By Peter Hannaford on 10.2.07 @ 12:07AM
Hillary's "coldness" may have a bright side.
Better get used to it, folks. Your next president may be someone
you have told the pollsters you think is "cold." That, of course,
is Hillary Clinton, whose lead among Democratic presidential
candidates gets larger and more solid by the week.
She has long had high negative ratings, but this latest Gallup
poll has something new, measuring emotional reactions to
candidates. Interviewees were asked to rank candidates on a
"feelings thermometer," with zero as the coldest and 100 as the
warmest. Forty-nine percent said Hillary was "warm," but 44 percent
said she is "totally cold." The rest were neutral.
Forty-four percent "cold" makes her the Ice Queen. Those rated
warmest were, in order, Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards,
and John McCain.
In previous polls Hillary has been described as "calculating,"
which may equate to "cold." This may have its bright side. Consider
this:
Last spring when the MoveOn.org crowd on the far left of the
Democratic party was beating the drums to force every one of its
presidential candidates to disavow any support for the war against
terrorism in Iraq, Sen. Clinton carefully avoided "apologizing" for
having voted for the war. She said instead, "If I knew then what I
know now, I would have voted against it." The fact is, she did know
then what she knows now, but this lawyerly response provided an
escape hatch for future action.
Not long afterward, Senator Obama put his foot in his mouth when
he said he'd be willing to meet various dictators (such a Hugo
Chavez and Fidel Castro) unconditionally. Hillary's answer to the
same question was measured and, well, presidential. Obama has been
stuck in the polls ever since.
Experience has taught Hillary to be careful not to say things
that will come back to haunt her. She seems to understand
instinctively that the outcome of the general election will turn on
one great issue: national security. That includes the outcome in
Iraq and how we proceed in the war that the radical Islamists have
declared on the United States in particular and Western
civilization in general.
Once she has the nomination sewn up, say, by next February 6,
watch for her to run increasingly on this issue and to be
surprisingly hawkish on it. Ironically, the slow but steadily
improving conditions in Iraq will give her encouragement. Her
campaign objective will be to make it very difficult for the
Republican nominee to get to her right. National security has
traditionally been a Republican issue. Turning it into a Democratic
one in 2008 will be a Hillary priority.
Only two Republican candidates, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain
have the credentials to challenge her on this central issue. There
will be past votes and things she has said that they will have to
dig out to make that challenge successful. In addition, since she
was supposed to be such an influential First Lady, she will have to
answer this question: Why was her husband's response to al Qaeda
attacks so weak?
Should the Ice Queen win, it is just possible that "cold" could
equate to giving the cold shoulder to the far left of her own party
when it comes to dealing with the central issue of our time -- a
issue that should override partisanship.
topics:
John McCain, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Islam, Law, Iraq, NATO
