Presidential Nomination Quotes

I wish that in order to secure his party’s nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickenson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael’s “Two Sleepy People”, Johnny Cash’s “Five Feet High and Rising”, and “You Got the Silver” by the Rolling Stones...What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes.

I wish it were different. I wish that we privileged knowledge in politicians, that the ones who know things didn't have to hide it behind brown pants, and that the know-not-enoughs were laughed all the way to the Maine border on their first New Hampshire meet and greet. I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's "Two Sleepy People," Johnny Cash's "Five Feet High and Rising," and "You Got the Silver" by the Rolling Stones. After all, the United States is the greatest country on earth dealing with the most complicated problems in the history of the world--poverty, pollution, justice, Jerusalem. What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes.

Typically, in politics, more than one horse is owned and managed by the same team in an election. There's always and extra candidate who will slightly mimic the views of their team's opposing horse, to cancel out that person by stealing their votes just so the main horse can win. Elections are puppet shows. Regardless of their rainbow coats and many smiles, the agenda is one and the same.

Reagan and his growing right-wing "truth" machine had stirred public opinion to such a frothy head that Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker was warned that a vote for the treaty would cost him any chance at the GOP presidential nomination in 1980. On the way to the Senate floor to cast his aye vote, a popular centrist Democrat from New Hampshire asked his wife to "come on and watch me lose my seat

It must be that there are years unlike other years, as different in climate and direction and mood as one day can be from another day. This year of 1960 was a year of change, a year when secret fears come into the open, when discontent stops being dormant and changes gradually to anger. It wasn't only in me or in New Baytown. Presidential nominations would be coming up soon and in the air the discontent was changing to anger and with the excitement anger brings.

Operation Diamond would neutralize antiwar protesters with mugging squads and kidnapping teams; Operation Coal would funnel cash to Rep. Shirley Chisholm, a black congresswoman from Brooklyn seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, in an effort to sow racial and gender discord in the party; Operation Opal would use electronic surveillance against various targets, including the headquarters of Democratic presidential candidates Edmund Muskie and George McGovern; Operation Sapphire would station prostitutes on a yacht, wired for sound, off Miami Beach during the Democratic National Convention.

Such was Frémont’s fame that, in 1856, he was nominated as the Republican Party’s first presidential candidate. The ensuing campaign was “one of the nastiest in the nation’s history.” Indulging in the kind of unbridled calumny that makes modern-day mudslinging seem like the height of civility, Frémont’s adversaries branded him “a secret papist” (a harsh accusation in an era of virulent anti-Catholic bigotry), a bastard, an adulterer, a native-born Frenchman, and the son of a prostitute.

Contact often has the effect of hardening hostilities, not dissolving barriers. This effect is common in politics. When Jesse Jackson was running for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, his percentage of the white vote was consistently highest in those states with the fewest blacks. Whites with the most actual contact with blacks were least likely to vote for him. The same was true in 2008 during Barack Obama’s Democratic primary campaigns. He won the highest percentages of the white vote in states such as Iowa, which has few blacks, and the lowest percentages in states with large black populations. Bernard N. Grofman of the University of California, Irvine has found a reliable political correlation: As the number of blacks rises, more whites vote Republican—and the less likely they are to vote for black candidates. It is whites whose knowledge about blacks is filtered by the media rather than gained first-hand who have the most favorable impression of them. The alleged benefits of diversity seem illusory to the people who actually experience it.

On the morning of March 4, in an extraordinary sequence of events, the House approved the bill right before the noon deadline. Senators had already adjourned to the Capitol for the inauguration. They were abruptly rounded up and herded back into the Senate chamber, the hands of the clock were turned back twenty minutes, and, to tempestuous applause, they approved Grant’s bill. Chester Arthur hurried to the Capitol to sign it. As his last presidential act, he nominated Grant, and President Cleveland renewed his commission as general of the army. Chester Arthur instructed the president pro tempore of the Senate to send Grant a congratulatory telegram.

That July, on a flight to the Republican convention in Detroit which nominated him as the party’s presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan had chatted with his political guru, Stuart Spencer: ‘Spencer asked the question all political pros learn to ask their candidates early on. “Why are you doing this, Ron? Why do you want to be President?” Without a moment’s hesitation Reagan answered, “To end the Cold War.

Looking back now, it’s hard not to conclude that the anxious nominal party of the economic left, Democrats, was magnificently played by the committed and confident economic right, Republicans, for forty years. I’m not saying the shift in popular sentiment wasn’t partly organic. But Democrats, after the Republican presidential landslides of 1972 and 1984, remained too dazed and confused and scared for too long.

