Bhutto: Shameless and Pathetic Political Exploitation

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On Thursday I spoke at length to a very nice lady in the D.C. area who had met Benazir Bhutto in the flesh (and wasn’t too impressed at the time), and who shared her personal reminiscences with me. I am generously concealing her identity here lest she be inundated by requests to run for President. Apparently the best qualified candidates are those who personally knew Bhutto.

US presidential candidates from both parties competed to exploit Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, using it to advertise their foreign policy experience and personal contacts with Pakistan.

With Miss Bhutto’s killing – unusually prominent for a foreign story on network news bulletins – several candidates or their aides suggested that the turmoil in Pakistan raised the bar for the qualities required of the next commander-in-chief.

A row over experience quickly broke out between the campaigns of former First Lady Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, her young challenger for the Democratic Party’s nomination.

One of the leading Republicans, John McCain, made perhaps the most blatant attempt to turn events to his advantage. “My theme has been throughout this campaign that I’m the one with the experience, the knowledge, the judgment,” the veteran senator and former Vietnam War fighter pilot said after a campaign event in Iowa.

“So perhaps it [the assassination] may serve to enhance those credentials to make people understand that I’ve been to Pakistan, I know Musharraf, I can pick up the phone and call him. I knew Benazir Bhutto.”

He was not alone in mentioning by name Miss Bhutto or Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, as candidates proved unable to limit themselves to statements of regrets and appeals for calm.
[...]
On the campaign trail in Iowa, Mrs Clinton stressed her personal relationship with Miss Bhutto. “This is a terrible loss – certainly on a personal level – for those of us who knew her,” she said, adding: “It certainly raises the stakes high for what we expect from our next president. I know from a lifetime of working to make change.”

Making change is indeed a basic skill. Good to know that Clinton is also eminently qualified to work in any fast food establishment of her choice.

And perhaps in Dairy Queens and Burger Kings across America, they are actually saying that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan raises the stakes for what they expect from our next president.

Continuing with the quote, any time Clinton or her campaign makes even a veiled reference to her experience, the Obama campaign is legally required to respond, even if they are only talking about experience in making change. And respond they did:

Mr Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod hit back at Mrs Clinton’s implication that the Illinois senator was too inexperienced to handle an international crisis, which has been a running sore during the long campaign. He said that al-Qa’eda, suspected in Miss Bhutto’s murder, had been emboldened by the Iraq war, which Mrs Clinton initially supported.

“That’s a serious difference between these candidates and I’m sure that people will take that into consideration,” he said.

It’s a serious difference between them that al-Qa’eda has been emboldened by the Iraq war? Or is Axelrod saying that Obama is not very experienced at making change?

Also, granted that my knowledge of customs in the Muslim world may not be on par with David Axelrod’s, but I somehow suspect that Miss is not the proper way to refer to a lady who is well-known to be married with children.

Comments

  1. sarabeth says:
    December 29, 2007 at 10:13 am

    My apologies to David Axelrod. “Miss Bhutto” seems to be The Guardian‘s phrase, not Axelrod’s.

    But Axelrod still deserves a withering amount of contempt for the remarks he made about Bhutto’s assassination:

    Obama adviser David Axelrod, however, later seemed to draw a connection between Clinton’s initial support for the invasion of Iraq and Bhutto’s death. “Barack Obama had the judgment to oppose the war in Iraq, and he warned at the time it would divert us from Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, and now we see the effect of that,,” Axelrod told reporters. “Al Qaeda’s resurgent, they’re a powerful force now in Pakistan, they may have been involved — we’ve been here, so I don’t know whether the news has been updated, but there’s a suspicion they may have been involved in this. I think his judgment was good. Sen. Clinton made a different judgment, so let’s have that discussion.”

    Not just totally tasteless but lunatic. And Obama not only justified and supported Axelrod’s remarks, he also uttered some blatant untruths in the process:

    Obama was on CNN last night and NBC/NJ‘s Aswini Anburajan reports that during the interview, Obama was grilled by Wolf Blitzer on whether his chief media strategist, David Axelrod, had placed blame on Hillary Clinton for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. “I don’t need to hear what you read because I was — you know, I overheard it when he said it, and this is one of those situations where Washington is putting a spin on it. It makes no sense whatsoever,” he said.

    However, this could not have occurred since Axelrod had spoken to a large scrum of reporters in the back of the hall where Obama gave his speech, well after Obama had left the room. Obama went on to say that Axelrod had been asked a politicized question, on how the assassination would affect the Iowa caucuses, which resulted in a politicized answer on exercising good judgment on foreign policy. “But his [Axelrod's] response was simply to say that if we are going to talk politics, then the question has to be, ‘Who has exercised the kind of judgment that would be more likely to lead to better outcomes in the Middle East and better outcomes in Pakistan?’” he said.

    Just another example of how Obama will bring us all together when he’s President. Just another reason why you should vote for him twice and give him the opportunity.