Phony change agents

The Washington Post looks at the advice that the Clinton camp is getting on how to recalibrate her campaign after her loss in Iowa. I thought that Paul Begala had the best approach in advising her to

accept responsibility for the loss, saying, " 'I've been knocked on my rear end. It's not fun, but the view from the canvas can be instructional.' "

"America loves an underdog," Begala said. "Candidates can show their character in defeat."

I'm not quite sure how that would look and how a former First Lady portrays herself as an underdog, but he's right that she shouldn't ignore her loss but should be up front about being sobered by it and ready to change.

Instead she seems poised to just do more of the same: try to convince people that she has the experience to bring about needed change.

But the Clinton campaign did not appear poised to take the advice. The senator from New York and the former president started the day taking jabs at Iowa, justifying Clinton's third-place finish. And for those who counseled that she could not campaign both as an agent of change and the most experienced candidate in the race, Clinton had a clear answer: Her two-sided message would not be altered much.

Senator Menendez of New Jersey has the message that you'll probably hear more from Hillary.

Menendez said the biggest mistake Clinton made in Iowa was not emphasizing her ability to bring about change because of her experience in Washington. "For the longest period of time in Iowa, all she talked about was strength and experience," he said. Put up against Obama, he said, "I don't think that's a juxtaposition that benefits Hillary very well."

You can see how easily they can morph her message of being strong and experienced to simply add in a concluding sentence about her using that strength and experience to bring about change.

The only problem is that it's just a slogan. There is no evidence to back up her claim. There is no change that she has brought about. Just as her claims to being more experienced come from having been married to a president, any evidence of changes would have to come from what happened when her husband was president not from her personally.

Her only hope is that voters will come to see how Obama's claims to being the one to bring about change are just about as phony as hers. There is very little he can point to on the national scale for evidence that he can work across partisan lines was his support for ethics and lobbying reform, but how hard was that when the bill passed by 96 to 2? In 2007, after the scandals in the 109th Congress, how much ability to work across aisle was needed to be for ethics and lobbying reform? Getting real legislation against earmarks through Congress is a tougher nut and Obama still hasn't seen his legislation passed. And his supposed opposition to earmarks hasn't stopped him from requesting quite a few of his own in the recent omnibus budget package.

An examination of the Heritage Foundation’s database of the earmarks in the fiscal 2008 omnibus appropriations bill revealed the total number received by Presidential candidates from the Senate and House: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), 261; Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), 57; Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), 52; Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), 46; Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), 10; Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), 9, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), 6; and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), 0.

He claims to have brought legislators in Illinois from both parties to pass healthcare reform, but there is less here than meets the eye as a hometown paper points out.

If you heard Barack Obama's Iowa victory speech, you might conclude Illinois has universal health care.

"I'll be a president who finally makes health care affordable and available to every single American, the same way I expanded health care in Illinois, by bringing Democrats and Republicans together to get the job done," the Chicago Democrat said Thursday.

But Illinois doesn't have universal health care.

In fact, Obama's comment comes as Illinois is embroiled in a full-scale political fight over whether to expand coverage. Gov. Rod Blagojevich last year proposed such a plan only to see it go nowhere.

His supporters point to legislation he supported that expanded health care coverage in Illinois, but that's different than making it "affordable and available to every single American" which seems to imply "every" person would be covered just as he gives the impression that he did in Illinois.

Other officials also questioned Obama's claim.

Robert Rich, director of the University of Illinois' Institute of Government and Public Affairs, considered it a stretch and questioned Obama's credentials as a health care reformer.

"He was not the prime mover and shaker for health care in Illinois," Rich said. "But to me, that's not the most important part of this. As the victor in Iowa, he's highlighting health care as a really important issue."

Gee, how hard is it for any Democrat running for the nomination to highlight health care as a really important issue? It's not like Clinton or Edwards would not have done that. The question is whose leadership would achieve the promised universal health care coverage that Obama and Clinton both state as their goal.

So who has the ability to bring about change? From their records, it's not clear that either does. Rather like Hillary, Obama is claiming to be the rooster whose voice brought forth the dawn. But neither of them has anything tangible to point to as evidence that they have brought forth change in their own experiences.