The blogosphere is buzzing about something almost serious this week as Hillary Clinton displayed a severe lack of knowledge about something other than Whitewater real estate or Cattle Futures. It was Pakistani politics and her ignorance was exposed after she made some comments after the assassination of her friend Benazir Bhutto this last weekend. It seems that Hillary thought that President Pervez Musharraf was up for re-election and he was not.
What makes the story twice as ugly as so far none of her Democratic opponents, not even the very smart and foreign policy savvy Joseph Biden have called her on her mistake and ignorance, which insinuates that the entire Democratic party may not be smart enough to understand what is going on in Pakistan. That should have voters concerned, but the reality is that President Bush has been displaying a severe lack of knowledge over politics in Pakistan, Iraq, Russia, the UK, Japan, the Koreas, Iran and about every other country on Earth so the bar is set rather low. Its too bad that even with the bar half buried in the mud on the ground, Hillary Clinton still managed to trip over it.
On the Democratic side, the Politico’s Ben Smith has taken a closer look at the wording of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assessment of the political situation in Pakistan after the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. (Read the transcripts from her recent appearances on CNN’s “The Situation Room” and ABC’s “This Week.”)
The story’s spurred a lot of comments on Tuesday as it appeared that Mrs. Clinton stated that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was up for reelection this month – inaccurate because the upcoming elections are for the Pakistani parliament, not president.
Mr. Smith writes:“He will NOT be on the ballot,” said a Pakistan scholar at Columbia University, Philip Oldenburg, in an e-mail. “These are parliamentary elections, where the contests are for a seat in the national assembly. The prime ministerial candidate typically fights for victory in a local constituency, as well as lead[ing] the party in a national campaign.”
A spokesman for Clinton, Howard Wolfson, said Clinton was referring to Musharraf’s party, not the president himself.
And Oldenburg said that “how well the PML-Q, the so-called ‘King’s Party,’ does would in effect be a referendum on Musharraf.”
But Clinton’s words appear unambiguously to describe Musharraf himself as a candidate.“If President Musharraf wishes to stand for election, then he should abide by the same rules that every other candidate will have to follow,” she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Dec. 28.
“He could be the only person on the ballot. I don’t think that’s a real election,” she told ABC’s George Stephanopolous December 30.
Bryan, a writer at the blog Hot Air, says that Mrs. Clinton “gets nearly everything about the Pakistani political situation and upcoming elections wrong. And by wrong, I am not saying that she’s a little wrong. She’s totally wrong. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
What may be even more telling than how wrong Hillary got Pakistan is the fact that none of her Democrat rivals have called her out on it. She made her remarks in a high profile interview on the last Sunday morning before the Iowa caucus. It’s now Tuesday. Where are the Edwards and Obama camps to criticize her for getting everything on a vital story completely wrong? It’s reasonable to assume that none of the experts in either camp are even aware that Hillary is so disastrously wrong about the hottest foreign policy story of the moment.
He also has the video of Mrs. Clinton’s Dec. 30 appearance on “This Week.”
Kim Priestap at Wizbang wondered why the media didn’t pick up the story until now, and if it’ll gain any stream – although she thinks it should.
Senator Clinton is looking quite foolish after setting up her foreign policy experience like this because she has set an expectation that she didn’t fulfill. Not knowing that Pervez Musharraf is the president of Pakistan who won reelection in October and that the elections on January 8th, which will probably be postponed after Bhutto’s assassination, are for Parliament is really unacceptable, especially since Pakistan is such an important hot spot in the War on Terror.
As The Caucus tuned into CNN’s day-long campaign coverage today (billed as the Ballot Bowl ’08, naturally), we saw live coverage of Democratic contender Joe Biden jumping into the fray. Touting his own experience, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told a crowd in Indianola, Iowa, of Musharraf – “he’s already elected” – and “ladies and gentlemen, this is about electing the parliament.”
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