If either one or two candidates is dominating the field at the time of the first primaries and caucuses, the voters are superfluous because the victor is already guaranteed. If, however, no candidate is dominant, then the primaries and caucuses will determine the winner. Nonetheless, in recent campaign cycles, that determination has been made earlier and earlier in the process, by fewer and fewer voters, who pick from only a few candidates - the ones who have not already eliminated themselves from serious contention by their weak performances in the pre-primary phase.

Hillary Clinton, the longtime fixture of the Boomer establishment, viewed her nomination in the same way that seniors view Social Security, as an entitlement to be realized whatever the risk. Donald Trump, the Section 8 scion, a bully whose quantum of thought is no greater than a tweet, decided to prove that the lowest common denominator could be found further down than anyone in the commentariat thought possible. That Clinton and Trump were the two most unpopular presidential candidates in decades, if not since the Civil War, deterred the Boomer machine not a whit, because they all agreed on what mattered. Thus,

Hillary rode her husband’s success to become first lady of Arkansas, then first lady of the United States. Then she won an easy race in liberal New York to become its junior senator. As a senator she accomplished, well, nothing. Then she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, losing to Barack Obama, who appointed her secretary of state. Despite extensive travels, Hillary’s achievements as secretary of state are essentially nil. As with Benghazi, most of her notable actions are screwups. In an apparent confirmation of the Peter Principle, however, Hillary is now back as the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. Hillary is fortunate, not merely in her career path, but also in being the surprise recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars that have been rained on her and her husband both directly and through the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation has raised more than $2 billion in contributions. A substantial portion of that came from foreign governments. Some sixteen nations together have given $130 million. In addition, through speeches and consulting fees, more than $100 million has ended up in the pockets of the Clintons themselves. The foundation, although ostensibly a charitable enterprise, gives only one dollar out of ten to charity. It has also been disclosed that the Clintons have developed a penchant for traveling in high style, and use a substantial amount of donation money on private planes and penthouse suites. The rest of the loot seems to have been accumulated into a war chest that is at the behest of the Clintons and the Hillary presidential campaign.

Pastor Max Lucado of San Antonio, Texas, said in an editorial for the Washington Post in February 2016 that he was “chagrined” by Trump’s antics. He ridiculed a war hero. He made a mockery of a reporter’s menstrual cycle. He made fun of a disabled reporter. He referred to a former first lady, Barbara Bush, as “mommy” and belittled Jeb Bush for bringing her on the campaign trail. He routinely calls people “stupid” and “dummy.” One writer catalogued 64 occasions that he called someone “loser.” These were not off-line, backstage, overheard, not-to-be-repeated comments. They were publicly and intentionally tweeted, recorded and presented.18 Lucado went on to question how Christians could support a man doing these things as a candidate for president, much less as someone who repeatedly attempted to capture evangelical audiences by portraying himself as similarly committed to Christian values. He continued, “If a public personality calls on Christ one day and calls someone a ‘bimbo’ the next, is something not awry? And to do so, not once, but repeatedly, unrepentantly and unapologetically? We stand against bullying in schools. Shouldn’t we do the same in presidential politics?” Rolling Stone reported on several evangelical leaders pushing against a Trump nomination, including North Carolina radio host and evangelical Dr. Michael Brown, who wrote an open letter to Jerry Falwell Jr., blasting his endorsement of Donald Trump. Brown wrote, “As an evangelical follower of Jesus, the contrast is between putting nationalism first or the kingdom of God first. From my vantage point, you and other evangelicals seem to have put nationalism first, and that is what deeply concerns me.”19 John Stemberger, president and general counsel for Florida Family Action, lamented to CNN, “The really puzzling thing is that Donald Trump defies every stereotype of a candidate you would typically expect Christians to vote for.” He wondered, “Should evangelical Christians choose to elect a man I believe would be the most immoral and ungodly person ever to be president of the United States?”20 A

