Please note that I am talking about Bill Clinton, former President as opposed to Hillary Clinton, current Senator and Presidential candidate.  This diary is about him and the impact of his actions and comments – not those of Hillary nor of her campaign.

That being said, this is not about whether Bill Clinton should be out on the campaign trail for his spouse – as many spouses do when their husbands run for President.  There is a big difference between campaigning for your spouse and crossing the line – especially when you are a former President..  For better or for worse, Bill Clinton is still, to many people, the face of the Democratic Party and the one person who many people think of when they think of “the Democratic Party, personified”.

He is the immediate former President, he is the only Democratic President in more than 25 years, and he has used his time since leaving office doing some very high profile humanitarian work.  A lot of this recent work has actually raised the view of him by people whose view was not so favorable while he was in office as well as people who had already viewed him favorably.

Consider the following:

A 46 year old man is running for President.  He has some good solid experience, but being that he is only 46, that experience is derided as “not enough”, or that it “doesn’t count as much because of the background behind that experience”.  

His policies and “successes” prior to his running for President are, by no stretch, “far left wing”, rather they turned out to be relatively middle of the road – liberal on some, not as much on others.  And even though the success stories were based on policies that were not against some conservative ideals (i.e., job growth, economic policy), he was derided by the right wing nonetheless as being a lightweight or too liberal.

When running for President, he had used a message of “hope” and used his personal story of coming from a less-than-stellar childhood or background to overcome the obstacles placed before him and rise to political prominence.

Well, that isn’t exactly the headline, but it may as well have been.

In a WaPo article from today outlining the increased world opinion about and interest in the Presidential primaries and our upcoming election, the general feeling around those terrorist loving, freedom hating countries in the Middle East, er, Europe, Africa and South America is that hopefully us Americans can elect someone this November that isn’t out of touch with the rest of the world on, well, just about everything, actually.

Change.

It is the buzzword of the campaign so far.  It is the message that Barack Obama has based his campaign on (that, and hope).  It is the message that John Edwards is representing when he talks of taking on corporate interests.  Hillary Clinton talked in New Hampshire about the fact that she spent 35 years making change and will continue to make change.

While there are some differences between the three, it is evident that each one does bring an element of change, even if more of it is lip service.  I, as well as many others in the progressive blogosphere (and elsewhere) want to see drastic changes from the past decade.

Even the republicans are getting into the change business now – I just heard Mitt Romney on the Today Show talk about how he can bring change.   Almost a year ago, Chuck Hagel said that the republican party must change.  Ron Paul seconded that comment a few months ago.  Mike Huckabee said last week that change is necessary.  And John McCain – the ultimate DC insider (regardless of his double, um, “straight” talk) said after the Iowa caucuses that “change is coming”.

Today’s WSJ has a commentary by new best friends forever John McCain and Joe Lieberman that is simply titled “The Surge Worked”.  We heard this same nonsense on Sunday night during a long soliloquy by Charles Gibson as he debated the Democratic Party Presidential Candidates, and this commentary by McCain and Lieberman is only stunning in reaching new heights of disingenuous drivel.

No doubt, on this one year anniversary of the escalation, we will be treated to more of the same crap about how “the surge worked” and how “Democrats and other anti-war people are living in denial of reality”.  And as usual, it is the war cheerleaders who are living in denial of reality when it comes to any measure of success.

The answer is, as far as I can think of, is nothing, and there is pretty much everything to lose.

This is why I reacted to the report that Iranian boats had “provoked” US ships in the Strait of Hormuz with a “WTF????”.  Let’s look at a few things here, just to make heads or tails of things.

• Iran halted its nuclear weapons program back in 2003, and there is no evidence that they are much closer to developing a weapon anytime soon.
• Ayatollah Khamenei recently indicated that he would be willing to restore diplomatic relations with the US in the future.
• There were recent reports that Iran was cooperating with the US in Iraq with respect to the decrease in violence.
• Iran has recently divested from the US dollar – a move that is more threatening to the US than many of the items that we have been hearing for years.
• To further keep its independence from the US (and strengthen its own position in the global economy), Iran has recently made deals with China on oil, has been cozy with Russia for a number of years and has been making trade deals with Nicaragua – not to mention potential deals with Venezuela as well.

So what is the common thread here?  Well, pretty much all of these are a threat to US economic interests, not to mention partially avoidable had this administration acted differently back in 2001, 2002 and 2003.  Additionally, all of this has happened despite (or as a response by the global community) the saber rattling that Mister Bush, Dick Cheney and the other neocons have been doing for the past few years.

A lot has been said of the record shattering numbers from last night’s caucuses – moreso on the Democratic side.  The numbers are staggering, no matter how you slice them.  

With that, there has been some talk about the demographics in terms of young voters, new voters and how they are more energized or motivated than in years past.  While we saw this as well in 2004, there is a further uptick now.  Of course, this is only based on one state’s caucuses, but there are stories from New Hampshire as well about the level of motivation by “younger folk”, and judging by the large number of Facebook “elections” (and votes), this may be something that has legs.

All that being said, I wanted to go through a few numbers, but also to explore what this means – less in terms of which candidate it works best for, but more along the lines of the Democratic Party and the potential for keeping these votes in the future as well as keeping them engaged enough in the political process that it adds to the movement that we here on the left have been trying to build for the past few years.

According to CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), the youth turnout rate rose to 13 percent from 4 percent in 2004 and 3 percent in 2000. About 65,000 Iowans under the age of 30 caucused.

