As IF Times

link Can John Kerry top Hillary Clinton as secretary of state? – The Week.

The notion that Hillary Clinton is deserved of praise and admiration for her term in office as Secretary of State is like a parent at their 10 year old’s music recital jumping to rapturous applause after a tortuous 3 note rendition of Amazing Grace.   At best, it’s tone deafness and at worst, it’s revisionism.   Other adoring parents will likely join in with the swooning admiration of the special and talented performance.  On the other hand,  passers by outside the school could easily mistake the sounds as cats being made into violin strings.

The state of journalism has devolved into the more commercially successful direction of being fans  and apologists for favored politicians and news-makers.   Like Joan Rivers at the Oscar red carpet parade, politicians are treated as celebrities known as much for their shoes, their hairstyles and their dates rather than for any genuine talent for their jobs.  “Hillary! Hillary! Was that an Armani pantsuit you were wearing while watching the Benghazi riots?”  Or, “How do you stay so slim after logging all those flight miles?”   Some may remember years ago a “celebrity” by the name of Rula Lenska, internationally known and acclaimed actress that no one had ever heard of.   She did a number of Alberto VO-5 commercials and was billed as famous….well,  for being famous.

Hillary inherited that mantle from Ms. Lenska.  Hillary became “internationally known and acclaimed diplomat”.  During her time as Secretary of State, there were constant photo ops of Hillary de-planing in some area of conflict in the world, or huddling at some microphone laden meeting tables with goofy looking politicians.   If nothing else, at least these goofy politicians took the time out from their life and death conflicts for these photo ops.  How often do you get to meet with a rock star? “Hey, Mohammed, turn on channel 5, I’m on TV with Hillary Clinton!”

But after the staged photo ops and earnest speeches, the fighting typically resumed and mayhem continued.   She used the same playbook as the ex UN secretary Kofi Annan who was famous for his standard line of “both sides must show tolerance” especially as it applied to one sided conflicts.   If absolutely nothing at all of significance was resolved because of Hillary’s term in office, that would be acceptable, since the bar set for political fixes is low anyway.  But the fiasco that was Benghazi, the subsequent fake narrative explaining the incident and the kabuki-like congressional questioning should give real journalists pause before they anoint her as a rock star politician.

It’s as if you took your car into a mechanic who then allows it to be vandalized and destroyed but then explains it away by talking about the features of the new Corvette.  Journalists today allow that kind of misdirection and obfuscation so politicians are not held accountable by their actions.  Just the other day, Hillary was interviewed jointly with the President on the hard hitting news show, CBS’s 60 minutes.  It may as well have been Ryan Seacrest doing an exit interview on an American Idol contestant.

Diplomacy can be a tough gig and as described by Will Rogers, it consists of saying “good dog” until you can find a rock.  It means offering all kinds of empty platitudes and obsequious praise to tyrants and nincompoops, so the ability to speak elliptically is a desired talent.  On the basis of that skill-set, Hillary is indeed the Mick Jagger of politics.

link Romney energizes campaign with feisty debate performance | Fox News.

By now, the media is all a-twitter about the big collapse.  No, not the Ryder Cup, that’s another story.  We’re referring of course to last evening’s first Presidential debate.  As we skim through the expected comments by pundits in the aftermath of the great debate, the most striking tone that emerges is the surprise at how well Mitt did versus the relatively flat performance of Barack.

This is amusing because Romney did not do anything different than he has been over this entire campaign and really, since he started public life.  It has been the reporting of it and the perception that has been exposed.   There were no surprise policy positions offered at the debate, nothing that hadn’t been pooh-poohed by the media for months.  For anyone who has been paying attention to the content and not the editorials of his positions, what he offered has been there for everyone to consider for at least the past year.

What changed was the stark juxtaposition of Romney’s pragmatic positions versus the ideological ramblings of Obama’s, laid bare for everyone to see, stripped of spin or embellishment.  It’s akin to the old chestnut about how the young man at 25 years of age, is amazed at how smart his once clueless father became over the past 10 years of their lives.

What I find truly amusing, actually alarming, are the comments by the so-called independents who admitted to being swayed by last night’s debate.  It truly illustrates the shallowness of most of the voting public.  It also shows the residual power and influence of the general media which, though subtle can greatly influence opinions by steadily offering a concocted version of events.

Despite inarguably having the greatest access to education and information in the history of mankind, the ability of people to think independently is overwhelmed by an American Idol culture in which groupthink is rampant.  Many people think that popularity equals legitimacy.  It is a particularly unique trait of humans to do things that are actually detrimental to their own survival, something that you would never observe in the animal world, with the obvious exception of lemmings.

Conservatives shouldn’t take too much joy in last night’s debates as far as swaying the hard core liberals.  We know that even if the liberal candidate were found to have bodies stuffed in a freezer in his house, he’d still get the liberal vote. In the 2010 elections, Californians had the choice of candidate A, a person with renowned business skills who ran a multi-billion dollar enterprise employing thousands and who spent their own money on their campaign; versus candidate B.  This candidate was a relic from the past who essentially had no plan but was a darling of the entertainment community.  Californians were faced with crippling debt loads, massive flight from the state because of taxes and regulation and in dire need of proven fiscal management expertise.  Sure enough, the B team won.