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Hillary and her Staff Need to Learn that 2008 isn't 2000
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01/17/07 07:42 AM ET
Hillary’s handlers are showing their lack of grasp of modern politics. A race for president in 2008 is quite different, they are finding out, from a race for Senate in 2000.
It has not been a good week for Hillary Clinton. The cakewalk to the nomination that she anticipated seems to be quickly becoming paved with rocks.
First, she went AWOL last week immediately after President Bush announced his plans for a surge of 20,000 new troops in Iraq. While every other presidential candidate criticized the president’s plan, Hillary hopped a plane for her annual photo-ops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Instead of using the opportunity to shore up her credentials with the anti-war left by grilling the secretary of state at the hearing of the Armed Services Committee, she left it to her quasi-relative, the ditzy Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), to grill Condi about her lack of a husband and children. According to Boxer, Condi can’t understand the pain of war because, like 51 percent of American women, she has no husband. That and the fact that she has no children make her incapable of understanding the price of war. The press and the public didn’t buy it.
Hillary was unprepared for what was about to unfold. First, John Edwards boldly entered her backyard and criticized her at a memorial service for Dr. Martin Luther King jr. at Riverside Church in Manhattan. Quoting Dr. King, Edwards called her silence on the troop surge a ‘betrayal.’ Unable to respond substantively, Hillary’s flack unleashed the standard Clinton campaign diatribe about its shock at negative campaigning. Playing right into Edwards's hands, her spokesman ignored the issue of the troop surge. Score one for Edwards.
Then, at about the time that Hillary was scheduled to have a press conference on her Iraq trip, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) announced that he was creating an exploratory committee to look into a presidential race. Overshadowed, Hillary was forced to postpone her press conference.
A few more weeks like this and Hillary might have to hire a staff that knows about the speed and timing of modern politics.
It has not been a good week for Hillary Clinton. The cakewalk to the nomination that she anticipated seems to be quickly becoming paved with rocks.
First, she went AWOL last week immediately after President Bush announced his plans for a surge of 20,000 new troops in Iraq. While every other presidential candidate criticized the president’s plan, Hillary hopped a plane for her annual photo-ops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Instead of using the opportunity to shore up her credentials with the anti-war left by grilling the secretary of state at the hearing of the Armed Services Committee, she left it to her quasi-relative, the ditzy Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), to grill Condi about her lack of a husband and children. According to Boxer, Condi can’t understand the pain of war because, like 51 percent of American women, she has no husband. That and the fact that she has no children make her incapable of understanding the price of war. The press and the public didn’t buy it.
Hillary was unprepared for what was about to unfold. First, John Edwards boldly entered her backyard and criticized her at a memorial service for Dr. Martin Luther King jr. at Riverside Church in Manhattan. Quoting Dr. King, Edwards called her silence on the troop surge a ‘betrayal.’ Unable to respond substantively, Hillary’s flack unleashed the standard Clinton campaign diatribe about its shock at negative campaigning. Playing right into Edwards's hands, her spokesman ignored the issue of the troop surge. Score one for Edwards.
Then, at about the time that Hillary was scheduled to have a press conference on her Iraq trip, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) announced that he was creating an exploratory committee to look into a presidential race. Overshadowed, Hillary was forced to postpone her press conference.
A few more weeks like this and Hillary might have to hire a staff that knows about the speed and timing of modern politics.
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