The lawyer is back, like one of her bad hairdos from the 1990s. Clinton was bruised in last week’s Democratic debate in Philadelphia because she seemed trapped in a series of fuzzy nonresponses that might have worked in opaque corporate legal filings at the Rose Law Firm but sounded evasive and mealy-mouthed in politics. Her rivals pounded her for what John Edwards called “double talk.” It reminded me of when President George H.W. Bush said in 1992 that his challenger, Gov. Bill Clinton, “wants to turn the White House into the Waffle House.” (To drive home the point, Bush made the charge while campaigning at a Waffle House in Spartanburg, S.C.)
Of course, it didn’t work for Bush. “Slick Willie” had other great strengths to compensate for his exasperating I-didn’t-inhale word games. So did Franklin D. Roosevelt, who during the 1932 campaign was for the League of Nations—before he was against it. On Prohibition, he was neither a “wet” nor a “dry” but a “damp,” a position for weasels that left resolving the legalization of alcohol to the states. Masters of politics get away with trimming, hedging and flip-flopping, while the John Kerrys of the world cannot.
We know Hillary isn’t in a league with her husband or FDR as a politician, but is she agile enough to dodge all the incoming fire? Is she “Slick Hillary”? And what do her acrobatics on issues such as Iran, Social Security, driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and the Clinton Library records tell us about what it would be like to spend the next four or eight years with her?
On Iran, Clinton makes a decent case that she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization, to build diplomatic pressure on the regime. But her claim last week that Barack Obama’s plan for a new relationship with Iran would “short-circuit the diplomatic process” would be more convincing if the Clinton foreign policy she claims to have helped implement had done anything significant to advance that process when her husband was in office.
On another big debate topic—Social Security—Clinton’s position on bolstering the entitlement for the soon-to-be-retiring baby boomers makes her sound like a politician of the 1980s, afraid to touch the “third rail.” She may be right that the system isn’t in immediate crisis, but repeating like an annoying mantra that she’s against privatization (who among Democrats isn’t?) and for “responsibility” is itself irresponsible. Contrary to her obfuscations, she must know perfectly well that wealthy retirees should pay taxes on their Social Security benefits just like ordinary income.
Today’s rapidly developing third rail (at least in some states) is supporting driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, as favored by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. When Tim Russert asked Clinton her view of it, she claimed it was a “gotcha” question, as if he had asked for the name of the president of Tunisia. As of last week, driver’s licenses for illegals is for Democrats what the State Children’s Health Insurance Program is for Republicans—an “80-20” issue, meaning they see a Mack truck (in the form of 80 percent of the public) bearing down on them if they get on the wrong side of the debate.
The issue that hurt Clinton the most last week was least relevant to the public. While the availability of the Clinton Library papers is not going to determine anyone’s vote, it gave Obama an opening to tap old fears about her. He made the reasonable point that she shouldn’t brag about her White House “experience” without releasing the evidence to prove it.
In truth, the Clintons have been much better than the Bushes on releasing documents. But once again, as she did in her famous “pretty in pink” press conference in 1994, she made you think something was there when there probably wasn’t. Houdini in reverse.
Despite her debate stumble, the Hillary Clinton I followed around New Hampshire last week is a much-improved model from the old days. It felt as if she were already the incumbent, with tightly choreographed events and a message that is poll tested but also adroitly customized to her personal story: a new anecdote about an arrogant Harvard law professor telling her 37 years ago that “Harvard already has enough women” is particularly compelling for starry-eyed young women in the audience.
Clinton was relaxed, at least mildly amusing and deft at drawing on her status as a history-making woman without sounding like a strident feminist. These are compensatory strengths for her frequent failure to answer direct questions directly. But politicians, like ordinary mortals, only change around the edges. A lawyer she was, a lawyer she will be.
