Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Will Wonders Never Cease?
After seeing him speak in front of a Young Republican group back in 2001, I realized that he had such a visceral hatred of HRC (and a commensurate psychological love/passion for Bill's political charisma) that he was unable to separate his analytic abilities from his emotional involvement in the Clinton universe.
Anyway, even a stopped clock is right once a day. Morris strikes me as being exactly right in his view on why Democrats appear to be lining up behind Hillary:
Democrats today are seeking a warrior, a gladiator, not a president when they cast their ballots in their primaries and caucuses. Angered by the so-called defeat of 2000 and scarred by the upset of 2004, there is an intensity to their desire to win that dwarfs all other emotions and
considerations. They are not nominating a president. They are nominating a candidate. They are not interested in the credentials of a possible president in selecting their standard-bearer; they seek the characteristics of a fighter, a combatant, one who will win.
Hillary’s demonstrated ability to overcome adversity and triumph is the quality that most appeals to Democrats. Were she to star in a reality TV show, it would be “Survivor.” She has taken the worst the Republican machine can deal and overcome it. She has mastered the Karl Roves of our politics and earned the affection of her party’s voters for doing so.
Her battle scars are her accolades. Her ability to come back from Gennifer Flowers, healthcare reform, the loss of Congress, the grand jury subpoenas of Kenneth Starr, the denouement of the truth about Lewinsky, the ensuing impeachment, the carpetbagger issue as she journeyed to New York, the pardon and White House gifts scandals and her early support of the war in Iraq are the real items in her résumé that interest her party’s voters. They care less what kind
of president she would be and more that she probably can become the president.
When she says she can “hit the ground running,” she pretends that she is addressing her vast public policy experience. But it is irrelevant that she was in the White House for eight years. So was the pastry chef. But what is relevant, and inescapable, is that she did lead the president’s crusade to overcome the efforts of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” to bring him down, and
it is that experience which endears her to the base.
The "pastry chef" line, by the way, is a good example of Morris' psycho-babble when it comes to Hillary. He wants to have it both ways: Half his columns are about her power-hungry nature and how she screwed up health-care reform; the other half dismiss her as the functional equivalent of the White House pastry chef. NO first lady is that irrelevant/dismissable in a modern White House -- and Morris knows it.
Still, that aside, Morris' overall point is quite correct: Democrats want competence in their candidate -- not the sort of competence that might contrast with the "heckuva job, Brownie" of the current administration, but the competence needed to take hard hits in the campaign and return fire. Democrats believe that neither Al Gore nor John Kerry had that ability to know when they were under attack and respond to it. They think Hillary does.
Labels: Dick Morris, Hillary Clinton
Friday, August 03, 2007
The Hillary-Dick Problem
Put very simply, Hillary is on the wrong side of this particular issue for the Democratic primary electorate. Scott Rasmussen's daily tracking poll shows that Democrats agree with Obama that the president should meet with these foreign leaders without preconditions by 55 percent to 22. His polling shows that Democrats are outsiders who take literally JFK's thesis that we "should never negotiate out of fear, but should never fear to negotiate."...
But most Americans, and especially most Democrats, think that this kind of insider-think is precisely the problem with our foreign policy. They see nothing lost by negotiating and much potential gain from coming to points of mutual understanding.But the real question is: Why have Hillary and her people persisted in using this issue to beat Obama over the head? Aren't they polling? Do they not know that the issue is bad for them -- or, with Hillary staking out an intransigent and stubborn position, do they not care?
So, in Morris' eyes, there are only two possible options for Hillary's actions -- both negative: Her campaign is either incompetent -- "Aren't they polling? Do they not know that the issue is bad for them..." -- or too intractable, "staking out an intransigent and stubborn position..."It is impossible for Morris to consider that Hillary has crafted a political image for her campaign of a strong leader, unafraid to take positions that might put her at variance with some aspects of her base -- in order to be in the strongest possible position for the general election campaign.
Andrew Sullivan has been taking Hillary to task in a similar fashion for being a Democrat scarred by the culture wars of the '70s and '80s -- and thus drafts her campaign cautiously out of fear of being branded as a "liberal."
I think something else is going on here.
Hillary has made a decision from the beginning of her campaign that, when it comes to issues of national security, she is going to be the strongest, most forceful, candidate in the field. She, too, will demonstrate "no fear", -- but lack of fear in a specific manner: No fear of using force, no fear of using nuclear weapons. Hillary recognizes that, apart from the specific problems she has to overcome as "Hillary Rodham Clinton," she recognizes that she has to overcome the perception that a woman won't be as tough as a man -- particularly in a wartime environment.
That is why she hasn't backed away from her war vote. That's why she jumped on Obama over the "negotiating with dictators." She probably knows full well that she'll take a small hit over it with Democrats -- just like she knows that she might get a small bump from Democrats if she disavowed her war vote. But she knows that backing down would have a much more damaging impact on the broader strategy she is pursuing -- a strong woman who is ready to be the commander-in-chief.
But Dick Morris has blinders when it comes to Hillary and he can't see that she is running a very smart campaign -- which may well explain why she is consistently leading Obama.
Labels: Dick Morris, Hillary Clinton
