Last Updated on August 27, 2017
Who’ll be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008? It would seem that Karl Rove has already decided that it’ll be Hillary Clinton. In his Newsweek column, he discusses how the Republican candidate — he apparently hasn’t decided who that will be, yet — can beat her:
“Say in authentic terms what you believe. The GOP nominee must highlight his core convictions to help people understand who he is and to set up a natural contrast with Clinton, both on style and substance. Don’t be afraid to say something controversial. The American people want their president to be authentic. And against a Democrat who calculates almost everything, including her accent and laugh, being seen as someone who says what he believes in a direct way will help.”
I wonder if Mitt Romney read the article. Romney already makes John Kerry, the man accused of being the new millenium’s first real flip-flopper of a presidential candidate, look like he never changed his mind a day in his life.
Clinton has gotten lots of attention the past few days, and she seems to have gotten points for her handling of a hostage crisis at her campaign headquarters in New Hampshire. She seemed calm under fire, authoritative, decisive. (Even though she likely made no decisions at all about how that particular crisis was being handled.)
Meanwhile, just as people have been forgetting that pointless squabble about why she won’t admit that her vote to authorize Bush to invade Iraq if necessary was a “mistake” (and use that specific word), Bill Clinton made a remark that will probably put him (back) in the dog house: speaking to an Iowa audience, he said that he “flatly opposed” the war in Iraq from the beginning.
Of course, back in 2003, he told a graduating class at Tougaloo College, “I supported the President when he asked the Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
And in 2004, he said this in a CNN interview:
“I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over.
“[After 9/11, Bush’s first priority was to keep al Qaeda and other terrorist networks from obtaining] chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material.
“That’s why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for.”
Is this a rewriting of history or a clarification of what Bill Clinton really felt but didn’t come right out and say because of his wife’s pending run for the White House? It makes little difference, because either way, it gives Hillary’s critics more ammunition.
And while Clinton’s critics are typing up a storm on the blogosphere, there is now word that Barack Obama has now taken the lead (albeit a slight one) in Iowa over Clinton and John Edwards. Obama is still riding the high of campaign assistance from Oprah Winfrey and the endorsement of Des Moines’ mayor, as well as a fiery speech three weeks ago in which he vowed to turn away from the partisan battles of the Clinton-Bush years.
That’s something all candidates should be promising. And exactly what the winning candidate needs to deliver.
- Take the poll: Who do you think will win the Democratic primary in Iowa?
First: The notion of Karl Rove and the words “authentic” and “don’t be afraid to say something controversial” are laughable. He’s the architect (remember) of Dubya’s “Smears, Fears and Queers” campaigns. They had the right-wing fundamentalists voting in droves after painting a picture of, say, a couple of gays who want to get married (and destroy the sanctified version of the “family”) embracing Islam, strapping on dirty bombs and attacking several cities. At once. And there goes the retail profit margin at the malls…
We’re supposed to be Shopping for Freedom and sharpening our claws to fend off “Islamo-fascist” sympathizers and the GLBT hordes. They’re all alike. They hate us (white, Christian straight types) because we’re free.
Is HRC a done deal? If you count the good old boy money machine and the “It’s her turn” mindset on the Left, yes. The voter–if we refuse to buckle under the weight of the Smears and Fears campaign–is a different story.
Eight years as First Lady does not count as “experience.” Unless you can also say the wife/receptionist of a neurosurgeon is qualified to perform brain surgery.
The Right is literally salivating for another Clinton campaign. So is the MSM. Prurient, salacious, juicy, vicious–the politics of personal destruction all over the news. An HRC/Giuliani race is the tabloid equivalent of multiple orgasms. Scandal sells. So does the campaign that draws blood. Lofty debates about public policy are boring.
Inevitability is a sure thing only when the voter plays along rather than take responsibility for knowing the issues well enough to get past the slick one-liner, the posturing for who looks “toughest” or “most presidential” on the tube.And God preserve us from another “Why, he’s the kind of regular guy I could have me a beer with!” candidate. Or another “Born Again” who peddles intolerance and greed as both “faith” and the American Dream.