Hillary Clinton is running as Leonard Zelig – her proximity to the Commander-in-Chief, to military escorts and to world leaders and diplomats during her years as First Lady transforming her into an experienced leader that is Ready on Day One. Alas, the facts don't not bear this out. As The Guardian of London recently noted:

[A]n initial reading of some of the more than 11,000 pages of Clinton's schedules from her days as first lady… shows that she was often far from the site of decision-making during some of the most pivotal events of Bill Clinton's presidency. …

On August 20, 1998, Bill Clinton ordered US missile strikes on suspected terrorist sites in Sudan and Afghanistan. The president and Hillary Clinton were on holiday on Martha's Vineyard, a posh island vacation spot off the coast of Massachusetts. After announcing the attack, Clinton cut short his break and returned to Washington to confer with his national security team; Hillary Clinton remained on the Vineyard until August 30, her records show.

Barack Obama is running as Chauncey Gardiner - his lofty rhetoric induces voters to project onto him qualities that transform him into a uniter, a change agent and a post-racial candidate. Pollster Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, summarizes the findings from his organization’s latest poll of swing voters (i.e., white Dems) “about the personal qualities … they associated with each candidate …  and the general feelings that the two candidates stirred in them”: 

While Mr. Obama’s positive personal image plays an important role in his high favorable ratings, the polling found that his ratings are more influenced by how he makes voters feel than by specific characteristics they attributed to him. In particular, views that Mr. Obama inspires hope and pride are the strongest determinants of a person’s opinion of him. In other words, he is a charismatic candidate who has made large numbers of Democratic voters feel good, and this is even more important to them than specific perceptions of him.

Unfortunately, emerging evidence suggests Obama may be not be who voters think he is, but is instead just another cynical, ambitious pol.

In An Absolut World Everyone Would Drink Grey Goose

Since May 2007, Absolut Vodka has been running an ongoing ad campaign created by TBWA/Chiat/Day/New York, “In an Absolut World,” described by The New York Times as:

[A] fanciful, even surreal, place where common sense prevails and just deserts are always on the menu.

On Planet Absolut, for instance, men can get pregnant, the Curse of the Billy Goat is lifted from the hapless Chicago Cubs and the garish billboards in Times Square are replaced by masterpiece paintings. Lying leaders are exposed by their Pinocchio noses, protesters and the police wage street fights with feather pillows, nice Manhattan apartments cost $300 a month and it takes only one exercise lap in a pool for a fatty to become a hottie.” 

And in this alternate Absolut reality, the Mexican-American war of 1848 never happened, and Alta California – that is to say, CA, TX, NM, UT, CO and AZ – still “belongs” to Mexico on a map that was the centerpiece of a billboard and print campaign that ran in Mexico until los gringos El Norte got wind of it. Though Mexico lost that war – and to the victor go the spoils – Mexicans think the U.S. “stole” their land and the ad campaign stokes their resentment. Whether the campaign would increase sales of vodka in a country where people drink cerveza and tequila is debatable, but calls for boycotts on this side of the border forced the company to apologize, reports The Associated Press:

“In no way was it meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues,” Absolut said in a statement left on its consumer inquiry phone line. …

Absolut said the ad was designed for a Mexican audience and intended to recall “a time which the population of Mexico might feel was more ideal.”

“As a global company, we recognize that people in different parts of the world may lend different perspectives or interpret our ads in a different way than was intended in that market, and for that we apologize.”

This nonapology apology begs the question of how the same ad would be reinterpreted for an American audience to recall a time which population of the U.S. might feel was more ideal.  

Beijing Olympics Sponsors Subsidizing Rights Abuses On An Olympian Scale

The Washington Post reprints a September 10, 2007 letter to Human Rights Watch, for which its author, human rights activist Hu Jia, was just sentenced to 3½ years in prison by a Beijing court. The Stilletto can only offer excerpts due to copyright restrictions, but urges you to read the letter in its entirety:

On July 13th 2001, when Beijing won the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the Chinese government promised the world it would improve China's human rights record. …

To clear space for Olympic-related construction, thousands of civilian houses have been destroyed without their former owners being properly compensated. …

It has been reported that over 1.25 million people have been forced to move because of Olympic construction; it was estimated that the figure would reach 1.5 million by the end of 2007. No formal resettlement scheme is in place for the over 400,000 migrants who have had their dwelling places demolished. …

China still practices literary inquisition and holds the world record for detaining journalists and writers, as many as several hundred since 1989, according to incomplete statistics. As of this writing, 35 Chinese journalists and 51 writers are still in prison. Over 90 percent were arrested or tried after Beijing's successful bid for the Olympics in July 2001. …

Every year in mainland China, countless websites are closed, blogs deleted, sensitive words filtered. Many websites hosted abroad are blocked. Overseas radio and television programs are interfered with or strictly prohibited. …

Religious freedom is still under repression. In 2005, a Beijing pastor, Cai Zhuohua, was sentenced to three years for printing Bibles. Zhou Heng, a house church pastor in Xinjiang, was charged with running an "illegal operation" for receiving dozens of boxes of Bibles. From April to June 2007, China expelled over 100 suspected U.S., South Korean, Canadian, Australian, and other missionaries. …

Labor camps are still retained as a convenient Chinese system which allows the police to lock up citizens without trial for up to four years. …

China has the world's largest secret police system, the Ministry of National Security (guo an) and the Internal Security Bureau (guo bao) of the Ministry of Public Security, which exercise power beyond the law. They can easily tap telephones, follow citizens, place them under house arrest, detain them and impose torture. …

The Chinese government has been selling arms and weapons to Darfur and other African regions to support ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The Chinese authorities have forcibly repatriated North Korean refugees, knowing that they would be sent to labor camps or executed once back home. …

As the Beijing Olympics slogan says, we live in "one world" with "one dream." We hope that one day the Chinese people will be able to share universal human rights, democracy and peace with people from all around the world. However, we can see that the Chinese government obviously is not yet prepared to honor its promise. As a matter of fact, the preparations for the Olympics have provided the perfect excuse for the Chinese government to restrict civil liberties and suppress human rights!

The heads of several European nations have either announced, or are giving serious consideration to, boycotting the opening ceremonies to protest China’s suppression of Tibetan protestors. Apparently, nothing will keep President Bush from attending.