If I had lied to the CIA, perhaps I might have passed a test. Instead of writing a book about the White House, I’d be poisoning a drug kingpin with a dart gun concealed inside a slightly larger dart gun, or making love to a breathy supermodel in the interest of national security. I’ll never know. I confessed to smoking pot two months before. The sunniness vanished from my interviewer’s voice. “Normally we like people who break the rules,” Skipper told me, “but we can’t consider anyone who’s used illegal substances in the past twelve months.” Just like that, my career as a terrorist hunter was over. I thought my yearning for higher purpose would vanish with my CIA dreams, the way a Styrofoam container follows last night’s Chinese food into the trash. To my surprise, it stuck around. In the weeks that followed, I pictured myself in all sorts of identities: hipster, world traveler, banker, white guy who plays blues guitar. But these personas were like jeans a half size too small. Trying them on gave me an uncomfortable gut feeling and put my flaws on full display. My search for replacement selves began in November. By New Year’s Eve I was mired in the kind of existential funk that leads people to find Jesus, or the Paleo diet, or Ayn Rand. Instead, on January 3, I found a candidate. I was on an airplane when I discovered him, preparing for our initial descent into JFK. This was during the early days of live in-flight television, and I was halfway between the Home Shopping Network and one of the lesser ESPNs when I stumbled across coverage of a campaign rally in Iowa. Apparently, a caucus had just finished. Speeches were about to begin. With nothing better to occupy my time, I confirmed that my seat belt was fully fastened. I made sure my tray table was locked. Then, with the arena shrunk to fit my tiny seatback screen, I watched a two-inch-tall guy declare victory. It’s not like I hadn’t heard about Barack Obama. I had heard his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. His presidential campaign had energized my more earnest friends. But I was far too mature to take them seriously. They supported someone with the middle name Hussein to be president of the United States. While they were at it, why not cast a ballot for the Tooth Fairy? Why not nominate Whoopi Goldberg for pope?

Now, I’m an apolitical person (which I realize is its own kind of misleading political posture, but I think you know what I mean). I do not have conventional political affiliations. I follow presidential elections the same way I follow the NFL playoffs: obsessively and dispassionately. But Sarah Palin was (and is) a real problem. Her nomination for vice president in 2008 represents the most desperate inclinations of the Republican Party. In two hundred years, I suspect historians will use Palin as an example of how insane America became in the decade following the destruction of the World Trade Center, and her origin story will seem as extraterrestrial and eccentric as Abe Lincoln jumping out of a window to undermine a voting quorum in 1840.

Several candidates for the Republican nomination for president in 2012 had previously accepted the climate science consensus, and in some cases actively worked toward climate change solutions (e.g., Huntsman, Pawlenty, Gingrich, and Romney). After becoming presidential candidates, they retreated from their previous positions in every case.

waits to see how Mrs Clinton will conduct a second bid for her party’s presidential nomination, that ========== The Economist

As he stood at the lectern beaming, delegates from the various chapters of Americans for Prosperity reported in, one by one, describing how they had organized “dozens of tea parties” in their regions as they stood beside oversized vertical signs marking their states. Strobe lights crisscrossed the auditorium as excitement surged. It was hard not to notice that twenty-nine years after David Koch left the national political stage in utter defeat, he had succeeded in financing something that looked a lot like a presidential nominating convention, with himself as the winner.

Hillary rode her husband’s success to become first lady of Arkansas, then first lady of the United States. Then she won an easy race in liberal New York to become its junior senator. As a senator she accomplished, well, nothing. Then she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, losing to Barack Obama, who appointed her secretary of state. Despite extensive travels, Hillary’s achievements as secretary of state are essentially nil. As with Benghazi, most of her notable actions are screwups. In an apparent confirmation of the Peter Principle, however, Hillary is now back as the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. Hillary

This was possible because the leaders of the Democratic Party controlled enough delegates to the nominating convention to choose whomever they wished. The opinions of voters in the primaries could be safely ignored.2

These party insiders used the results of primaries to gauge the popular appeal of the leading competitors, but in the end they chose as they saw fit.

Parties also must work together in order to succeed. If the coalition splits into competing factions, each pledged to a different candidate, voters become the real power by choosing between the insider-backed candidates. This happened in 2008 but is not the modal pattern.

An important argument of this book, however, is that parties try, via the candidates they nominate and elect, to pull policy toward what their interest and activist groups want, even if that is not what most voters want.

To summarize: The reformers of the 1970s tried to wrest the presidential nomination away from insiders and to bestow it on rank-and-file partisans, but the people who are regularly active in party politics have regained much of the control that was lost. Control rests on their ability to reach early agreement on whom to support and to exploit two kinds of advantage-control of campaign resources (money, knowledge, labor) and the persuasive power of a united front of inside players. Insider control is not unshakable, but it has usually been sufficient to the task at hand for some two decades.

