The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day always seems like a good time for reflection. But, reflecting on 2007, I’m finding it hard to get a sense of the year. It seems like it was *hard*. It’s a good bet I expended more energy. At work, we moved our offices, I shattered my previous billable hour totals, and I found myself exposed to a number of novel (to me) types of legal cases. At home, my two little kids got more active. I increased my ability to run from about 3 or 4 miles up to about 9 or 10 miles. And, for fun, I climbed some 14,000 foot mountains. No wonder I’m feeling a little wrung out just about now.
Here at the blog, I’ve entered something not too far shy of 900 blog posts. (All of the highest quality.) Some of the topics:
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SJR 7 – Marriage “protection”.
Colts beat the Patriots in a thriller of an AFC Championship
Gov. Daniels tried to privatize the lottery.
Extreme weirdness continues in Roseland.
Craig Fry’s budget shenanigans
The exposure of Weathervane McCain.
Several counties shifted from Central Time to Eastern Time
Mitch & Mitch’s welfare privatization plan hit a federal snag
In God We Trust plates challenged for being promoted over other specialty plates
America’s health care system continued to suck
Alberto Gonzalez got amnesia
Tragedy at Virginia Tech – everyone used it to grind their favorite axe
Todd Rokita suggested that blacks were like slaves to the Democratic party
Lawmakers continued to think the budget was a Constitutional requirement and not just a Good Idea
Imus was a racist
Abstinence education continued to suck
Years of shortsighted property tax policy started coming to a head
Gas prices continued to climb
Iraq continued to suck
Reverent & Free went dark
President Bush’s popularity dropped to new lows
Jerry Falwell died
The 2007 General Assembly was less contentious than predicted
Terry Record got drunk in a strip club and killed Jimmy Cash
The minimum wage increased
Dick Lugar continued to talk a big game about Bush’s inadequacies in Iraq
Tax Rage ™
Anti-Wiccan Jurist named to Indiana Court of Appeals
Foreclosures were high in Indiana.
Subprime lenders hit a bit of a rough patch
A majority of Republicans say they don’t believe the theory of evolution is true
Efforts to shift taxes from property tax payers to income and sales tax payers gained momentum
Scooter Libby lied to a grand jury, Evansville C&P cool with that, President Bush finds his pardon pen
Gov. Daniels unilaterally made tax decisions that the legislature approved retroactively
Video game addiction
The DLGF jerked around local government
Gov. Daniels disingenuously tried to blame local government spending for the property tax increases.
Glenn Murphy has a fun way to wake up sleeping dudes
Voter ID winds its way through the courts
Sectarian Government prayer case thrown out on technicality
Lots of legislators stepping down
War continued to suck generally
Gov. Daniels more popular than scurvy
Dan Burton engages in meaningless spectacles of piety
Steve Buyer gets a challenger
Patriots revealed as cheaters
Pacers continue to be model citizens
Rishawn fired
Ballard wins
Monticello mayor convicted
Bush continues to spend like a drunken sailor
Richmond High School is a dropout factory
Monday Night Football sucks worse than ever
Bob Sanders hurts people
Dumbledore is gay
Hillary was inevitable until she wasn’t
Cheney is worse than we thought
Senator Long took over and did a pretty good job
Even after looking back at all of that, I still don’t have a good feel for how the year was as a whole. I’m still here. My bills are all paid. My wife and kids are healthy and appear to still like me. I’ll chalk it up as a win.
900 blog posts! And how many comments were sparked by those 900 posts? Your blog is a HUGE accomplishment. Looking forward to 2008 (only… not TOO many vacations, ok?).
Doug, I want to congratulate you on the great work you have done here, not only in humanizing the web, but bringing us really good discussion on the legal/ political issues from a perspective of someone who has been there in the statehouse. I look forward to a lot more of that.
On the personal side, I also congratulate you on your lucky and happy family circumstances. I am sure no one has to remind you to enjoy those little ones and the spouse. And keep sharing yourself with us. It’s inspiring — gonna kick my own butt in gear here as well.
