Columnist Dick Morris, who as pollster and strategist helped craft the Clinton presidency before he was disgraced, takes note of the dilemma presented by Iraq for Hillary’s presidential campaign:
“Worried that the left-wing Democratic Peace Train may be leaving the station without her, Hillary Clinton is scrambling for a seat by moving away from her carefully crafted hawkish support of the Iraq war. But she can’t join the left body and soul because she still needs to show how tough she is on national security issues, so she is trying to craft her own ‘third way’ on Iraq.
“All she has succeeded in doing, however, is fudging her position, muddying it up, but convincing nobody on the right or on the left.
“Hillary became a hawk in the first place because she realizes that the chief obstacle to a female presidency is the concern by both sexes that a man might be better at handling issues such as national defense and security. To have a realistic chance at winning the White House, the Hillary Clinton of It Takes a Village and healthcare reform must take a back seat to Hillary the Hawk, an American incarnation of the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Ghandi.”
Morris notes that Hillary pals and aides have worked people at ABC to use the weekly show “Commander in Chief,” to show a Hillary-like woman president dealing with national security issues.
Morris thinks that Hillary’s attempt to have it both ways won’t work-that she will run afoul of the moonbat element of her party. I disagree-Hillary’s supporters know that she is a woman of the left and they will be willing to forgive anything to get one of their own into the White House. My belief is that they will overlook hawkishness on Iraq to get a nationalized healthcare system (I think that, even if elected, Hillary would be hawkish-she is smart enough to know the consequences of withdrawal and not want it on her watch).
Also on the subject of Senator Clinton’s bid for the presidency, the New York Observer has a piece on “the New Hampshire Taboo:”
“The drive from Portland, Me., to Boston takes less than two hours, but when Hillary Clinton made the journey in October, she flew.
“To do otherwise would have violated what has become the central taboo of her independent political career: It would have put her, for 14 miles, on the soil of the State of New Hampshire.
“Mrs. Clinton’s New Hampshire taboo is the physical form of her refusal to discuss what has become, for supporters and critics alike, an assumption: her bid for the Presidency in 2008. But it isn’t just that she hasn’t, unlike every other Democrat seriously eyeing the nomination, visited New Hampshire this year. She didn’t visit it during the 2004 election, because the Kerry campaign-based on its own polling-didn’t want her there. She didn’t visit during her first four years as a Senator. And she didn’t even visit during her last four years as First Lady.”
But absence is not hurting her in New Hampshire:
“[M]any of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters say that the network Bill Clinton built in the state-along with the jobs and the White House visits he lavished on New Hampshire Democrats-all give his wife a huge head start on her potential Democratic rivals. And Mr. Clinton, not bound by his wife’s taboo, has visited the state, most recently for a book signing last month.
“‘With no disrespect to the candidates who have already visited the state, my guess is, if there was a contest of who could look at the most people and say hello to them by first name, Hillary would still win,’ said Joe Grandmaison, a former state party chairman who had a federal appointment in the Clinton administration.”
Fasten your seatbelts. The next presidential race is going to be like no other.