Hillary's call for Olympic boycott is puerile

In her latest foray into foreign affairs (after single-handedly bringing peace to Ulster and dodging snipers in Bosnia) Hillary Rodham Clinton has called on President Bush to boycott the Olympics. 

Given that the Chinese have been abusing human rights since long before her husband abused female staff, one wonders why she was coy on the subject between 1993 and 2001 when her husband was President. 

While President, Bill Clinton approved the transfer to China of advanced space technology that can be used for nuclear combat. Bear in mind that in that same year, Clinton happily accepted illegal campaign contributions from Chinese army sources - including in the form of cash! I guess this brings a whole new meaning to a Chinese take-away. 

Quite what Hillary Clinton thinks bashing the Chinese by boycotting the Olympics will achieve is beyond me. It is puerile gesture politics and it is simply not the kind of grown-up behaviour that one would expect of a President. She is simply reminding people that she is not up to the job. Given how grouchy she always seems to be, the idea of letting her make a decision at 3am or even 3pm is not one I think Americans will ever let her make. Go back to New York, Hillary, and save yourself some money, time and further humiliation.  

Today's Hero & Zero: President Bush & The Lib Dems

Today’s Hero is…President George W Bush, for meeting the Dalai Lama at the White House this week despite the frenzied objections of the Chinese. The Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize Winner worthy of the award when the award was worth winning, is also to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

The United States is right to honour the Dalai Lama, to call for freedom for Tibet and to defend the Taiwanese. The Chinese – far from being a threaten to western hegemony – are themselves about to discover some harsh realities.

The world will glimpse next year during the Olympics what a sordid, corrupt and oppressive country China is – even the BBC will have to report on it. And with wonderful irony China’s leaders will one day find themselves on the receiving end of protests from the dispossessed who have not benefited from China’s economic growth. Those who live by the sword will eventually perish by the sword too.

So three cheers for President Bush for standing shoulder to shoulder with the Dalai Lama. And don’t forget – while his approval rating of 24% may be very low indeed, at least it’s highest than the approval rating of the Democratic Party-controlled Congress which is an abysmal 11%. The same rating Ming Campbell was getting in the polls at the weekend, in fact!

Today’s Zero is…the Liberal Democratic Party. Britain’s third party is in danger of becoming a joke. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde “to lose one leader may be regarded as misfortune, but to lose two leaders in under two years smacks of carelessness”.

If the LibDems choose a fellow centrist such as Nick Clegg, they will find the centre ground is already overcrowded. Their only option to ensure they have a distinctive electoral voice is to move to Labour’s left. This might, however, split the party and ensure we revert to a two-party system with the Orange Book liberals joining the Tories and the social democrats joining Labour. One wonders whether if they had stuck with the flawed but popular Charles Kennedy they would still be in this mess.