Another Clinton, another set of crocodile tears. Well played, Hillary. Well played.
"Some of us are right, and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready, and some of us are not. Some of use know what we will do on Day 1, and some of us really haven't thought that through enough."
Yes – a focused, perfectly worded political attack right after her supposedly unguarded moment, our little glimpse of the "human Hillary." Right.
New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd channeled my thoughts perfectly in her piece on the matter of candidate Clinton's apparently willful weepiness:
There was a poignancy about the moment, seeing Hillary crack with exhaustion from decades of yearning to be the principal rather than the plus-one. But there was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing.
As Spencer Tracy said to Katharine Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib,” “Here we go again, the old juice. Guaranteed heart melter. A few female tears, stronger than any acid.”
The Clintons once more wriggled out of a tight spot at the last minute. Bill churlishly dismissed the Obama phenom as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen,” but for the last few days, it was Hillary who seemed in danger of being Cinderella. She became emotional because she feared that she had reached her political midnight, when she would suddenly revert to the school girl with geeky glasses and frizzy hair, smart but not the favorite. All those years in the shadow of one Natural, only to face the prospect of being eclipsed by another Natural?
That's exactly the feeling I got when I watched her display on the news, and pre-planned or not, Hillary's little hold-on-give-me-a-moment, tearful tremolo had its desired effect. Yet, I found it as suspect as old Slick Willie's crocodile tears at a funeral for Ron Brown, and completely out-of-character for Hillary C., since that lady's as tough as nails and no question lobbed by a soccer mom is going to choke her up, like a guest having a self-revelatory moment on Oprah.
So, Clinton the Second busted a move as slick as any pulled by Clinton the First, and it worked. It humanized her, and synced perfectly with Slick Willie's speechifying about poor, poor Hillary:
Gloria Steinem wrote in The Times yesterday that one of the reasons she is supporting Hillary is that she had “no masculinity to prove.” But Hillary did feel she needed to prove her masculinity. That was why she voted to enable W. to invade Iraq without even reading the National Intelligence Estimate and backed the White House’s bellicosity on Iran.
Yet, in the end, she had to fend off calamity by playing the female victim, both of Obama and of the press. Hillary has barely talked to the press throughout her race even though the Clintons this week whined mightily that the press prefers Obama.
Bill Clinton, campaigning in Henniker on Monday, also played the poor-little-woman card in a less-than-flattering way. “I can’t make her younger, taller or change her gender,” he said. He was so low-energy at events that it sometimes seemed he was distancing himself from her. Now that she is done with New Hampshire, she may distance herself from him, realizing that seeing Bill so often reminds voters that they don’t want to go back to that whole megillah again.
Hillary sounded silly trying to paint Obama as a poetic dreamer and herself as a prodigious doer. “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” she said. Did any living Democrat ever imagine that any other living Democrat would try to win a presidential primary in New Hampshire by comparing herself to L.B.J.? (Who was driven out of politics by Gene McCarthy in New Hampshire.)
Her argument against Obama now boils down to an argument against idealism, which is probably the lowest and most unlikely point to which any Clinton could sink. The people from Hope are arguing against hope.
A cheap shot, but effective. Obama can't attack her on it, since he'll look like a schoolyard bully, the popular kid who doesn't deserve the attention, who stepped over the line. But crying ain't gonna carry Hillary all the way through the primaries, and I think Obama's wiley enough himself to remind young, independent, and female voters that America isn't a political system that includes dynastic succession, and the Clintons had their chance, as had Hillary.
Hillary's an establishment politician, she's extremely polarizing, and just plain lacks the charisma and "audacity to hope" that makes Obama a leader I want to follow. Hillary got her pass, she's used her "Get-out-of-third-place-free" card, and it's time to move on. We'll see how well she does after Obama has some more time in front of the cameras and crowds.
