Paul Mirengoff has a thoughtful
post arguing that conservatives should be less relieved by
the large presence of Clinton holdovers -- and perhaps Hillary
Clinton herself -- in the incoming Obama administration. His case
is threefold. First, he argues that Bill Clinton's moderation was
largely a product of the Republican Congress and other outside
political conditions. Second, even if Clinton was truly a
moderate many of his staffers were not. Third, the differences
between Hillary and Obama during the primaries may have been more
opportunistic than ideological.
There's a certain amount of truth to all three points,
particularly the first. Bill Clinton's administration was further
to the left in 1993-95 than it was after the arrival of the
Republican Congress. Clinton made a career for himself as a DLC
Democrat in recognition of the more conservative political
climate of Arkansas and also to compensate for his party's
political weaknesses during the Reagan era. But it was only after
the voters rebuked his turn to the left during his first term
that Clinton embraced triangulation.
Nevertheless, the differences between the Clinton and Dean wings
of the Democratic Party are not all window dressing or different
reactions to existing political circumstances. Bill and Hillary
have, since the 1990s, been more willing to use military force
(even if not always when U.S. national security interests were
most at stake). Rahm Emanuel is certainly more hawkish than your
average liberal. And the relevant fact isn't whether partisan
Democrats eventually became critical of an unpopular war
initiated by a Republican president -- that part was inevitable
-- but how long it took these Democrats to follow the rest of
their party to that point.
The real question mark here isn't Hillary's foreign policy views.
It's Barack Obama's, which may or may not turn out to be more
hawkish than either his supporters or detractors suspect. If
conservatives do end up liking his foreign policy better than
they originally thought, those conservatives probably won't be
the Obamacons.