The average delegate never knows what is going on. The hall is in dreadful confusion, and the speeches from the platforms are mainly irrelevant and unintelligible. The real business of a national convention is done down under the stage, in dark and smelly rooms, or in hotel suites miles away. Presently a State boss fights his way out to his delegation on the floor, and tells his slaves what is to be voted on, and how they are to vote. (Cited in Hinderaker 1956, 158)

It is instructive to observe these great men at the solemn business of selecting a First Chief for the greatest free Republic ever seen on earth. One hears, in their speeches, such imbecilities.... One sees them at close range, sweating, belching, munching peanuts, chasing fleas. They parade idiotically, carrying dingy flags and macerating one another's corns. They crowd the aisles, swapping gossip, most of it untrue.... The average delegate never knows what is going on. The hall is in dreadful confusion, and the speeches from the platforms are mainly irrelevant and unintelligible. The real business of a national convention is done down under the stage, in dark and smelly rooms, or in hotel suites miles away. Presently a State boss fights his way out to his delegation on the floor, and tells his slaves what is to be voted on, and how they are to vote. (Cited in Hinderaker 1956, 158)

On the surface, it therefore appears that voters choose the nominee by choosing convention delegates in their state primaries and caucuses. But the appearance is deceiving because, as we have suggested, party insiders use the invisible primary to coordinate behind a preferred candidate and to endow that candidate with the resources and prestige necessary to prevail in the state-by-state contests.

The traditional instrument of party control, the party nominating convention, was eviscerated by reform. Hence, party insiders must now exert themselves by informally coordinating behind a preferred candidate and providing that candidate with the support necessary to prevail in the state-by-state primaries.

This is a season of denialism. In my circles, the word tends to mean denial that climate change is real or human-caused. But denialism can stand for something broader: a refusal to see the things that tie us inconveniently together. These include the unequal history that the land remembers, the perennial presence in American life of migration and foreign labor, the decline of relative American power. You could distill it by saying that denialism is the ethos that refuses to see how the world is deeply plural at every scale and that we are in it together. The denial comes not because the denialist cannot see this but because he does see it, not because he doesn’t believe others are there but because he feels their presence so acutely, suspects they will make claims on him, fears they will get power over him and take what he has. When I was in high school in Calhoun County, West Virginia, my classmates told me that Michael Dukakis (the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee) would take everyone’s guns and Jesse Jackson (who ran for the nomination that year) had a plan to put all white people in camps. Today we hear that climate change is an internationalist stalking horse for global government. Interdependence is incipient war and conquest. Climate denial is really less about science than it is about who has claims on you, and who rules you.

Kissinger was true to his word, and during the 1968 presidential contest, after his favorite, Nelson Rockefeller, failed to win the Republican nomination, he covered all his bases. In a well-known and still controversial episode, he passed along information to the Nixon people about the Johnson administration’s last, and futile, efforts at negotiations with the North Vietnamese; he also offered to provide the Hubert Humphrey camp with the Rockefeller campaign’s files on Richard Nixon. “Six days a week I’m for Hubert,” he told a friend, “but on the seventh day I think they’re both awful.” Like Morgenthau, he reluctantly voted for Nixon—or so he says. In any case, Kissinger’s political double-dealing contributed to his winning the trust of the pathologically untrusting Nixon and landing the position of national security adviser with the new administration. Humphrey later said that if he had won the presidency he too would have appointed Kissinger national security adviser, suggesting two things: first, that Kissinger’s deviousness had paid off; second, that America’s Vietnam policy would not have been very different if Humphrey had been in the White House instead of Nixon.

(Dr. Carson, being a neurosurgeon, probably favors a physiological and biochemical model of brain dysfunction over a Freudian model. This means he was a shoo-in for the presidential nomination if Republicans stayed on their meds. Which they didn’t.)

The magic of America is that we're a free and open society with a mixed population. Part of our security is our freedom.” Quote by Madeleine Albright, Former Secretary of State. Madeleine Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelová on May 15, 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996 and was confirmed unanimously by the Senate to become the first woman to hold a Cabinet post as Secretary of State. She currently serves as the Chairperson of the Albright Stonebridge Group and is a Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. In May 2012, Secretary Albright was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Aside from English she speaks French, Russian, and Czech; she also understands Polish and Serbo-Croatian.