That, in and of itself is a huge number.  Taking into account that the temperatures were frigid, at best, yesterday, and this is even more impressive.  More stats from Young Voter PAC are as follows:

2007 started with such promise – there would be “big changes” – or so we were told.  And on some levels (mainly personal), it has delivered – I still have my job (and it is better than at the beginning of the year), YKos was great, I have a baby on the way….but in the world of politics and around the world, things don’t look as rosy as we may have thought back when a new Congress took session.  Some of this is the fault of Democratic leadership, a lot of this is the fault of Bush and the republican party, or the corporate media, or the fault of nobody.  But, a lot did go on this past year, and all I can say is that I hope 2008 holds out more in terms of delivery and less in terms of broken promises, frustration, disappointment, bewilderment and lowered expectations.

The 3,000th US military death in Iraq was just before the new year.  There were promises of a “new Congress in town” and a change of direction in Iraq.  Another close to $200 billion was approved during the year for “continuing operations” with absolutely no real change in direction.  The “surge” has been an absolute failure – a reduction in deaths due to sectarian cleansing and voluntary temporary stop in violence by al Sadr’s militia with no political benchmarks met is no success in any way.  

A new record was set in the Senate by republicans on filibustering.  Except that it suddenly wasn’t called a “filibuster” anymore.  It was now the conventional wisdom that you “need 60 votes for anything” and votes can fail with 58 votes in favor.  Amid the record obstruction, there were cries for bipartisanship and to let bygones be bygones.  Of course, that meant letting a new Attorney General through even though he wouldn’t comment on torture being torture.  

The way that the reports have been coming out with respect to Bhutto’s death is not totally surprising.  The fact that there are differing facts emerging is also not surprising – although the conflicting and “evolving” stories regarding just how she died, who is taking responsibility and who is pointing fingers (not to mention where the fingers are being pointed) is a bit more disturbing.

First it was bullets, then no bullets but shrapnel, then no bullets or shrapnel but the sunroof of the car causing so much force that blood was covering much of the interior of her car (warning – pics that you may not want to see) with no head wound takes this into the lone-gunman-with-bad-rifle-and-worse-angle-and-magic-bullet territory.

What is even more questionable here is that the Interior Ministry was claiming that there was no wound from the attack and at the same time blaming al Qaeda for the attack on Bhutto’s life.  And, just for good measure, we can throw in the police abandoning their posts while Bhutto was still in the area – reminiscent of , if not necessarily on par with the last minute changes to JFK’s route in Dallas, the Secret Service being told to stand down and the lack of other measures taken to protect Kennedy.

The whole US/Pakistan relationship and history is pretty complex, to say the least.  Then again, so are the US/Afghanistan, US/Iran and US/Iraq relationships.  But none of the other countries (or nearly any other country) has been “touted” by Mister Bush and his neocon supporters as such a strong ally or key ally or friend in the WarOnTerror(TM) than Pakistan.

This, despite a certain volatile mix of apathy, extremism, military rule and nuclear weapons proliferation, some of the “highlights” including:

Pakistan also has a long relationship with the United States, although it is more of one that is based on convenience for the US.  We have alternately shunned and supported this country, although we have also supported its “enemies”.  It was one of only three countries who recognized the Taliban as legitimate before abruptly changing its mind after 9/11.

Pakistan’s leader seized power in a coup, and has, at times, suspended the Constitution, held positions as President and leader of the country’s military, looked the other way as terrorists set up in his country.  It had no ties to Saddam or to 9/11, however, it has been sympathetic to extremists that have caused death and destruction within the country – including against political leaders.  On the other hand, there were ties between the country and the Taliban in the months leading up to 9/11.

Pakistan’s population is not sympathetic to the United States; rather it is fairly hostile or apathetic at best.  Not only does the Taliban and al Qaeda have large membership in the country, but many of its citizens in certain regions had been harboring them and therefore letting them roam free – recently, its leader was less popular than bin Laden according to polls.  Last year, Musharraf said that he wouldn’t go after bin Laden if bin Laden agreed to live a peaceful citizen.

The country also has nuclear weapons, and was dangerously close to a nuclear conflict with its neighbor a few years ago.  The high level official in Pakistan’s government who was responsible for its nuclear weapons program (Khan) sold nuclear secrets to a number of other countries, and is basically a free citizen (not totally but certainly not being punished).  Most recently, it was uncovered that Musharraf really has no interest in cracking down on extremists and terrorist groups and was accused last year of looking the other way while the Taliban and al Qaeda were launching attacks over its border against US and NATO troops.  

For starters, I must give a hat tip to Brandon Friedman for coming up with that saying as we were going back and forth discussing sayings that we should be using this upcoming year.

But at this time of year, especially on Christmas time – a holiday where religion is now intertwined and nearly synonymous with a front running Presidential candidacy – we should celebrate some deserving yet underappreciated people. These battle tested, wounded and weary warriors whose crusade to engage, battle and fight with those “non-believers” and satan lovers (liberals too, no doubt) who are waging this War on Christmas.

How can we not take a moment to stop and thank those who stand tall and use every weapon at their disposal in order to fight a cataclysmic fight to the death against the godless souls who want to purge the world from celebrating the birth of the one who represents all “true Americans”.

This is something that has been on my mind for some time, yet I still haven’t quite figured out where I am going with it.  Over the past decade, this country has fallen from grace in a big way.  Granted, “grace” is overstated, since there were many stains on the integrity and hypocritical nature of what we say as opposed to what we do long before Mister Bush took office in 2001.

But even taking that all into consideration, the way that this country’s promise and opportunity was hijacked – not by “republicans” or “Democrats” or even “neoconservatives” per se – since 2001 makes one (or at least makes me) look at what has gone on and how much respectability has been lost and wasted by a combination of greed, money, arrogance and wanton disregard for the rule of law.