Nothing gets the Clintons’ Machiavellian juices flowing like a
tricky race with an “idealist.” Whether facing Paul Tsongas, Jerry
Brown, or Barack Obama, the Clintons despise the same liberal
idealists they pretend to adore.
Remember the savage comments Hillary made about “St. Paul”
before he pegged out of the 1992 race? Hillary considered him a
self-righteous nebbish, and in a choking fury, after Tsongas called
Bill a “pander bear,” instructed Clinton campaign hacks to destroy
him. Governor Moonbeam, who deserves a footnote in American
political history for, if nothing else, first mentioning Hillary’s
seedy work at the Rose Law Firm (which prompted faux-chivalrous
blubbering from Bill in one of the 1992 debates), received
similarly biting treatment.
Now it is Obama’s turn. Even more than Bill it seems Hillary
enjoys the ruthlessness of politics, sifting through blades in her
bag of dirty tricks until she finds one that really cuts.
She is as methodical and disciplined as Nixon. Once a low tactic
has outlived its usefulness she discards it and searches for a
better one. There is no stubborn time-wasting. After the Obama as a
cokehead-and-possible-drug-dealer smear failed, she sent her
minions down a more promising avenue: Obama, the naive pacifist
whose name and past raise questions about his connection to our
enemy’s religion.
You have to hand it to her: she basically took Obama’s greatest
strength (in the eyes of liberals) — that he opposed the Iraq war
— and turned into a weakness by planting the Muslim smear. That’s
why her seemingly lame red phone ad worked. Coupled with the photo
on Drudge of Obama in Muslim garb — which Drudge says Clinton
staffers disseminated — the ad triggered real fears. And her
doubt-raising, he-is-not-a-Muslim “as far as I know” hedge on
60 Minutes was a nice touch too.
Within Hillary’s calculated pauses the whisper of a smear
suggested itself: Do we really want a Muslim defending America
against jihadists? No wonder he didn’t vote for the war; no wonder
he wants to sit down with Iranians and Syrians.
THE LIBERALISM OF the Clintons, whenever they run into electoral
troubles, turns parasitic on conservatism, drawing vitality from
the exploitation of traditional concerns. Let’s portray ourselves
as patriotic Christians while painting the Obamas as America-hating
Muslims, you can almost hear the Clintons say in a telephonic
Nixonian exchange.
Notice that Bill and Chelsea were dispatched to Joel Osteen’s
Christian mega-church in Houston not long after the Drudge photo
was bouncing around the Internet. “We just appreciate you serving
the country,” Osteen gushed to the Clintons. Did they adjourn for
apple pie later?
I also noticed earlier that week a Clinton flak, appearing on
Tucker, wearing a necklace with a Christian cross. That
Obama had to declare himself a “devout Christian” testifies to the
effectiveness of the Clintons’ subtle smear.
Hillary’s exploitation of Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement of Obama
added to this atmosphere of doubt. Pundits called that a gaffe on
her part, but dwelling on his support for Obama in the debate
kicked up a few more particles of anxiety. To force an opponent who
has been dogged by Islamic rumors to say that the “Nation of Islam”
is playing no role in his campaign is a victory in itself.
Making Hillary’s harrumphing about whether Obama would “reject
and denounce” Farrakhan’s support all the richer was that a few
days later she refused to do the same when one of her Latino
supporters in Texas popped off about the historic indifference of
black pols to Mexicans. She certainly wasn’t going to reject and
denounce that woman; she needed every last Hispanic vote in Texas
and couldn’t risk offending anyone. So, as with the other smears,
she just played dumb.
Hillary relishes that oldest trick in politics — distancing
yourself from a smear while making sure to repeat it. She just
hates it, you understand, that faceless enemies of decency are
calling her opponent a cokehead and Muslim. Then, quickly shifting
attention from his troubles to hers, she adds that she dislikes
such smears so much because they remind her of what she and her
husband have endured.
That is itself a perversely effective doubt-raising tactic,
since, if the smears at Obama are on the same evidentiary plane as
rumors about the Clintons’ corruption, ordinary Americans may
suspect the smears to be true.