In the meantime, though, the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination sure seems funny. The event known around the world as hashtagGOPClownCar is improbable, colossal, spectacular and shocking; epic, monumental, heinous and disgusting. It’s like watching 17 platypuses try to mount the queen of England. You can’t tear your eyes away from it. It

In late September 1955, on vacation in Denver, President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in the early hours of the morning. Speculation quickly arose over whether he’d be able to serve a second term. One man, betting against a full recovery, saw an opportunity opening for his son. Joseph Kennedy, believing Ike would have to forgo reelection, now offered a deal to Lyndon Johnson, the new Senate majority leader. If Johnson agreed to run for the 1956 Democratic nomination, Kennedy would pick up the bill. There was a single condition. If the Texan won the Democratic nomination, he was to name Senator John F. Kennedy his vice presidential running mate.

The Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010 established funding for presidential nominees to start the process of vetting thousands of candidates for jobs in a new administration, codifying policies that would determine the early actions of a new White House, and preparing for the handoff of bureaucratic responsibilities on January 20. During the campaign, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, the nominal head of the Trump transition office, had to forcefully tell the candidate that he couldn’t redirect these funds, that the law required him to spend the money and plan for a transition—even one he did not expect to need. A frustrated Trump said he didn’t want to hear any more about it.

But the main reason Trump won the nomination—and later the general election—was simpler than any of that: he fit the times. Trump had explored running for president twice before, and the voters had shown little interest. This time around, he turned half the country’s unease and confusion about what was happening to America into a powerful political response. In his own way, he articulated the anger that many middle- and working-class Americans felt over the excesses and condescension of the Democratic Party, the coastal elites, and especially the mainstream news media. Trump had diagnosed a decisive divide in the nation: the alienation of average Americans from the increasingly smug and isolated elites that had mismanaged the country and appeared content to preside over a declining America. They felt the old-boy system in Washington had sold them out and that it was time to disrupt the system. Many ordinary Americans were especially sick of the radical progressives’ shrill disparagement of America and scornful attacks on traditional values, and they were deeply frustrated by the wildly partisan role played by the media. In short, in 2016 many voters felt like the character Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Trump’s pugnacious style worked. These frustrated Americans found in him a fighter willing to punch back, go toe-to-toe with the press, and mount a full-throated defense of America and middle-class values. They were tired of the cooing doublespeak of professional politicians and wanted someone who would tell it like it is—straight from the shoulder—and someone willing to follow through and actually do what other politicians said they would do but never did. Trump’s combativeness also enabled him to break through the distortions and smothering hostility of the partisan media and talk right past them, straight to the American people. For many, supporting Trump was an act of defiance—a protest. The more over the top he was, the more they savored the horrified reaction of the elites, especially the media. Arguments that Trump wasn’t presidential missed the point. Trump’s supporters already knew he didn’t conform to presidential norms. Their question was: Where had presidential norms gotten them? They wanted someone who didn’t conform. The Left was taking a wrecking ball to the country. Many fed up Americans wanted to strike back with their own wrecking ball.

The success of Woodrow Wilson’s campaign for the presidential nomination and the management and direction of his race for President were in very considerable degree the work of an able school of Southern progressive politicians. Likewise the striking success of the progressive reforms of Wilson’s first administration owed much of their vigor to the work of Southern cabinet members

In 2006, the political ambitions of Governor Huckabee of Arkansas, who was going to stand in the primaries as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, extended to granting me a pardon for my misdemeanor of thirty years previous. Governor Huckabee also thinks of himself as a guitar player. I think he even has a band. In fact there was nothing to pardon. There was no crime on the slate in Fordyce, but that didn’t matter, I got pardoned anyway.

This year of 1960 was a year of change, a year when secret fears come into the open, when discontent stops being dormant and changes gradually to anger. It wasn’t only in me or in New Baytown. Presidential nominations would be coming up soon and in the air the discontent was changing to anger and the excitement anger brings. And it wasn’t only the nation; the whole world stirred with restlessness and uneasiness as discontent moved to anger and anger tried to find an outlet in action, any action so long as it was violent

Now if you lose this job of vice president because you do what is right, because you help the MFDP, everything will be all right. God will take care of you. But if you take [the vice-presidential nomination] this way, why, you will never be able to do any good for civil rights, for poor people, for peace or any of those things you talk about. Senator Humphrey, I’m gonna pray to Jesus for you.

