourcefulness of CIA officers who swooped into Afganistan after 9/11 and put al Qaeda and the Taliban on the run within weeks — at minimal cost. As for the “extraordinary rendition” about which so many Obama fans are exercised, would it not have been just such a rendition if CIA had been allowed to execute its plan to kidnap bin Laden from Khandahar in 1996 or 1998? And while we’re on the subject, where did Panetta, as Chief of Staff, stand on the decision not to implement that plan?
– If the IC is still in need of broader reform that would improve its efficiency, a good place to start would be to reconsider the creation of the Office of DNI as an added and largely superfluous and wasteful layer of intelligence bureacrats. But Panetta is being appointed to CIA, where he’ll be subordinate to the DNI and unable to promote such a change.
– No where else in government would the appointment of a neophyte be acceptable to anyone. Imagine proposing an attorney general who had not practiced law; an FBI director with no experience in law enforcement; a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who had not put at least 20 years into the military; a Secretary of the Treasury with no business or financial experience.
It’s a disgrace and a grave mistake.
Actually Panetta is another one of Obama’s inspired picks like those he announced for the DOJ yesterday. Allegedly Porter Goss and George Tenet were “experts” and we all know that turned out. Panetta is a superb manager and totally experienced in the highways and byways of bureacratic Washington and this is what is important in the intelligence world. He is highly regarded on left and right, after all Pete Hoekstra was welcoming his appointment yesterday so if that doesn’t tell you something I don’t know what does. He’ll have no trouble getting confirmed. You can ignore all the kneejerk reactions.
Forget not Clinton brought Penetta in as Chief of Staff to establish discipline to the Clinton administration. By most accounts he was successful while he was engaged. His nickname around DC at the time was “Leon the Leg-breaker.”
George H. Bush was not an “intelligence professional” when he was named CIA head in the 70s, although he had been ambassador and congressman. I think Panetta was named because of his disagreement with policies that condone torture, which signal a shift in policy that I welcome.
Some seriously disturbed people on here, I notice.
Including the author.
Criticism for the sake of criticism is the norm, it seems. (I love to see my words in writing?)
Obama knows exactly what needs to be done, and some people are just sh*t-scared of what ‘change’ really means. It is coming, bigtime.
I can’t wait for the ‘hallelujahs’ once ‘Change Obama Style’ really kicks in. The man is serious.
Remember you read it here first!
Obama’s appointments have shown that he is just another politician. The only “change” he’s bringing to the White House is the color of his skin. As an early Obama supporter, I feel incredibly disillusioned. I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and had not voted again, until 2008; now I suppose I’ll never ever cast a vote for any politician.
Obama is starting out exactly like Bill Clinton did, which eventually led to the planes
crashing into the Twin Towers!
God help us…
If prior Intelligence experience isn’t a baseline prerequisite for being named Director of the CIA, why not name Dick Morris? Like Panetta, Morris is also a long time DC insider, has great organizational skills (imagine coordinating Bill’s adultery schedule to compliment Hilary’s travel schedule!), opposes torture and is [was] chummy with the Clintons, all of which have been proferred as reasons why Panetta’s qualified for the job.