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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (367482)	1/19/2008 4:16:37 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576851

Clinton, Romney win Nevada caucuses By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent 2 minutes ago Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won the Nevada caucuses Saturday, powering past Barack Obama in a hard-fought race marred by last-minute charges of dirty politics. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney easily won the Republican contest. The victory marked a second-straight campaign triumph for the former first lady, who gained an upset victory over Obama in last week's New Hampshire primary. Early returns showed the former first lady gaining roughly half the vote in a three-way Democratic race, with Obama at about 45 percent and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards placing a distant third. Romney said Republicans had cast their votes for change — and that he was the man to provide it. "With a career spent turning around businesses, creating jobs and imposing fiscal discipline, I am ready to get my hands on Washington and turn it inside out," he said in a statement issued while he flew to Florida, site of the Jan. 29 primary. The Republican caucuses drew relatively little candidate interest. Not so the party's South Carolina primary, the second half of a campaign doubleheader, and a duel between Sen. John McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Romney was gaining more than half the vote in Nevada, leaving McCain and Texas Rep. Ron Paul in a close race for a distant second place. Obama had pinned his hopes on an ourpouring of support from the Culinary Workers Union, which endorsed him last week. But it appeared that turnout was lighter than expected at nine caucuses established along the Las Vegas Strip for the union membership. The Nevada Democratic contest was intense, despite the absence of negative television commercials. The Clinton campaign said their supporters in the union had been the targets of threats designed to keep them from attending caucuses. Obama's camp said their backers were receiving telephone calls that made repeated reference to "Barack Hussein Obama."

To: tejek who wrote (367482)	1/20/2008 11:04:23 AM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 1576851

Hillary, Barack, Experience By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF With all the sniping from the Clinton camp about whether Barack Obama has enough experience to make a strong president, consider another presidential candidate who was far more of a novice. He had the gall to run for president even though he had served a single undistinguished term in the House of Representatives, before being hounded back to his district. That was Abraham Lincoln. Another successful president scorned any need for years of apprenticeship in Washington, declaring, “The same old experience is not relevant.” He suggested that the most useful training comes not from hanging around the White House and Congress but rather from experience “rooted in the real lives of real people” so that “it will bring real results if we have the courage to change.” That was Bill Clinton running in 1992 against George H. W. Bush, who was then trumpeting his own experience over the callow youth of Mr. Clinton. That year Mr. Bush aired a television commercial urging voters to keep America “in the hands of experience.” It might seem obvious that long service in Washington is the best preparation for the White House, but on the contrary, one lesson of American history is that length of experience in national politics is an extremely poor predictor of presidential success. Looking at the 19 presidents since 1900, three of the greatest were among those with the fewest years in electoral politics. Teddy Roosevelt had been a governor for two years and vice president for six months; Woodrow Wilson, a governor for just two years; and Franklin Roosevelt, a governor for four years. None ever served in Congress. They all did have executive experience (as did Mr. Clinton), actually running something larger than a Senate office. Maybe that’s something voters should think about more: governors have often made better presidents than senators. But that’s not a good Democratic talking point, because the candidates with the greatest administrative experience by far are Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee. Alternatively, look at the five presidents since 1900 with perhaps the most political experience when taking office: William McKinley, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. They had great technical skills — but not one was among our very greatest presidents. The point is not that experience is pointless but that it needn’t be in politics to be useful. John McCain’s years as a P.O.W. gave him an understanding of torture and a moral authority to discuss it that no amount of Senate hearings ever could have conferred. In the same way, Mr. Obama’s years as an antipoverty organizer give him insights into one of our greatest challenges: how to end cycles of poverty. That front-line experience is one reason Mr. Obama not only favors government spending programs, like early-childhood education, but also cultural initiatives like promoting responsible fatherhood. Then there’s Mr. Obama’s grade-school years in Indonesia. Our most serious mistakes in foreign policy, from Vietnam to Iraq, have been a blindness to other people’s nationalism and an inability to see ourselves as others see us. Mr. Obama seems to have absorbed an intuitive sensitivity to that problem. For starters, he understood back in 2002 that American troops would not be greeted in Iraq with flowers. In politics, Mr. Obama’s preparation is indeed thin, though it’s more than Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledges. His seven years in the Illinois State Senate aren’t heavily scrutinized, but he scored significant achievements there: a law to videotape police interrogations in capital cases; an earned income tax credit to fight poverty; an expansion of early-childhood education. Mrs. Clinton’s strength is her mastery of the details of domestic and foreign policy, unrivaled among the candidates; she speaks fluently about what to do in Pakistan, Iraq, Darfur. Mr. Obama’s strength is his vision and charisma and the possibility that his election would heal divisions at home and around the world. John Edwards’s strength is his common touch and his leadership among the candidates in establishing detailed positions on health care, poverty and foreign aid. Those are the meaningful distinctions in the Democratic field, not Mrs. Clinton’s spurious claim to “35 years of experience.” The Democrats with the greatest Washington expertise — Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson — have already been driven from the race. And the presidential candidate left standing with the greatest experience by far is Mr. McCain; if Mrs. Clinton believes that’s the criterion for selecting the next president, she might consider backing him. To put it another way, think which politician is most experienced today in the classic sense, and thus — according to the “experience” camp — best qualified to become the next president. That’s Dick Cheney. And I rest my case. You are invited to comment on this column at Mr. Kristof’s blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground.