“I think that would be a very good move,” Harkin told the Huffington Post. “He brings all the background and experience. He’s very strong on prevention and wellness, which I’m very strong on. I think he’d make an outstanding secretary of HHS.”

Asked if he had spoken to White House on the matter, Harkin demurred: “I’m not going to get into that,” he said after a pause.

Harkin himself has been mentioned as a possible replacement to former Sen. Tom Daschle, who had to withdraw his name from consideration for the HHS position due to revelations that he had not paid taxes on parts of his income.

Harkin endorsed Dean’s candidacy for president leading up to the Iowa Caucuses in 2004.

Iowa Republican Tom Latham sailed into the House of Representatives on a sea of change in 1994, when his party swept into power. Could Latham sail out on a different partisan sea of change in 2008 — and, in the process, make way for the election of Iowa’s first congresswoman?

…

To date, both candidates have used limited, largely positive television advertising, with Latham running as a “trusted leader” and Greenwald as an “independent thinker.”

The report from Time discusses candidate differences and notes the change from primarily positive advertising to a more rough-and-tumble marketing strategies.

U.S. House races from New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Mississippi, Florida, California, Washington and New Jersey are also featured in the report, as are U.S. Senate races from Minnesota and Virginia.

According to the Associated Press, Clinton acknowledged Wednesday that she loaned her campaign $5 million late last month as Obama was outraising and outspending her heading into the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests.

“That’s very interesting,” Harkin told Iowa Independent and other media on a conference call Thursday. “And that’s before Super Tuesday. You wonder if their campaign is running on fumes.”

Harkin added, “I think there are some real dark clouds there on that.”

A veteran U.S. senator, Harkin — who is also a superdelegate at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in late August — continued to tell reporters he was neutral and at one point joked that he would not reveal his hand regardless of how “ingenious” media members were with framing their questions to Harkin on the matter.

“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” Harkin said. “I’m still neutral in this race and I intend to stay that way.”

Harkin did not endorse a candidate before the 2008 Iowa caucuses — as he did in 2004 when Harkin stood behind third-place finisher Howard Dean on the stage during the infamous speech by the Vermonter, now the head of the Democratic National Committee.

Having known Harkin since the 1970s (he helped secure certain details of my little sister’s arrival as a Vietnamese immigrant) I told the senator my instinct is that he’s an Obama man.

“I’m neutral,” Harkin said.

But moments later he made a number of statements that might indicate otherwise. The senator even went so far as to suggest that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., might be better prepared for the presidency than Clinton because he has served both as a federal and state legislator.

“Don’t discount that,” he said of Obama’s time in the Illinois Senate. “That’s sort of down at the nitty gritty level where you really have to work with people.”

Harkin also noted that Hillary Clinton (elected in 2000) has been in the Senate just four years longer than Obama (elected in 2004).

“Four years, does that make that much difference?” Harkin asked.

Said Harkin: “I think they both have the necessary experience and background.”

I asked Harkin if the superdelegate process was fair, if it in fact amounted to some “netherworld, English House of Lords” elitist process that could negate the will of regular people — people Obama and Clinton have been fighting for to gain at times is a razor’s edge of advantage in some places.

“Maybe this is something the Democratic Convention ought to look at,” Harkin said.
]]> http://iowaindependent.com/1922/harkin-spots-dark-clouds-over-clinton-campaign/feed 2 http://iowaindependent.com/553/clinton-may-have-borrowed-another-story-from-a-well-known-politician http://iowaindependent.com/553/clinton-may-have-borrowed-another-story-from-a-well-known-politician#comments Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:10:34 +0000 Ben Weyl http://iowaindependent.com/553/clinton-may-have-borrowed-another-story-from-a-well-known-politician On Thursday, Iowa Independent reported on the sharing of anecdotes between New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack. Now Time reports that Clinton is using a story on the campaign trail that strongly echoes one that former Vice President Al Gore has told before.

Clinton recalls a story she says was told to her by then United Nations Ambassador Madeleine Albright, who was born in Czechoslovakia and was traveling in Europe to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Everywhere she went, Albright saw cheering people with American flags that counted only 48 stars. Apparently they had kept the flags — though hidden during Soviet rule — that were handed out by American soldiers who had liberated them from the Nazis. At the time Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states.

In Gore's version, a man from Murfreesboro, Tenn., had come to visit him when he was a senator. The man recounted to Gore how he had escaped from communist Czechoslovokia to come to the United States. Years later, when he returned to his homeland after the communists had fallen from power, he, too, saw those same 48-starred flags in the hands of pro-American Czechs who had kept them since World War II.

The stories, which are indeed poignant, are meant to illustrate that America's values and standing in the world can be reclaimed. But are they less powerful if they were invented or in some other way borrowed?

The authors conclude:

There's nothing particularly scandalous about this. Working in the Senate and the White House, we've seen elected officials (and their staff members) hear stories, mash them up, and make them their own. At least in this case, Clinton and Gore wisely credit their stories to sources that protect them: Clinton because her source is unimpeachable, Gore because his is untraceable.

Of course, there's another possible explanation: maybe Madeleine Albright is from Murfreesboro.