Odd Couple
I had the privilege of watching a unique debate tonight at Boalt Hall, between our Dean, Christopher Edley, Jr., and his wife Maria Echaveste.
The two met in the West Wing while serving in the Clinton administration, Edley as his top adviser on race relations and Echaveste as his Joshua Lyman (Deputy Chief of Staff for the uninitiated). They are both high-level party insiders, he an adviser to practically every Democratic nominee going back to Carter and she a superdelegate. And they are both aggressively working on behalf of their preferred candidate, he for Obama and she for Clinton. Oh to be a fly on their wall...
Well we got to be that fly for an hour, and I could have sat there all night. The two set a high bar for political discourse. Some highlights:
- Edley started things out by telling us that he taught Obama at Harvard Law School, then quickly qualified that by adding he had also taught Spitzer there.
- Edley called Obama one of the three most gifted minds he's come across in his lifetime, along with Bill Clinton and Barney Frank, and said he's a hardcore policy wonk who could absorb incredible amounts of information.
- Echaveste recalled the daunting challenges facing Bill in January '93, then described how the challenges facing our new president would absolutely dwarf them. At this critical juncture, she wanted Hillary's proven track record rather than Obama's potential. Echaveste did a nice job of setting the stakes high.
- Edley pointed out that Hillary's track record included her health care failure, which he attributed to her divisive approach. She demonized the opposition and made all of the decisions behind closed doors. Echaveste countered that Hillary had learned from that failure and become quite skilled at working with Republicans in Congress, while Obama was still largely unproven in this area.
- On Iraq, Echaveste said she understood Hillary's vote to authorize the Iraq invasion because both she and Edley were initially willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, too. Neither could fathom that a president would risk our soldiers' lives based on political ideology rather than sound intelligence. Echaveste assumed that the administration had to have known something she didn't. However, Edley pointed out that Hillary was not in a position to have to take things on faith. Bob Graham, then head of the Senate Intelligence Committee (and not exactly a bastion of liberalism), voted against the war after reading the National Intelligence Estimate, which convinced him that the administration hadn't made the case. They simply didn't have it. But only a small handful of senators read the report, and Hillary was not among them. Egregious! Even Echaveste admitted that she had no answer for this.
- Edley pointed out that many of the red/purple states won by Obama have key battles further down the ticket, and the people in those battles prefer Obama at the top of the ticket.
In the end, Edley said the key to bringing together a party that's been splintered by this process will be to refocus it on what ultimately matters: winning. To that end, he encouraged us to attend McCain rallies and start chants of "Four More Years!" Ah, the inner workings of a top political mind.
By the way, Edley said that Obama's speech on race would go down as of the best of our generation. If you haven't seen it:
The two met in the West Wing while serving in the Clinton administration, Edley as his top adviser on race relations and Echaveste as his Joshua Lyman (Deputy Chief of Staff for the uninitiated). They are both high-level party insiders, he an adviser to practically every Democratic nominee going back to Carter and she a superdelegate. And they are both aggressively working on behalf of their preferred candidate, he for Obama and she for Clinton. Oh to be a fly on their wall...
Well we got to be that fly for an hour, and I could have sat there all night. The two set a high bar for political discourse. Some highlights:
- Edley started things out by telling us that he taught Obama at Harvard Law School, then quickly qualified that by adding he had also taught Spitzer there.
- Edley called Obama one of the three most gifted minds he's come across in his lifetime, along with Bill Clinton and Barney Frank, and said he's a hardcore policy wonk who could absorb incredible amounts of information.
- Echaveste recalled the daunting challenges facing Bill in January '93, then described how the challenges facing our new president would absolutely dwarf them. At this critical juncture, she wanted Hillary's proven track record rather than Obama's potential. Echaveste did a nice job of setting the stakes high.
- Edley pointed out that Hillary's track record included her health care failure, which he attributed to her divisive approach. She demonized the opposition and made all of the decisions behind closed doors. Echaveste countered that Hillary had learned from that failure and become quite skilled at working with Republicans in Congress, while Obama was still largely unproven in this area.
- On Iraq, Echaveste said she understood Hillary's vote to authorize the Iraq invasion because both she and Edley were initially willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, too. Neither could fathom that a president would risk our soldiers' lives based on political ideology rather than sound intelligence. Echaveste assumed that the administration had to have known something she didn't. However, Edley pointed out that Hillary was not in a position to have to take things on faith. Bob Graham, then head of the Senate Intelligence Committee (and not exactly a bastion of liberalism), voted against the war after reading the National Intelligence Estimate, which convinced him that the administration hadn't made the case. They simply didn't have it. But only a small handful of senators read the report, and Hillary was not among them. Egregious! Even Echaveste admitted that she had no answer for this.
- Edley pointed out that many of the red/purple states won by Obama have key battles further down the ticket, and the people in those battles prefer Obama at the top of the ticket.
In the end, Edley said the key to bringing together a party that's been splintered by this process will be to refocus it on what ultimately matters: winning. To that end, he encouraged us to attend McCain rallies and start chants of "Four More Years!" Ah, the inner workings of a top political mind.
By the way, Edley said that Obama's speech on race would go down as of the best of our generation. If you haven't seen it:
posted by Chang Kim at Tuesday, March 18, 2008
3 Comments:
this begs the obvious question- how often do these two have sex?
they either never touch each other or have tons and tons of makeup sex.
i know harvard lawyer and he's not that smart...
Thanks for this re-cap. I had really wanted to make it to this discussion--have a lot of respect for both participants. Do you think it was a draw?
I don't know if either of 'em "won", but I feel more informed, more confident about my vote for Obama, and more comfortable with the prospect of voting for Hillary if she wins the nomination. A win-win.
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