A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on February 22nd, 2008 in Campaign News

I’ve watched over the last week or so as Hillary Clinton has attacked Barack Obama for using language in his speech that has been used by others, most notably Deval Patrick. I don’t see any indication that it is actually working, and rightfully so. I’m pretty sure that Obama didn’t tell his speechwriter “Make sure you lift these likes from Deval.”

But there is something disingenuous about a politician who employs a speechwriter criticizing anyone else for using “someone else’s words”. The so-called “line of the night” in the Texas debate where she dismissed Obama as “change you can Xerox” - did that come from her or from Jonathan Lovett? If we were to find that it fell from the thumb of Lovett, should we no longer attribute it to Clinton, although she undeniably said it?

Of course not. It’s a stupid charge and she should know better. After telling us for a month that words are meaningless (which, by the way, would also apply to her own campaign - is that a Freudian thing?), she is now trying to tell us that words are so meaningful that they must be original to the speaker or they are - what? Less meaningful?

If I read a passage from the Bible - if I say, “I have run a good race. I have fought a good fight.” or if I say “the scales have fallen from my eyes” or “forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing” - do I mean it any less because those words and phrases were once used elsewhere? Hardly.

What Clinton is trying to convey is that she is better able to lead - something she has consistently said for months and fewer and fewer people are buying. But this is what Woodrow Wilson said about leadership: “Power consists in one’s capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.” If Hillary can’t exert the power to win a Democratic primary where she has a favorable rating among the majority of voters, how will she lead in a general election when that isn’t true? How will she convince a reluctant Congress to go along with her?

I’ll close here with two more quotes from Wilson:

The supreme test of the nation has come. We must all speak, act, and serve together!

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.