SCANDALS AND MISMANAGEMENT If Secretary Clinton’s political career had ended with her defeat for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, her skills as a manager would have been judged by her disorganized and drama-filled campaign for the presidency and her disastrous Health Care Task Force as First Lady. President Obama, who defeated her calamitously run campaign, should have been wary of nominating Clinton to a post that was responsible for tens of thousands of federal employees throughout the world. While her tenure in Foggy Bottom didn’t have the highly publicized backstabbing element that tarnished her presidential campaign, Secretary Clinton’s deficiencies as a manager were no less evident. There was one department within State that Secretary Clinton oversaw with great care: the Global Partnerships Initiative (GPI), which was run by long-time Clinton family aide Kris Balderston. Balderston was known in political circles for creating a “hit list” that ranked members of Congress based on loyalty to the Clintons during the 2008 presidential primaries.[434] Balderston was brought to Foggy Bottom to “keep the Clinton political network humming at State.”[435] He focused his efforts on connecting CEOs and business interests—all potential Clinton 2016 donors—to State Department public/private partnerships. Balderston worked alongside Clinton’s long-time aide Huma Abedin, who was given a “special government employee” waiver, allowing her to work both as Secretary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, and for other private sector clients. With the arrangement, Abedin would serve as a consultant to the top Clinton allied firm, Teneo, in a role in which, as the New York Times reported, “the lines were blurred between Ms. Abedin’s work in the high echelons of one of the government’s most sensitive executive departments and her role as a Clinton family insider.”[436] Secretary Clinton and her allies have placed great emphasis on the secretary of state’s historic role in promoting American business interests overseas, dubbing the effort “economic statecraft.”[437] The efforts of the GPI, Abedin, and Balderston ensured that Secretary Clinton’s “economic statecraft” agenda would be rife with the potential for conflicts of interest reminiscent of the favor-trading scandals that emanated from her husband’s White House. While the political office and donor maintenance program was managed with extreme meticulousness, Secretary Clinton ignored her role as manager of the rest of the sprawling government agency.[438] When it came to these more mundane tasks, Secretary Clinton was not on top of what was really going on in the department she ran. While Secretary Clinton was preoccupied with being filmed and photographed all around the world, the State Department was plagued by chronic management problems and scandals, from visa programs to security contractors. And when Secretary Clinton did weigh in on management issues, it was almost always after a raft of bad press forced her to, and not from any proactive steps she took. In fact, she and her department’s first reaction in certain instances was to silence critics or intimidate whistleblowers, rather than get to the bottom of what was actually going on. The events that unfolded in Benghazi were the worst example of Secretary Clinton neglecting her managerial responsibilities. This pattern of behavior, which led to the tragedy, was characteristic of her management style throughout her four years at Foggy Bottom. “Economic Statecraft” A big part of Secretary Clinton’s record-breaking travel—112 countries visited—was her work as a salesperson for select U.S. business interests.[439] Today, her supporters would have us believe her “economic statecraft” agenda was a major accomplishment.[440] Yet, as always seems to be the case with the Clintons, there was one family that benefited more than any other from all this economic statecraft—the Clinton family.

One American political figure saw Russia for the growing menace that it was and was willing to call Putin out for his transgressions. During President Obama’s reelection campaign, Mitt Romney warned of a growing Russian strategic threat, highlighting their role as “our number one geopolitical foe.”[208] The response from President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and other Democrats was not to echo his sentiment, but actually to ridicule Romney and support the Russian government. President Obama hurled insults, saying Romney was “stuck in a Cold War mind warp” [209] and in a nationally televised debate mocked the former governor, saying “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back…” [210] When asked to respond to Romney’s comment, Secretary Clinton refused to rebuke the over-the-top and false Obama campaign attacks. Instead, she delivered a message that echoed campaign talking points arguing that skepticism of Russia was outdated: “I think it’s somewhat dated to be looking backwards,” she said, adding, “In many of the areas where we are working to solve problems, Russia has been an ally.”[211] A month after Secretary Clinton’s statement on Romney, Putin rejected Obama’s calls for a landmark summit.[212] He didn’t seem to share the secretary’s view that the two countries were working together. It was ironic that while Obama and Clinton were saying Romney was in a “Cold War mind warp,”[213] the Russian leader was waging a virulent, anti-America “election campaign” (that’s if you can call what they did in Russia an “election”). In fact, if anyone was in a Cold War mind warp, it was Putin, and his behavior demonstrated just how right Romney was about Russia’s intentions. “Putin has helped stoke anti-Americanism as part of his campaign emphasizing a strong Russia,” Reuters reported. “He has warned the West not to interfere in Syria or Iran, and accused the United States of ‘political engineering’ around the world.”[214] And his invective was aimed not just at the United States. He singled out Secretary Clinton for verbal assault. Putin unleashed the assault Nov. 27 [2011] in a nationally televised address as he accepted the presidential nomination, suggesting that the independent election monitor Golos, which gets financing from the United States and Europe, was a U.S. vehicle for influencing the elections here. Since then, Golos has been turned out of its Moscow office and its Samara branch has come under tax investigation. Duma deputies are considering banning all foreign grants to Russian organizations. Then Putin accused U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of sending a signal to demonstrators to begin protesting the fairness of the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections.[215] [Emphasis added.] Despite all the evidence that the Russians had no interest in working with the U.S., President Obama and Secretary Clinton seemed to believe that we were just a Putin and Obama election victory away from making progress. In March 2012, President Obama was caught on a live microphone making a private pledge of flexibility on missile defense “after my election” to Dmitry Medvedev.[216] The episode lent credence to the notion that while the administration’s public unilateral concessions were bad enough, it might have been giving away even more in private. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Putin didn’t abandon his anti-American attitudes after he won the presidential “election.” In the last few weeks of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, Putin signed a law banning American adoption of Russian children,[217] in a move that could be seen as nothing less than a slap in the face to the United States. Russia had been one of the leading sources of children for U.S. adoptions.[218] This disservice to Russian orphans in need of a home was the final offensive act in a long trail of human rights abuses for which Secretary Clinton failed to hold Russia accountable.

