I Call Bullshit

"Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn't make me Madonna. Never will."

Joan Cusack as Cynthia in Working Girl

"I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold," the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant's bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

"I believe that I've done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you'll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy," she said.

This is the kind of thing that makes me go ballistic. I'm a unity Democrat. I believe either of the Democratic candidates will make a fine President. I support Obama over Clinton because she voted for the war, and he spoke out against that foreign policy mistake. I have tried SO HARD not to criticize Hillary, not to demonize her, not to tear her down, because she may be the party's nominee, and I'm a good Democrat. I want the Democrats to win, not the Republicans.

Now Hillary is saying not only that Obama is not qualified to be commander-in-chief, but that the Republican candidate, McCain, IS qualified. [Based on what? Five years as a prisoner of war? Four years in the House? Twenty-two years in the Senate?] What party is she working for here? Whose side is she on?

Let's face it, the three candidates for President are all Senators. None of them has any executive experience. Is Hillary just saying she and McCain are older than Obama? Or is she trying to claim that somehow sleeping in the same bed with the President gives her executive experience? Here's how the NYTimes evaluated that claim:

[D]uring those two terms in the White House, Mrs. Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president’s daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.

And during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled.

In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: a full partner to her husband in his administration, and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her “eight years with a front-row seat on history.”

I've had front row seats to Celtics games. Doesn't make me Larry Bird. Never will. I've had front row seats for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Doesn't make me Seiji Ozawa. Never will.

And I know that scorched earth tactics leave nothing but burned ashes behind.

My Congressman, Jim McGovern, is a Hillary supporter. I'm sending him an email reminding him that Clinton is running to win the Democratic nomination. Tearing down Obama and praising McCain to the skies is not the way to go.