Those Unnamed Foreign Leaders Are Back!
And This Time They're Pissed. Assuming They Exist, That Is.
By Dan McLaughlin Posted in 2008 — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
For all of his legendary political savvy, Bill Clinton just can't help himself from repeating one of the stupider mistakes of the Kerry '04 campaign (which is saying quite a bit): touting the support of (mostly) unnamed and unidentifiable "foreign leaders" who are allegedly supporting Hillary!:
Bill Clinton regularly touts his wife's bid for the White House by telling crowds that leaders around the globe are pulling for Hillary Clinton's election in 2008.
Yet none of the leaders the former President cited will back him up, the Daily News has found.
"Every African leader I talked to, every single one when I was there, without any prodding from me, said, 'For God sakes, I hope Hillary wins. We don't like disliking America here,'" Bill Clinton said at a fund-raiser for her last month.
"I called the outgoing French president, and he said, 'Oh, tell me Hillary's going to win. I'm so tired of disliking America,'" Bill Clinton told the crowd.
Bill Clinton also quoted the immediate past prime minister of Singapore as saying, "'Please tell me Hillary's going to win. We need America leading the world again.'"
This is at least a threefer for boneheadedness. First, Bill looks like a liar (perish the thought, I know) because nobody will admit to saying this to him. Granted, they should deny it in public, but with Bill one never knows either way, which is pretty much the point.
Second, it is a visible symptom of the Democrats' obsession with placing an absurdly high priority on making nice with foreign executives and diplomats, something most Americans rightly regard as at best a very minor foreign policy priority, and at worst a sign of giving away too much to people who manifestly have their own interests and not ours at heart. Shepherds should not be popular with wolves.
And third, it sounds hopelessly naive to suggest that the causes of anti-Americanism in foreign locales is simply the personalities and policies of individual leaders rather than fundamental conflicts of national interest and ideology. It's true that personalities can play a part - in the specific case of France, our relationship is already improving dramatically due to Chirac being replaced by Sarkozy, but underlying causes of tension between U.S. and French foriegn policies won't just go away.
Remember the First Rule of Democrats and Foreign Policy: They never learn. They never, ever, ever learn.
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Those Unnamed Foreign Leaders Are Back! 6 Comments (0 topical, 6 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Maybe I missed a memo, but why exactly is it so important that we're 'liked'? This liberal preoccupation with being liked is beyond me. I mean sure, everyone wants to be liked, but this is foreign policy, not personal friendship, and countries are not 'friends' with each other. There are only common interests. As it so happens, fighting terrorism is not a common interest at present. So that means we're supposed to elect Shrillary on that basis? Does that imply she'll ease up on fighting the war?
Personally, I couldn't give a rat's pattooie what anyone in Uganda or Camaroon thinks about America.
Cheers,
Scott in Indy
It's just that the liberals don't like it when their feelings are hurt, or when they hurt someone else's feelings. It's all about feelings to them...
Queue up Morris Albert
...when they see me they'll say, "There goes Loren Wallace,
the greatest thing to ever climb into a race car."
and he's clearly anticipating consummating his duties as, er, First Man.
to appoint Hillary Secretary of State which would overjoy all the criminals running Africa, the criminal formerly running France and whoever the nobody is that is the just-pasted-out prime minister of pissant Singapore.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
It saddens me that Bill didn't talk about the big boost Fidel gave to the Hillary + Obama ticket
granted, that supporter would be the President of Iran. But still, he's a Hillraiser in his own way!