One continually hears the declaration that the direct primary [for legislative offices] will take power from the politicians and give it to the people. This is pure nonsense. Politics has been, is, and always will be carried on by politicians, just as art is carried on by artists, engineering by engineers, business by businessmen. All that the direct primary, or any other political reform, can do is affect the character of the politicians by altering the conditions that govern political activity, thus determining its extent and quality. The direct primary may take advantage and opportunity from one set of politicians and confer them upon another set, but politicians there will always be so long as there is politics. (Cited in Key 1965, 394-95)

Anyone who held that belief, as Richard Rovere was to explain in The New Yorker, “forgot the wisdom of history, which is that members of the United States Senate almost invariably come to grief when they try to win Presidential nominations for themselves or to manipulate national conventions for any purpose whatsoever. For many reasons—patronage is one, and control of delegations is another—the big men at conventions are governors and municipal leaders.

General Gerardo Machado always had an eye for the ladies and enjoyed partying at the swankiest nightclubs in Havana. For a time he even owned his own club, which was the place for his political hacks to be seen. Machado was frequently there in the company of some of the most enticing ladies in the country. Through a combination of threats and bribery, he maintained control of the Army. In April of 1928 the Cuban Congress at the behest of Machado passed a law barring any presidential nominations by any party other than the Liberal, Conservative and Popular parties. Interestingly enough Machado declared himself the only legal candidate for those parties, and thus ran for a second term unopposed. Not only had he overspent money from the national treasury, but now he also alienated the Cuban public, who denounced him as an authoritarian nationalist and tyrant. Students, labor unions and intellectuals branded him an outright dictator. It was during this time that Marxist thinking was gaining strength throughout the world. The Communist philosophy was also becoming ever more popular among intellectuals, professors and students at the Universidad de La Havana. Realizing that he was now in danger of losing control, Machado made a power grab and declared Martial Law in Cuba. Intent on holding on to power, he became even more despotic than ever, creating a secret police known to the people as La Porra, meaning a big stick! As President, Machado became openly vindictive and did not hesitate to torture or even assassinate his foes in order to maintain tight sway over the Cuban population. With the Great Depression of 1928, things only got worse. The economy, which was single-sided, was extremely dependent upon sugar. Poverty was widespread, and even necessities all but disappeared, leaving the Cuban people destitute and in misery.

A corrupt and dynastic political party is antithetical to the rule of law and to carefully crafted constitutional checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. A tendency towards autocracy and consequent institutional subversion is inevitable with a party thus configured. The result is a prime minister bereft of real power, subservient to the dynastic head and a mute spectator to the loot and plunder of the nation’s resources; a president who is a loyal camp follower and will faithfully rubber stamp the decisions ordained by the dynasty: witness how unhesitatingly President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed the Proclamation of Emergency at Mrs. Gandhi’s bidding in 1975 and ponder whether Mrs. Pratibha Patil, (besieged as she was by her co-operative sugar factory in liquidation, her co-operative bank bankrupt, and her family embroiled in the murder case of a popular intra-party rival in Jalgaon at the time of her nomination by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi), would have done otherwise; or for that matter whether President Pranab Mukherjee, whose many acts of subversion of the Constitution during the Emergency have been documented by the Shah Commission, is so radically transformed that he would now protect it; a judiciary accused of judicial overreach when it censures the government or brings its ministers to book while its inconvenient judgments are subjected to review or Presidential Reference; a CAG whose findings against the government’s decisions are vilified as being patently erroneous, in excess of jurisdiction and even motivated, although that august body, the Constituent Assembly had opined that as the guardian of the nation’s finances, the CAG was as important a Constitutional functionary as the justices of the Supreme Court; a CVC appointed despite the taint of corruption and over the protest of the leader of the Opposition, whose appointment was finally quashed by the Supreme Court; and a CBI whose only role on empirical evidence is to falsely implicate political opponents and wrongly exonerate the regime’s members and cronies.

