Bezir Bhutto’s body hadn’t reached room temperature yesterday before Clinton and Obama seized on her death for political opportunism (Washington Post link);
For [Obama’s] chief rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Bhutto’s death helped underscore the line she has been driving home for months — about who is best suited to lead the nation at a time of international peril. In her comments Thursday, Clinton described Bhutto in terms Obama (D-Ill.) could not: as a fellow mother, a pioneering woman following in a man’s footsteps, and a longtime peer on the world stage.
The differing reactions of Clinton and Obama to the assassination crystallized the debate between the two just a week before Iowans will decide the first contest in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.
While aides said Clinton was anxious not to appear to be politicizing Bhutto’s death, they nonetheless saw it as a potential turning point in the race with Obama and former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.).
Everything seems to be a potential campaign issue these days, but it’s completely tasteless to prop up a dead body, Bernie-like, and campaign from behind it. And I’m stupefied that Clinton thinks the murder of one woman politician gives her any kind of moral authority or proves her ability to be President. Clinton came close to  announcing that Bhutto would be her running mate;
“I have known Benazir Bhutto for more than 12 years; she’s someone whom I was honored to visit as first lady when she was prime minister,” Clinton said at a campaign event in a firehouse in western Iowa. “Certainly on a personal level, for those of us who knew her, who were impressed by her commitment, her dedication, her willingness to pick up the mantle of her father, who was also assassinated, it is a terrible, terrible tragedy,” she said.
Sweetness and Light chronicles Clinton’s lies about her relationship with Bhutto. And Obama blamed Bhutto’s death on Clinton;
Three hours after news of Bhutto’s slaying broke, Obama delivered a withering rebuke of Clinton’s experience, depicting her lengthy political resume` as a hindrance to solving big problems, including crises abroad. In an especially charged moment, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod would later tie the killing to the Iraq war — and Clinton’s vote to approve it, which he argued diverted U.S resources from fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, both al-Qaeda hotbeds.
“You can’t at once argue that you’re the master of a broken system in Washington and offer yourself as the person to change it,” Obama said. “You can’t fall in line behind the conventional thinking on issues as profound as war and offer yourself as the leader who is best prepared to chart a new and better course for America.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that somehow Clinton and Richardson think their time milling around the White House gives them experience;
Sen. Clinton, who had planned to talk about housing and the economy at a rally in Lawton, Iowa, shifted to condemn the assassination, to recall Ms. Bhutto as someone she had known personally since the late 1980s, and to stress the need for “picking a president who is ready on day one, who is ready to deal with the myriad of problems.”
Democrat Bill Richardson, the New Mexico governor who has boasted of his experience as President Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations, had the most muscular reaction. He called on President Bush to suspend military aid to Pakistan and “press Musharraf to step aside” in favor of a new coalition government, because he has failed to hunt down terrorists and had destabilized the country by “his attempts to cling to power.” Mr. Richardson also scheduled a speech for today in Des Moines to reiterate that call.
How does being being one member of a hundred-person debating society give Clinton any experience in dealing with terrorism? Richardson couldn’t even talk to the Pakistani government while he was laying waste to the omelet bar at the UN. I remember that Clinton and Richardson both admitted that they couldn’t make headway against the Taliban and al Qaeda because Pervez Musharraf’s government ignored them everytime the Clinton Administration tried to enlist Pakistan.Â
I guess the Democrats figure we’ve all lost our memories.
Photo lifted from Drudge Report
I can’t imagine any of the Democrat candidates telling their Democrat supporters that “I am what the terrorists most fear”. Well, especially since the terrorists and madmen around the world have already decided to support our Democrat candidates.
