Hillary could stand to show more spine and less expediency
If there is a phrase more closely associated with both Hillary and Bill Clinton than "the politics of personal destruction," it does not come to mind. All the others -- "It's the economy, stupid," for instance -- belong to one or the other, but "the politics of personal destruction" is a phrase both Clintons have used repeatedly -- so much so, it seems, that for Hillary it has lost all meaning. When, for instance, Gen. David Petraeus was slimed as "General Betray Us," Hillary Clinton looked the other way. This was the politics of personal expediency.
The swipe at Petraeus was contained in an ad the anti-war group MoveOn.org placed in The New York Times. It charged that Petraeus was "cooking the books" about conditions in Iraq and cited statements of his that have turned out to be either (1) not true, (2) no longer true, (3) possibly not true, or (4) like everything else in Iraq, impossible to tell. Whatever the case, using "betray" recalls the McCarthy era when, for too many Republicans, dissent corresponded with disloyalty. MoveOn.org and the late senator from Wisconsin share a certain fondness for the low blow.
Almost instantly, though, it got hard to find a Democratic presidential candidate willing to dispute MoveOn.org. Joe Biden did. "I don't buy into that," he said. "This is an honorable guy. He's telling the truth." But lonesome Joe was seconded only by Joe Lieberman, not a candidate, and John Kerry, a man whose tomorrow is yesterday. When Clinton was asked about the ad, she avoided answering.
It may seem unfair to single out Clinton when the bunker in which she took shelter was crowded with her fellow quivering candidates. But Clinton is the front-runner, quite possibly the next president, and so it is reasonable to focus on her and wonder if, as some allege, she indeed does have a spine. In this instance, it was nowhere to be found.
It is an odd standard Clinton has when it comes to smears. When the entertainment mogul David Geffen, once a Clinton supporter, called both Bill and Hillary liars, Hillary not only decried the remark as a particularly vivid example of the "politics of personal destruction," but she demanded that Barack Obama do the same. Yet when Clinton herself was asked to repudiate the abuse of Petraeus, she either saw no reason to do so or, much more likely, was afraid to alienate an important constituency. She would, it seems, rather be president than right.
This week Hillary announced her health care plan. Good for her. But you never had any doubt, did you, that she was going to have one. The issue with Hillary Clinton is not whether she's smart or experienced but whether she has -- how do we say this? -- the character to be president. Behind her, after all, trails the lingering vapor of all those gates: Travel, File, Whitewater, and other scandals to which she was a part only through marriage. In a hatless society, she is always wearing a question mark.
Certain Republicans, particularly Rudy Giuliani, have attempted to exploit the MoveOn.org ad for their purposes, even wondering if the Times violated election law by selling the page at a (standard) discount. This is silly. But it is not silly to wonder -- again -- about what makes Hillary run.
The MoveOn.org ad was the moment for Clinton to rise above hackdom. It was a moment for her to insist that the business of politics is made uglier when people who merely differ with one another resort to insult. It was a moment for her to say that a general, under orders and attempting to fulfill a mission, should not be so casually trashed. And it was a moment for her to trot out her favorite phrase and use it, not in her defense for once, but in defense of someone else. That moment is gone -- maybe because for Hillary it never arrived in the first place.
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group