TIME: How the Front Runners Lost Their Edge; Clinton "is fighting the last war"

DeepModem Mom

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Feb-28-07 09:52 PM
Original message

TIME: How the Front Runners Lost Their Edge; Clinton "is fighting the last war"

Edited on Wed Feb-28-07 09:57 PM by DeepModem Mom

How the Front Runners Lost Their Edge
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007
By JOE KLEIN

Presidential hopefuls Senator Hillary Clinton (L) (D-NY) and Senator John McCain (R-AZ).
(Christopher Morris/VII)

In the beginning, Hillary Clinton and John McCain were the front runners in the 2008 presidential campaign, and it was good. Two strong, colorful candidates. What could be better? That was a few months ago--pre-surge, pre-Obama. In the party of primogeniture, the 70-year-old McCain was next in line for the throne. He was, and still is, scarfing up the fund raisers, pols and operatives who represent the beating heart of the Republican Party. And Hillary was ... Hillary. No last name necessary. It was an article of faith that because of money and marriage, the junior Senator from New York had it locked up. It still is an article of faith among right-wing talk-show hosts, who tend to believe in their wildest fantasies. "She's got it locked up, right?" Sean Hannity said to Dick Morris during a radio smarm-athon a few weeks ago. Of course, Morris agreed, juicily, but "wait till people see that she's an even bigger flip-flopper than John Kerry."

The odd thing about this conversation is how irrelevant it seemed. For one thing, no one with any sense still believes that Clinton--or McCain, for that matter--has the nomination locked up. And flip-flopping? Wasn't that the last election? So imagine my surprise to learn, in the New York Times, that Clinton was thinking right along with Morris, that she was really, really worried that if she admitted that her vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, she could be accused of being a flip-flopper. "She is in a box now ... but she doesn't want to be in a different, even worse box--the vacillating, flip- flopping Democratic candidate went down to defeat in 2000 and '04," said one of the Senator's apparently limitless supply of advisers. "She wants to maintain a firmness ... That's what people will want in 2008."

No, they won't. Most voters don't care if Hillary Clinton says "I was wrong" about Iraq. They know she was wrong, and they sense she regrets it. After all, she's against the surge and for a phased withdrawal. She knows more about national-security issues than most of her Democratic opponents do, and when she talks about what to do in Iraq, she makes sense. That should be all that matters. But there are about 873 people on the left edge of the Democratic Party, plus assorted anti-Clinton consultant trolls like Morris, who want to torment her over this. And she, inexplicably, is allowing herself to be tormented. One would think that after six stubborn years of George W. Bush, Clinton would realize there is a bull market for candidates who can admit, and learn from, mistakes. When John Edwards simply said "I was wrong" about Iraq on Meet the Press a few weeks ago, it seemed to defuse even Tim Russert, who can flog a flip-flop better than anyone else.

Clinton's sclerotic firmness may be chronic, a consequence of the sort of campaign she appears to be running--which is to say, the sort of campaign in which you put a ravening horde of consultants in a room and have them discuss whether you should say "I was wrong" about Iraq instead of making up your own mind and speaking the obvious truth. In other words, she's running against the Kerry campaign by imitating the Kerry campaign. She's fighting the last war....

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1592851,00.html