One of the Bloomberg Business Channel guys did a sit-down with Iowa Democrats (ten of them). Typically, I don't expect an awful lot of competent analysis via the Today Show, CNN, or any of the normal pretender news folks. Bloomberg tends to shock me on occasion....they round up folks who aren't part of some foundation or pretender 'expert' status, and they kinda talk like guys at some barbershop or church group would talk.
So, Mike Halperin asks these ten folks.....from Hillary Clinton's four years as Secretary of State.....what would you say was her top accomplishment?
The ten folks just kinda sat there in a daze. In Alabama....it'd be like some minister picking people from the audience to name all the miracles that Moses accomplished, or some cousin asking you to name five great University of Alabama quarterbacks from the past fifty years.
None of the ten could answer 'top' accomplishment.
Nor could any of them name any accomplishment.
So the ending of this question came to some guy who simply said that he'd watched her for twenty-odd years and viewed her as competent, and that you just couldn't possibly vote for Scott Walker.....mostly cause he'd destroy the unions in America.
I sat there and watched the minute-long clip twice. Yeah, it's a pretty dismal explanation about someone who spent four years in a fairly noteworthy job and no one seems to remember much of anything they did.
I worked in an organization once with a Captain. After three years, it was time for the guy to leave, and they needed someone to sit down and help him and his chain of leadership to write achievements. I sat there looking at the Major who asked me to help and simply noted there was nothing this officer did in the two years I knew him....that was worth writing on paper. The Major walked around and the next five people said the same thing. Anything they wrote....mostly led back to what I or several others in the shop had actually done. We didn't care if they wanted to use the words of our actions....but the Captain was the most marginal leader that I'd come across in twenty-two years. When he showed up each day.....he was there to just show attendance and sign papers.
I see Hillary in the same light. She walked around and attended meetings.....did two-star chats with news media folks, and repeated scripted answers for chaotic events going on in the world. In terms of knowledge or expertise? She was a marginal two-star person doing a job that required an awful lot.
What's this say for folks from Iowa? They recognize the same thing. So, it's pretty simple for a three-star former governor of Maryland to walk in.....talk a bit, and amaze the public. It's not a pretty sight, but I think Hillary has lost momentum and blazing away on fumes only at this point. The job as Secretary of State? It didn't give her anything worth talking about, and we kinda know that now.
