Paraphrasing Maureen Dowd, Hilly Clinton is acting creepy. This is essentially where the conversation started and then eventually came full circle in the first half of the program. This seems to be becoming a loose trend; Senator Clinton makes a statement and then at the very least later has to explain the context. This is it was invoking the June '68 assassination of Robert Kennedy in relation to her campaign. Ms. Dowd continued that Mrs. Clinton doesn't hope for any bodily harm to Senator Obama, but she is waiting for something dreadful to befall him.
Ruth Marcus did not see it as calculated a comment as the others. She attributed it to exhaustion and self-pity, and this combination results in political gaffes. The self-pity stems from what the Clintons claim is sexism and gender-bias in the campaign. Before we leap into that, just a note on self-pity. A person may have self-pity but showing it attempts to invoke sympathy for the person. Hillary Clinton asking us for our sympathy is sad and she's not going to get it. So this column respectfully disagrees with Ms. Marcus.
The Clintons' invocations are always carefully calculated. Apologists would explain that bringing RFK was a mistake and that she could have used the Reagan-Ford primary race for example. Well, why didn't she? With regard to sexism, Ms. Dowd opined that Senator Clinton's statements, while using words like misogyny, actually do a disservice to feminism. She went on to explain that when as First Lady, Mrs. Clinton made this same argument when her health care plan failed and now that her campaign is failing, we're seeing this argument again. She called it Sharptonism - constantly wrapping oneself into side of the victim. And now that her campaign has faltered, she is doing it again. But as pointed out, it was her shortsighted strategy that was her downfall. The race didn't end on February 5th as she counted on.
[Usually when Maureen Dowd appears on the program, more times then not, the rest of the panel adopts her opinion. Mr. Russert mentioned that it was a special edition of MTP and, indeed, it was. Maureen Dowd's wit coupled with Jon Meacham's astuteness, augmented with Gwen Ifill's intuition, and put into perspective by Doris Kearns Goodwin is a two-fold success - entertaining and insightful.]
So will Senator Clinton get out of the race in June and what is she angling to get? As Jon Meacham succinctly put it, What's the meaning of June? At this point, the media and Clinton surrogates are chattering about the V.P. Office. Hasn't this column said this before - Senator Hillary Clinton will not be the Vice Presidential Candidate for the Democratic Party in November 2008. What does make sense is Hillary Clinton being the President of Senate. Now, this is one of the roles of the V.P., but The Clinton's in that office reeks of subversion of the Presidency. The best she is going to get is a sweet cabinet post. However, the problem with this is that Madame Albright and Madame Rice, pretty much have spoiled the Secretary of State role so what's left? Secretary of Defense? Hillary Clinton doing her best Margaret Thatcher routine could work. The irony that the Democrats, traditionally viewed as weak on defense, would put a woman in the top war post. Senator Clinton is hawkish - this is common knowledge so why not employ it to a positive result?
The other irony touched on during today's program is the discussion about how Senator Barack Obama is inaccurately portrayed, especially with regard to race and religion. It's ironic that so many cast Mr. Obama as un-American when in reality he is the ultimate American. He is the first one who is most like a mix of all of us to get this close to the office of Presidency. In this country, every child at one point or another is told that anything is possible and you can be what ever you want to be. Now, we see the fruition of generation after generation telling their kids that, happening right in front of us, we should be pinching ourselves, but instead the focus revolves around the others who harbor more insidious intentions.
This all brings us back to Mrs. Clinton's creepiness. Misconceptions about Barack Obama become difficult to completely defend by the campaign when the candidate is fighting battles on two fronts - McCain to the starboard and Clinton to port (well, pretty much starboard as well, but for the sake of the nautical analogy...). Is Mrs. Clinton hoping that on one of the fronts, the Obama defense will crack? They said on today's program that in politics you should neither invoke assassinations or The Nazis. Ok, but in WWII, there was this big military power fighting a war on two fronts and they lost. The difference is that that was a good thing.
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