Australian role model

Being on the other side of the world does not distance one from the campaigns of the primary. It clarifies them - crystal with objectivity. Connectivity is all - and so the reports and newsletters keep on coming in and one checks in with the campaign office sites and sees how the keen bean volunteers are going.

And, we have had the interesting phenomenon of our own campaigns here in Australia, our equivalent, a Federal Election - which delivers the Prime Minister in the form of the leader of the elected party.

We have just scored a new Prime Minister - and a government which moves from right to left, from conservative to liberal. It is an unfortunate irony that the Australian conservatives call themselves "liberal".

The election was a landslide to the left.

It omens well for the US and Hillary Clinton. The US is the last right wing government in the English-speaking world.

Around the world, people finally are rebelling against Iraq, economic rationalism, worker exploitation, dumbed down education, inequality in health care...

And so will it be in the US.

Hills and the MySpace outreach

Never slow on the uptake, Hillary, one notes, has been campaigning brilliantly from within the ranks of youth. There are several worlds in which to sustain a profile these days. The classic hustings of the trail, the stump speeches from town to town, and then there are the "other" towns, the virtual communities which are huge, powerful and often cohesive.
Hillary has sustained a strong presence on MySpace which is virtual home to a daunting mass of brightly bubbling young people as well as much of the music industry. I am told that if you are in the music business, a MySpace page is de rigeur.
If you are trying to communicate with music consumers, with young people generally, MySpace also is de rigeur.
Hillary's team was quick to put her in there and to know how to escalate the message. Some 14703 have signed up as her friends and thus are eligible to receive postings of her blog. The blog is posted regularly - clear and coherent policies right there in your face, so to speak.
Today she talks about education, the most valuable investment the country can make.
It costs a fortune. Hillary suggests:


* Lowering the cost of college through a $3,500 tuition tax credit, enough to cover more than 50% of the cost of tuition at the average public institution for many families.
* Increasing the Pell Grant.
* Strengthening community colleges and training programs.
* Improving college graduation rates.
* Providing additional aid for people who do public service.
* Simplifying student aid.
* Providing clear information about the real cost of college well in advance to help families plan.

Meanwhile, here's to AL GORE, the first man since George Bernard Shaw to win both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize.
Perhaps the Nobel prize may make some of the American anti-environmentalist right wingers wake up, just a little bit. Or will they only think the prize is a commie conspiracy?

Hillary raises hillfire

The American presidential process is a contact sport. Candidates vying to run for President must run the gauntlet, not of the party backroom numbers but of the people of the country. To that end, theirs is an exhausting schedule of meeting everyone everywhere - but first and foremost in New Hampshire.

Hence, the Democrat frontrunner, Senator Hillary Clinton has just made her fifth visit to the Granite State to "Let the Conversation Begin" by throwing herself at the mercy of about 1000 people packed into a Manchester highschool gym. An interesting crowd since it was of broad demographic - young and old, rich and poor, multiracial. Its common bond was the urge to get a close look at this woman, to see if she scrubbed up to their expectations, to put her on the spot with difficult questions...This is their right and their role and they take it earnestly.

She kept the crowd waiting but, oddly, no one seemed to mind. Wallpaper rock music played and a rather merry, party spirit was established - among all except the very clearly labelled Hillary Press followers who sat about intensely tapping on their laptops and talking on their cellphones.


Secret Services officers were all over the place. There is nothing secret about them. They stand out as stern besuited bruisers with vast bulges beneath their jackets. Huge weapons. Machine guns! I felt their piercing gaze assessing my handbag, my camera, my attitude. Those eagle eyes constantly scoping.

Of course Hillary is not your average candidate - not only a Senator but former First Lady of the country. One assumes she is long accustomed to co-existing with that load of protective paranoia.

Hillary breezed into the hall accompanied by the school's Vice Principal and the local Senator, both of whom required their moment in the sun before she was invited to say her piece, expertly microphoned and free to walk around the little stage to address the 360 deg of eager audience.


She went straight for the grass roots with lighthearted anecdotes about her own childhood, gently self-deprecatory and humourous. Ah, what a pro. The audience was immediately with her. And they were to become more so as she launched into the hot issue of health care. The health care lobby is omnipresent at these political events, tribes of people in strident t-shirts handing out "I'm for Healthcare" stickers. Their local organiser, one Tammy Clark, told me that some of the candidates would not wear the stickers but Hillary would. Sure enough, Hillary did. And she spoke passionately about the ways in which the inequality and expense of this country's health system could be improved - starting with electronic medical records. She has fought for this before and, she laughed, she "carries the wounds" of those battles. But she is far from giving up. When she becomes President...

Then there was energy. "It's no use paying regimes that are not friendly to us for energy," she said, explainng that the urgent need to develop alternative sources could be funded by removing tax subsidies to oil companies.

Then education - access to preschools, making college affordable again.
She did not mention President George Bush by name. Instead, she targeted his "administration" and the eight years of dire decisions which have undermined America's standing in the world.

She cited the massive international outpouring of sympathy for the USA following 9/11 "even Iran, for example", lamenting that "we squandered that". And she promised "a concerted effort to tell not just the leaders of the world but the people that, while the US will always defend its borders, it wants to get back to working with people again... to send messages again about how the US cares because that used to be the US message". She wanted village people to turn in bomb-makers because they wanted to be "on the right side".



"I have visions of walking into the Oval Office and seeing this gigantic hole we have dug ourselves into over the last 8 years," she declared.