The Associated Press engages in some open and gross bum-kissing and campaigning for Hillary Clinton with it’s “analysis” of how she reacted to the hostage situation at a campaign office in New Hampshire.
It’s obvious that we’re supposed to draw the conclusion from her actions that as President she would act decisively and make good decisions. I think it shows the opposite. I think it also shows the continuing double standard—by liberals, mind you—toward women in leadership, i.e. if they aren’t paralyzed with fear, that’s supposed to be leadership.
For one thing, I would expect other candidates would have cancelled another appearance upon hearing of the situation, although some might have gone on with the speech but thrown out their prepared text in order to address the topic of security or law enforcement or somesuch.
But the rest of the “analysis” is just electioneering:
When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis.
I suppose she could afford to be calm since, as he wrote, the crisis was over. Is it a big deal she was calm when knew it was all over?
The rest of her actions actually lead me to believe that in fact she would be terrible facing presidential crises:
Over the ensuing five hours, as a state trooper negotiated with the suspect and hostages were released one-by-one, Clinton continued to call up and down the law enforcement food chain, from local to county to state to federal officials.
“I knew I was bugging a lot of these people, it felt like on a minute-by-minute basis, trying to make sure that I knew everything that was going on so I was in a position to tell the families, to tell my campaign and to be available to do anything that they asked of me,” the New York senator said.
So over the five hours of the standoff, Clinton micromanaged the entire law enforcement chain of command, bugging them for situation updates—which she openly admits—and taking them away from actually ending the situation. Is this what we can expect if President Hillary (God forbid) has a terrorist hostage crisis on her watch? Will she be picking targets for the F-15s if we have to bomb a terrorist training camp?
Rather than bugging the professionals trying to do their jobs, she should have waited by the phone for them to call her in case they needed her.
I think Clinton’s response to the situation was indeed very telling, just not in the way AP reporter Glen Johnson thinks it is.
