Hillary Clinton committed a cardinal sin recently by implying, if not stating outright, that John McCain would be a better president than Barack Obama. I’m not going to add my voice to everyone else who has come down on her, though she deserves every denunciation. What no one has noticed is the fact that, if she believes what she said, she has forgotten the mantra that won Bill the election in 1992. Here’s part of what she said:
I think that since we now know Sen. McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that.
(Emphasis added)
No, we don’t all know that.
In truth, National Security will be front and center if and only if the situation in Iraq gets worse, or Bush starts a war with Iran, neither of which events will help John McCain, or if the Democratic candidate is stupid enough to let McCain frame the issues.
Over at the Washington Monthly Kevin Drum has two posts, each of which deals with the front page of the Wall Street Journal, one on line last night, (here and here) the other this morning. The lead paragraph of the second post gives a bit of the flavor:
Jeebus. I should have waited until this morning to take a snapshot of the Wall Street Journal’s front page. It’s even worse than last night. Payroll employment dropped for the second month in a row, plummeting by 63,000 jobs in February, with the losses spread throughout a wide swath of the economy, not just construction and financial services. What’s worse, if you take out increased government employment, private sector job losses topped 100,000. From the Washington Post: “And in a particularly worrisome sign, temporary help services cut 27,600 jobs. Often, companies cut temporary workers before shedding permanent jobs, making that category a leading indicator for what is to come.”
In his first post he said that the milder front page looked pretty much like the front page might have looked the day after the market crash of 1929. Worse, actually. I can testify that the print edition gave the same impression: looming disaster everywhere. Things are going to get worse-a lot worse. Voters aren’t going to be thinking about Iraq if things stay pretty much the same there, though it will be a background irritant that can only redound against the Republicans. They will be thinking about their homes and their jobs, the price of oil and the price of health care, stagnant or falling pay, the near certainty that their kids will do worse, not better, than them, …and the list goes on.
If Hillary can’t see that, then she’s not fit to be running for president. Then again, she was unable to see what Obama did see in 2002, that backing the Iraq war was a bad idea morally and politically if you were thinking long term, so maybe she really believes it’s a good idea to run for president by playing to McCain’s strong suit, rather than the issue that will be foremost on people’s minds and on which McCain has admitted he knows next to nothing. It certainly makes sense to let your opponent define the terms of debate, if you want to lose, that is.
The strange thing about this is that given that people remember how comparatively good they had it under Bill Clinton, they’re quite likely to believe that Hillary can replicate his achievements. So Hillary, repeat after me: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Caveat: The above may be inoperative if Osama bin Laden steps in to endorse John McCain by pulling off another attack in this country. Unfortunately, most Americans are incapable of nuanced thinking, so such a diversion might work. The last thing Osama wants is a president in the White House that will appeal to the rest of the world and, simply by getting elected, help rehabilitate our reputation.
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