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Jewish World Review
Sept. 25, 2007
13 Tishrei 5768
Now playing left field ... Hillary's refusal to condemn attacks on Gen. Petraeus is unpresidential
By
Michael Goodwin
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
'The clatter of campaign promises being thrown out the window" was how the late Sen. Daniel Moynihan famously scolded a congressional witness 15 years ago. Fast-forward to the current campaign of Moynihan's successor, and one hears a different but no less disconcerting clatter. It is the sound of Sen. Hillary Clinton throwing away the chance to build support in the military she hopes to command.
With her refusal to denounce the far-left MoveOn.org for its smear of our top commander in Iraq, Clinton has taken another big step away from the center of American politics. On the most important issue of our times — Iraq and the fight against Islamic terrorism — the Democratic presidential front-runner has thrown her lot in with the radicals, kooks and nuts that litter the wackadoo wing. And she has turned her back on our soldiers and their leaders during wartime.
This is not the first time she has gone AWOL on the military. Back in May, Clinton voted to cut off all funds for the war. That she was in a small minority then was an alarming indication of how far she was willing to go to placate the anti-war base of the party. It was not, we know now, an aberration.
In the May vote, she was one of only 14 senators to support cutting off funds. In last week's resolution that saluted Gen. David Petraeus and denounced MoveOn for calling him "General Betray Us," in a newspaper ad, Clinton's no vote was one of only 25, with 72 senators voting yes.
It is a sorry spectacle, and incomprehensible because her lurch is wrong in terms of policy and politically unnecessary. The far-left wing does not elect Presidents or usually even pick nominees. Ask Howard Dean.
And Clinton knows she is under additional scrutiny because she is the only woman ever to get this close to being elected President. Fairly or not, women, especially Democratic women who tilt left, are suspect on whether they will be social workers or commanders in chief in a security crunch. Now it will be much harder for her to convince skeptics.
Tellingly, Clinton voted for an earlier resolution Thursday that was almost identical to the one that passed except that it did not mention MoveOn. That resolution failed.
The two resolutions were a litmus test — by supporting one and opposing the other, Clinton put her ties to the radicals ahead of her ties to the military.
Her closest competitor, Sen. Barack Obama, was worse, if that's possible. Accused last week of "acting white" by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Obama acted yellow on the Senate votes. He voted for the resolution that failed, then didn't show up for the second one. He said his nonvote was "my protest against these empty politics." That elitist pose would have rung true if he had skipped both votes. By ducking only the vote against MoveOn, he showed he, too, is afraid of the far left.
Yet Clinton's leftward march is more troubling because she is likely to be the party's nominee. Moreover, she has always been clever at triangulating her positions on major issues to suggest she is searching for a nuanced stance, if not the actual center. During her campaign for reelection last year she urged "common ground" on abortion and showed up for a meeting at the Daily News wearing a large Christian cross. Because neither move fit neatly with the image of her as a dogmatic secularist, they were interpreted as suggestions of a centrist impulse.
Forget all that now. Even as she uses retired Gen. Wesley Clark as a uniformed character witness, the military relationship can't be triangulated. It's a gut issue.
After losing seven of the last 10 elections largely because of doubts about their security bona fides, Dems should understand that finessing those doubts won't work. Either you are viscerally comfortable with the people and the power necessary to defend our nation, or you are not. And with these two key votes, Clinton is showing not just discomfort, but hostility.
While Iraq is a deeply unpopular war, that is primarily because we are not winning. If the surge continues to curb violence, and if the Iraqi government gets its act together, the nation's mood could shift and Clinton could find herself in a lonely hole a year from now. It will not be a foxhole, but the incoming attacks could make it feel like one.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and the media consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Michael Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News. Comment by clicking here.
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