President Obama wrote his own speeches. In a visit to a mosque in Baltimore he pitted his eloquence against the anti-Muslim demagoguery of Donald Trump, running for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election. The image Obama evoked was the parable of the Good Samaritan, but indirectly, and look how he did it in a single phrase, the moral thought fused by a gentle alliteration: “None of us can be silent. We can’t be bystanders to bigotry.

Some political scientists worried about the new system. Binding primaries were certainly more democratic. But might they be too democratic? By placing presidential nominations in the hands of voters, binding primaries weakened parties’ gatekeeping function, potentially eliminating the peer review process and opening the door to outsiders. Just before the McGovern–Fraser Commission began its work, two prominent political scientists warned that primaries could “lead to the appearance of extremist candidates and demagogues” who, unrestrained by party allegiances, “have little to lose by stirring up mass hatreds or making absurd promises.

The report of the judges went to Mbeki, who said he would not make it available to the public. The Mail & Guardian fought a lengthy legal battle for its release, leading to final release on a court order 12 years later, in November 2012. As expected, it was highly critical, citing a litany of legal gymnastics, failure to comply with court orders, sudden changes in the law and unavailability of voters’ rolls. Large numbers of voters had been disenfranchised by new residential qualifications, and more by a new dual passport prohibition. Postal votes were restricted to the army and diplomats. Mugabe had access to state resources like the presidential helicopter, security and state-owned media. There was official failure to comply with a court order to publish nomination of candidates, 79 MDC rallies were disrupted or cancelled by the police, militias forced MDC supporters to flee their homes, and 107 deaths, most of whom were MDC supporters. The report cited Tsvangirai’s arrest and treason charge. Other members of the MDC executive were also arrested. Mbeki did not accept the judges’ assessment.

Although political representation by racial quota is the effect of government policy, it is not yet respectable to call for it explicitly. When President Bill Clinton tried to appoint Lani Guinier as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights her appointment failed, in part because of Miss Guinier’s advocacy of representation by race. In her view, if blacks were 13 percent of the US population, 13 percent of seats in Congress should be set aside for them. It does not cause much comment, however, when the Democratic Party applies this thinking to its selection of delegates to presidential conventions. Each state party files an affirmative action plan with the national party, and many states set quotas. For the 2008 Democratic Convention, California mandated an over-representation of non-white delegates. Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics were only 4.6, 5.2, and 21.1 percent, respectively, of the Democratic electorate, but had to be 16, 9, and 26 percent of the delegates. Other states had similar quotas. Procedures of this kind do lead to diversity of delegates but suggest that race is more important than policy. Perhaps it is. In Cincinnati, where blacks are 40 to 45 percent of the population, Mayor Charlie Luken complained that the interests of blacks and whites seemed so permanently in conflict that “race gets injected into every discussion as a result.” In other words, any issue can become racial. In 2004, the Georgia legislature passed a bill to stop fraud by requiring voters to show a state-issued ID at the polls. People without drivers’ licenses could apply for an ID for a nominal fee. Black legislators felt so strongly that this was an attempt to limit the black vote that they did not merely vote against the law; practically the entire black delegation stormed out of the Capitol when the measure passed over their objections. In 2009, when Congress voted a stimulus bill to get the economy out of recession, some governors considered refusing some federal funds because there were too many strings attached. Jim Clyburn, a black South Carolina congressman and House Majority Whip, complained that rejecting any funding would be a “slap in the face of African-Americans.” Race divides Cook County, Illinois, which contains Chicago. In 2007, when the black president of the county board, Todd Stroger, could not get his budget passed, his floor leader William Beavers-also black—complained that it was “because he’s black.” He said there was only one real question: 'Who’s gonna control the county—white or black—that’s all this is.