What’s wrong with this picture? Our campaign runs a TV ad Monday saying that the presidency is the toughest job in the world and giving examples of challenges presidents have faced and challenges the next president will face — including terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, mounting economic dislocation, and soaring gas prices. The ad makes no reference — verbal, visual or otherwise — to our opponent; it simply asks voters to think about who they believe is best able to stand the heat. And we are accused, by some in the media, of running a fear-mongering, negative ad.
The day before this ad went on the air, David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief strategist, appeared with me on “Meet the Press.” He was asked whether Hillary Clinton would bring “the changes necessary” to Washington, and his answer was “no.” This was in keeping with the direct, personal character attacks that the Obama campaign has leveled against Clinton from the beginning of this race — including mailings in Pennsylvania that describe her as “the master of a broken system.”
So let me get this straight.
On the one hand, it’s perfectly decent for Obama to argue that only he has the virtue to bring change to Washington and that Clinton lacks the character and the commitment to do so. On the other hand, we are somehow hitting below the belt when we say that Clinton is the candidate best able to withstand the pressures of the presidency and do what’s right for the American people, while leaving the decisions about Obama’s preparedness to the voters.
Who made up those rules? And who would ever think they are fair?
I am not making any bones about the fact that our campaign has pointed out what we believe are legitimate differences between Clinton and Obama on important issues. We have spoken out when we thought the Obama campaign made false distinctions, such as when it ran advertising in Pennsylvania on standing up to oil companies, particularly when Clinton was the one who did stand up to the oil companies by voting against the Bush-Cheney energy bill. And we believed it was appropriate to debate Obama’s comments about working people in small towns, because they expressed a view of small-town Americans with which Hillary Clinton strongly disagrees.
But throughout that debate, Clinton deliberately focused on the content of Obama’s comments without making sweeping statements about his character.
It’s an important distinction. The Obama campaign has chosen from its inception not to treat Clinton with the same respect. In fact, the Obama campaign has made an unprecedented assault on her character — not her positions, but her character — saying one thing about raising the tone of political discourse but acting quite differently in its treatment of Clinton.
Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, held a conference call with reporters and called Hillary “one of the most secretive politicians in America today” — a striking personal charge in the era of Dick Cheney.
Axelrod described Clinton as having “a special interest obsession.”
Obama himself has joined the character assault from time to time, saying, for example, that Clinton “doesn’t have the sense that things need to change in Washington” — a patently false and demeaning observation.
In the Philadelphia debate last week, Obama incorrectly said that his campaign addressed Hillary’s misstatements on Bosnia only when asked to by reporters. In fact, Obama’s campaign has organized several conference calls on the topic, including one this past weekend in which the featured speaker said that Clinton lacks “the moral authority to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Memorial Day” (a statement the Obama campaign thankfully repudiated after we called it on it). Even though many reporters participated in those calls, Obama’s misstatement in Philadelphia was almost completely ignored.
The bottom line is that one campaign really has engaged in a mean-spirited, unfair character attack on the other candidate — but it has been Obama’s campaign, not ours. You would be hard-pressed to find significant analogues from our candidate, our senior campaign officials or our advertising to the direct personal statements that the Obama campaign has made about Clinton.
The problem is that the Obama campaign holds itself to a different standard than the one to which it holds us — and sometimes the media do, too.
Hillary Clinton is a strong and determined person, and she will continue to discuss real solutions to America’s problems and the need for strong leadership to implement those solutions — even if she must play by a different set of rules than Barack Obama. But wouldn’t it be better if in this campaign what’s good for the goose were also good for the gander? After all, in America, fair is supposed to be fair.
The writer is a strategist for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
M WAHEED JADOON
WORLD DEMOCRACY MEDIA GROUP
NEW YORK
Just wanted to note that the above seems to be a cut & paste job.