Common Sense Political Thought

My darling bride (of 28 years, 8 months and six days) is a registered nurse, and she’s started thousands of IVs (intravenous lines) in her career. But starting IVs was not a skill taught at Thomas Nelson Community College’s nursing progrram: nurses were expected to pick up the skill through on-the-job training once they passed their boards and were employed.

So, when Mrs Pico started her first nursing job at the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, Virginia, she not only lacked that skill, but was trying to learn in on patients with very small veins. She frequently came home frustrated and complaining that it was a hard skill to learn, that she kept going all the way through the veins, or could make the stick and then blow it when she had to withdraw the needle lut leave the IV line in place, or something like that. And having to practice on poor, sick kids who couldn’t understand the pain bothered her even more. Nurses often find their first job a very humbling experience!

Well, being the nice husband I am, I told her to bring home a few IV kits, and I’d let her practice on me. (Of course, I have veins you could start an IV in with a sixteen-penny nail!) And she did a few times. So, my question is: being married to a registered nurse, who can start IVs with ease now, and having been slightly involved (as a practice dummy) in the process, can I claim Mrs Pico’s years of experience in starting IVs as my own?

Well, perhaps by the standards of the editors of The New York Times, the answer is yes! In giving their presidential endorsement to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), the editors wrote:

Mrs. Clinton sometimes overstates the importance of résumé. Hearing her talk about the presidency, her policies and answers for America’s big problems, we are hugely impressed by the depth of her knowledge, by the force of her intellect and by the breadth of, yes, her experience.

Uhhh, what experience is that? Just what has Mrs Clinton actually done?

She has been a senator from New York for seven years now, and it will be almost eight by election day. But you might as well subtract all of 2007 and 2008 from her experience as a senator, because the vast majority of her time, concentration and effort have been consumed not in being a senator but in being a presidential candidate. She has no signature legislation to her credit, she has brokered no notable compromises, she has shepherded no important legislation through the Senate. Her votes have been either the go-along-to-get-along — and pander to the presumed current mood of the voters — type. She voted for the resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein, proud to stand up and be part of the effort, until the public’s mood changed and, like the last Democratic presidential nominee, was for it before she was against it.

When the Democrats won control of the Congress in the 2006 elections, largely on the electorate’s disapproval of the dragging on of the occupation in Iraq, and President Bush vetoed the weak attempts of the Democrats to force a withdrawal timetable on him, did Senator Clinton stand up boldly and lead the way, and say, “No timetable, no money?” Did she use the power of the Senate to force the will of the Democrats on the President, or did she meekly accept what President Bush demanded?

Of course, being President of the United States is vastly different from being a Senator. Senators are legislators, whose job it is to write the laws and regulations which will govern our country and our lives; while the President has a role in legislation, his primary job is to run the workings of our government. He is an executive. What executive experience does Mrs Clinton have? What has she ever actually run before?

Well, when her husband became President, he, with much fanfare and promotion and confidence in her abilities, gave the First Lady the job coming up with some form of universal health care coverage plan. After months of herculean labor, done mostly under a secrecy the likes of which Vice President Cheney could only envy, Mrs Clinton produced a thousand-page legislative proposal, not one section of which was ever passed by one single committee or subcommittee of the 103rd Congress, a Congress with greater Democratic majorities than anything the Republicans enjoyed in the next six Congresses. It was, to put it both bluntly and obviously, a miserable failure.

What do the editors say? Well, the best face that they can put on it is their supposition that she has learned from her failures:

Domestically, Mrs. Clinton has tackled complex policy issues, sometimes failing. She has shown a willingness to learn and change. Her current proposals on health insurance reflect a clear shift from her first, famously disastrous foray into the issue. She has learned that powerful interests cannot simply be left out of the meetings. She understands that all Americans must be covered — but must be allowed to choose their coverage, including keeping their current plans.

“She has learned that powerful interests cannot simply be left out of the meetings?” Any sophomore in political science could have told her that, before she began. That was one expensive lesson! The editors may have been “hugely impressed by the depth of her knowledge, (and) by the force of her intellect,” but there really isn’t much evidence of that. Just how has Mrs Clinton demonstrated the “force of her intellect?”

The editors said that Mrs Clinton has used:

her years in the Senate well to immerse herself in national security issues, and has won the respect of world leaders and many in the American military.

Well, normally world leaders don’t express disrespect, being for the most part acquainted with the norms of courtesy. And American military officers simply do not show disrespect to First Ladies or sitting Senators; military courtesy and respect for the chain of command is thoroughly taught in the service academies, in ROTC and OCS programs, because the armed forces could not function without it.

Quite frankly, Senator Clinton’s experience, as the editors of the Times list it, amounts to having read books and learned from her past failures.

While the editors at least had enough sense to avoid saying it, they have clearly fallen into the same mindset that the Clinton campaign wants the voters to accept: that Hillary Clinton’s experience includes the experience of Bill Clinton; that’s why, as the Times own political blog referenced, people are wondering just which Clinton is running for president.

Well, unless Mrs Clinton is embracing the Lurleen Wallace style of executive leadership, President Clinton’s experience is not her experience, anymore than my serving as a practice dummy for my wife’s learning to start IVs makes me experienced in starting IVs.