Published on TheHill.com on February 26, 2008.
Whether one likes, dislikes, loves, hates, admires, fears, despises, or envies them, every Clinton watcher has this in common: They are dumbfounded both by the incompetence with which Hillary has run for president and her intransigence at sticking to a failed message. In a demonstration of inability and inflexibility reminiscent of her healthcare debacle of 1993-94, Mrs. Clinton seems destined to fulfill Voltaire’s description of the Bourbon kings of France: “They learn nothing. They forget nothing.”
Even now, with her back against the wall, fighting for her political career, Hillary, presumably with Bill’s acquiescence, insists on making the same mistakes that landed her in the soup. No new tactics, no new strategy, no new message emerges.
Incredibly, both Clintons are harping, once more, on the theme of experience to carry the day. No matter that it hasn’t worked since before Iowa; they repeat the same mantra endlessly — that Hillary can “hit the ground running” on “Day One.” Will they ever realize that voters grasp two essential facts:
(a) That Hillary’s experience is derivative of Bill’s and her claims to his achievements are largely invented and spurious, and
(b) That the real edge she has in experience is her ability to repeat the strategies, tactics, message, fundraising models and campaign style of the 1990s, something modern voters reject emphatically?
Why, after losing 24 states, do Hillary and Bill fail to get these messages? Are they saving up these insights for their memoirs?
And why do the Clintons persist in running a negative campaign even when they can’t find anything to be negative about? Alienating voters with their abrasive attacks without attracting them with their content, they throw pitty-pat punches accusing Obama one day of plagiarism for borrowing speech lines from his close and consenting friend and the next day for accurately describing Hillary’s healthcare plan as requiring sanctions to make those who do not wish to sign up do so against their will (albeit for policies Mrs. Clinton deems to be “affordable”).
If you are going to pay the price of going negative, throw real punches. Hit Obama with big negatives. You take the backlash for going negative in order to pass the lethal message on to the voters. But if you don’t have any negatives to throw and your detectives have, indeed, come up empty, then stop trying to go negative. Stop alienating people to no purpose.
But as obvious as these observations are, they seem to be lost on Bill and Hillary and the geniuses who are running her campaign. Despite defeat after defeat, we still hear about experience and still get a daily dose of so-what attacks on Obama.
The deeper reality of this campaign is that Obama has shown, by his incredible skill in the way he is waging it, an ability to handle himself and a talent for the demands of center stage that show, experienced or not, he is better able to be president than the inept Hillary.
We are watching a grim re-enactment of all of the character traits that led Hillary to decompose in the healthcare debate of her husband’s first term. The blind reliance on a guru-delivered strategy, the religious insistence on following the same rhetorical line even when it obviously isn’t working, the inflexibility in adapting to one’s opposition, and the inability to formulate new strategies or to improvise tactics when her pre-conceptions are found to be so obviously faulty — this is Hillary at her worst.
As citizens, we are entitled to watch Obama’s skill, leadership style, and savvy sophistication and contrast it with Hillary’s doctrinaire insistence on approaches that aren’t working and to conclude that Hillary would be a disaster as president and that Obama would be pretty good. We can, at least, conclude that the same tenacity that led Johnson into Vietnam and may be inducing Bush to risk his party, his reputation and the attitudes of a generation in Iraq may be abundantly present in Hillary.
But we are driven to wonder: Does Hillary’s rigidity stem from a false conviction or from an absence of sufficient imagination and creativity to formulate an alternative course?
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Comments
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“Does Hillary’s rigidity stem from a false conviction or from an absence of sufficient imagination and creativity to formulate an alternative course?”
to me it is neither…it is simply because she just has an incessant need to be right. she seems “hell-bent” on proving to others that if she wins, it was because of her…if she loses, she seems more than willing to blame others…after watching her on the debate last night, the impression i received was (to an even greater degree than al gore, if that is possible) she exudes an arrogance that communicates the feeling of “because I said so”. hopefully “Phase I” will be complete when she loses the nomination. then “Phase II” when the voters of new york boot her out of the senate. then both clintons can just please go away…
Sincerity and Likeability sum it up for me.
Hillary exudes as much sincerity as the fox who ambles into the hen house with the feeble excuse of simply seeking shelter from the cold, as he licks his chops.
And as hard as I may try, I cannot make myself like this person on any level.
So, there you have it. Insincere and unlikable…her day has come and gone.
The queen is dead…ale for my men, water for my horses!
jb
Your article is right on the mark. Her campaign brings to mind companies who faced with clearly changing markets are unable to bring themselves to change sometimes until it is too late and bankruptcy looms. IBM didn’t wake up and really change until it posted a multi-billion dollar loss and GM has taken several decades to begin to respond to the market.
HRC just can’t accept that she and Bill are the poster children for what a large percentage of Americans are rejecting. We don’t want anymore mainframes and land yaughts. We want solutions not ideology from our elected officials.
Her whimpering last night about “the first to be asked” was pathetic. Guess what, the first to be asked gets to clean the plate if well prepared leaving only bits for the next guy. You also get a rebuttal if you miss something.
Rather than put Obama on the defensive Hillary’s attacks have given him an opportunity to shine and stengthen his attaining the mantle of being the Democrat Nominee. Contrary to the hints of a man in an empty suit with great oratory skills lacking in experience > nothing could be further from the truth. Obama is a confident, non race baiting, established, compassionate man with a strong handle on the issues and an inspiring articulation of the same. At the same time, he has provided a needed vindication that a person of color can be elected by a majority of white Americans which repudiates the tactics of those who have played the race card unfairly. We have seen this previously among Republicans in respect to Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice and others, however their detractors would attempt to challenge their “blackness” based on their conservative views. Now Obama has provided a candidacy for those to rally around on the liberal side which is devoid of race as far as his receiving support from white America. In my estimation, this is a significant victory for everyone in America. Hillary Clinton has unwittlingly provided the perfect forum for Obama to take the higher road when challenged by negative attacks and undertones of race baiting. His performance in the Cleveland Debate was very impressive.
I am a Republican supporting Mike Huckabee, but I would be remiss if I did not salute Barack Obama for running a wonderful positive campaign.
Despite differences we have on many issues, the rise of Obama is another reason why our diverse country is the greatest in the world!
Randy Whitman
Toledo, Ohio
So whats her next blunder going to be? Will she cite the Bush criticism of Obama’s foreign policy approach as vindication for her own?