Clinton or Obama?
Wednesday, August 8th 2007
Hillary Clinton's twenty-point lead in recent polls suggests that she may have secured the Democratic nomination before the debates have finished or a single primary vote has been cast. Some pundits are even wondering whether Senators Edwards and Obama might be signed up as running mates. (A Clinton-Obama ticket would be trumped only by Gore-Obama, a scenario that, however unlikely it may sound now, remains a possibility.) But these speculations miss the point, for whatever her current standing in specific polls, Mrs Clinton is still politically vulnerable, and the internal struggle for the nomination is far from over. Edwards is still favoured to win in Iowa, and Obama is showing the tenacity his supporters hope will carry the day in a closely fought campaign.
Sen. Clinton is a formidable campaigner: meticulously prepared, with a detailed grasp of policy, always on message. Mr Clinton has helped extend her grassroots support and she now has such enviable momentum that she has begun to relax a little and show a lighter side (her campaign's parody of the final scene of The Sopranos is now one of the most-watched videos on the internet). The race is hers to lose. Ironically, her cautious approach to maintaining her advantage, particularly her tactical silence on sensitive issues like her vote on Iraq may well prove to be her Achilles heel.
In 2002, as the Senate prepared for a vote to authorize the President to use force against Saddam Hussein, Senator Bob Graham, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, urged his colleagues to read a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which examined the evidence for WMDs in Iraq. Disturbed by what he found there, Graham voted against an invasion. Uncharacteristically, Clinton failed to read the estimate and compounded the mistake by making a speech that linked Saddam to Al Qaeda members-a gaffe that places her, retrospectively, uncomfortably close to the line taken by President Bush and Vice-President Cheney.
At the time, Clinton emphasized that she did not wish her vote to be seen as an endorsement for "any new doctrine of pre-emption, or for unilateralism."-but she did not vote for the Levin amendment that would have bound the president to seek UN approval before resorting to force. When Wolf Blitzer asked her- twice-whether she regretted not reading the NIE, she finessed the answer with this sort of response: "I was thoroughly briefed. I knew all the arguments. I knew all of what the Defense Department, the CIA, the State Department were all saying. And I sought dissenting opinions, as well as talking to people in previous administrations and outside experts." All true, perhaps, but then her failure to read a document much closer to hand, one that contained such critical information, becomes even more mysterious. Clinton must know that she cannot dodge the problem indefinitely. At some point in her campaign she will have to explain her explanation.
Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr, both Pulitzer prize-winning journalists, have just published a book on Sen. Clinton which suggests that this incident may be part of a larger reluctance to admit failure.<?b> Gerth recently told an interviewer that there almost seemed to be two Hillary Clintons, one "diligent, thorough, well prepared, does her homework, articulate, has all the facts on command. And … the other Hillary. And it's not just Iraq. We looked at energy. We looked at environment. And we found, to our surprise, a lot of mistakes and [an] unwillingness to admit mistakes; and then, starting to play fast and loose with her own record and with the facts."
One example of this tendency is Mrs Clinton's inexplicable divergence from the recommendations of her own energy task force. After a lengthy briefing on a 40-page memo prepared specifically for her, she publicly stated that America's dependency on foreign oil could be reduced by more efficient use of electricity and coal.
That sounds innocent enough, until you realize that less than one percent of US electricity relies on oil-cars are the main problem. The senator knew this-her experts had told her so-but she spoke as though she didn't. If that isn't playing with the facts, then nothing is.
Some of this is perfectly understandable in the rough-and-tumble of American politics, but it sits awkwardly with Clinton when she dismisses Obama's remarks on foreign policy as "naïve and irresponsible." Whether or not you believe in negotiating with America's enemies or striking in Pakistan if the government there won't move against bin Laden, these ideas deserve a fair hearing. You can't brush them aside in a soundbite, especially when you have ignored advice and advocated far more questionable policies.
Obama's political judgement on Iraq provides a striking contrast to Clinton's folly. Samantha Power of Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, recently pointed out that "Barack Obama defied conventional wisdom and opposed invading Iraq. He did so at a time when some told him that doing so would doom his political future. He took that risk because he thought it essential that the United States 'finish the fight with bin Laden and al Qaeda.' He warned that a 'dumb war, a rash war' in Iraq would result in an 'occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.'"
Five years later that prescient judgement remains the wisest and most statesmanlike that any presidential candidate has to offer.
Mrs Clinton is vulnerable in other areas too. At a recent meeting of Netroots activists, she found herself trying to explain-while parts of the crowd booed and hissed-why she still accepted money from lobbyists. "A lot of those lobbyists, whether you like it or not, represent real Americans. They represent nurses. They represent, you know, social workers. They represent-yes-they represent corporations." Obama, who has refused donations from registered lobbyists, then made the following observation: "The insurance and the drug companies have spent $1 billion in lobbying over the last 10 years … Now Hillary, you were talking about the efforts you made back in 1993, you cannot tell me that money did not make a difference." Here, again, Clinton seems to be the candidate who needs more experience.
"Every time Obama opens his mouth, he makes a mockery of concerns about his basic competence or experience, especially if we take the incumbent as a minimal standard," writes Michael Kinsley in Time magazine. And every time Obama manages a crisis he shows a level of sophistication that most other candidates lack. While researching a profile of the senator for The New Yorker magazine, Larissa MacFarquhar spoke to Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest friends. Jarrett remembered her outrage when the fanatical rightwing media circulated rumours that Obama had gone to a madrassa. "I said, 'How could they have even run with this story? It's so completely inaccurate!' He said, 'You know, we've contacted the school and the principal's gonna explain what kind of a school it is and we're gonna refute it all. You need to just calm down. This is gonna be fun! Valerie, you're not a guy but let me explain it to you in sport terms. It's like we're in a basketball game, and I'm gonna fumble the ball, and someone's gonna steal the ball, and I'm gonna miss a free throw, but we're gonna win the game. You can't get yourself worked up over every little thing.' A twenty-point lead in the polls isn't a little thing, but the game is only in its second quarter. It remains to be seen whether Clinton handles fumbles and free throws as well as Obama.
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