Did Hillary Pay for the Editorial?

Below is the lead editorial from what is supposed to be a reputable national (news)paper. The following editorial, uh, advertisement, appeared the Boston Sunday Globe this morning. My goodness, did Sen. Clinton have to pay for this? Surely a presidential campaign finance law was broken if no fee was paid for this advertisement.

Also, please note that the advertisement clarifies a quote from the staged "interview" Sen. Clinton allowed the Boston Globe editorial board that I wrote so prophetically about on October 3, 2007. Not only no piercing questions, but now a clarification! Sen. Clinton doesn't even need a communications team to clarify her remarks, the national media does it for her.

What Hillary Said

Boston Sunday Globe, Ideas, October 28, 2007, F8

In an interview with The Boston Globe editorial board on Oct. 10, Senator Hillary Clinton made a remark that has been so badly twisted by her opponents that we feel it necessary to reprint the interview transcript that contains the remark.

The quote that was lifted from the interview and magnified by Clinton's opponents is this: "I have a million ideas. The country can't afford them all." Within hours of the Globe's news report on Clinton's visit, the Republican National Committee sent out an e-mail alert claiming the remark showed how expensive a Clinton presidency would be for the taxpayers. It launched a "Clinton Spend-o-meter" on its website, tracking the potential cost of Clinton's campaign proposals.

A week later at the Republican presidential debate in Orlando, Fla., Rudy Giuliani played the remark for laughs, quoting her and adding the zinger: "No kidding Hillary, America can't afford you!"

All in good fun, perhaps, until you learn that Clinton was saying she opposes big government spending, not the other way around.

At the Globe meeting, Clinton was asked why she had turned cool on a proposal for so-called baby bonds that she has spoken favorably about just the week before. Baby bonds - sometimes called Individual Development Accounts - are small nest eggs government sets aside for each American child, which would build until adulthood when they could be used for college tuition or a down payment on a house. Though ridiculed when Clinton mentioned them, baby bonds have bipartisan support and can be an effective way to fight poverty. Clinton was asked whether dropping a good, new, bold idea like this was a symptom of what some critics have called a too-cautious campaign.

Here is Clinton's full answer: "Well, I have a lot of good, new, bold ideas, and I have to make some choices among them." She explained that baby bonds didn't have the level of political support of other proposals she had to help people pay for college. "I have a million ideas. I can't do all of them. I happen to think in running a disciplined campaign - especially when it comes to fiscal responsibility, which is what I'm trying to do - everything I propose I have to pay for. You know, you go to my website, you'll see what I would use to pay for what I've proposed. So I've got a lot of ideas, I just obviously can't propose them all. I can't afford them all. The country can't afford them all."

Clinton has adopted a pay-as-you-go rule for new spending, much like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's rules for the Democratic Congress. In order to avoid ballooning the deficit, the pay-go rules require a funding source be attached to any new spending. The 60-cent hike in the cigarette tax that would have paid for the expansion of children's healthcare is one example.

What Americans really can't afford are cheap political distortions. (End of Boston Globe press release on behalf of Senator Clinton.)

The letter:

Editor,

That the Boston Globe is in the tank for Sen. Hillary Clinton is now proved beyond any doubt by your lead editorial clarifying the Senator's "the Country can't afford all my ideas" quote (What Hillary Said, Ideas, Boston Sunday Globe, October 28, F8).

As we know, the Globe never published clarifying editorials letting your readers know that President Bush never said "mission accomplished", "Iraq is an iminent threat", or that he or anyone in his Administration ever questioned the military service of Sen. John F. Kerry.

And to the contrary on the latter, the Boston Globe continues to allow articles, columns, editorials, letters and political cartoons that suggest the President did.

The last sentence of your editorial, "What Americans really can't afford are cheap political distortions," is the ultimate in chutzpah. (End of letter.)