Nuancing the Hillary

So — as Jim points out — the Junior Senator from New York believes President Bush is understating the threat that Iran’s nuclear program poses. According to The Daily Princetonian (not to be confused with the journal of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton), Ms. Clinton said, “"I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations.” Where is Hillary going?

No one knows except, perhaps, she. Having taught Lil’ Billy the art of triangulation, she’s working hard to modernize triangulation to suit her own campaign, and she’s failing. Instead of the new Clintonism, she’s coming up with the old Kerryism, trying to take both sides of issues and coming up incoherent.

Hillary realizes that there can’t be a Dem president who doesn’t at least sound tough on the war. She’s trying to move to the right of the whackolib Dem mainstream without actually disagreeing with anything they say. So Hillary is rejecting immediate withdrawal from Iraq but saying at the same time that we can’t have an open-ended commitment. And following the Howard Dean/Nancy Pelosi prescription of bashing the president without stating an alternative. Now she’s trying to sound tough on Iran without saying anything that would upset Kofi and the Turtle Bay crime family.

What Hillary hasn’t yet figured out is that Kerryism lost last time because it is incoherent. In peace time, Americans are capable of voting for any fool (they did, twice, for her husband), if they can be convinced that the fool will keep the good times rolling. In wartime — though the Dems are willfully blind to the fact this is such — we ask more of our leaders. Miz Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign will flatline because she, like all the rest of the Dems, has neither the stomach for the fight nor any idea how to run it.