Hillary Clinton: Slash and Burn Politics

(Cross posted at Candide's Notebooks)

I have always been a partisan Democrat.

But after this week, I’m not sure I can support Hillary Clinton in the general election if she wins the primary. It started with her Iraq vote. But then again, Edwards and Kerry voted the same way, and I managed to forgive them once they disavowed the vote and proved their opposition to the war and Bush’s leadership.

Then, I wasn’t happy at all about Marc Penn’s company’s defense of Blackwater.

But in the last week, Clinton’s campaign has devolved into the worst sort of dirty tricks, cheap shots, and fearmongering that we would expect from a Republican opponent. First she aired an ad showing a sleeping child and talking about the “3 AM” phone call, and who would best handle it. She said that she had crossed the national security threshhold–whatever that means, and that Barack Obama hadn’t. But, that he gave a very good speech in 2002.

Well, let’s see. There are hundreds of people in the Pentagon and Congress who would have a pretty good idea of what to do with the mysterious “3 AM phone call”. Barack Obama can appoint one of them to be his National Security Advisor. But there aren’t very many who can inspire people with their words. Can Hillary Clinton appoint someone to inspire the country? Can she appoint someone to have enough good judgement not to trust cherry picked intelligence reports?

Meanwhile, it was revealed this week that it was HER campaign, not Obama’s, that gave private reassurances to Canadian officials that the talk about NAFTA was just that. She praised John McCain’s qualifications, saying only she and McCain had crossed the "threshold" of national security. Her top advisor compared, ridiculously, Obama to Ken Starr. She’s refused to release her tax records, after public assurances that she would do so. She’s demanded to seat the delegates in Michigan and Florida–but said she would ”not accept” (as if she has the power of refusal) a caucus. But more than anything, she has simply run a mean-spirited, dishonest, and fear-mongering campaign. She seems intent on destroying her party if she can’t be the nominee.

At this point, if she were to win, I think I’d have a hard time voting for her in the general. Even Nader seems more palatable.

Gary Hart in the Huffington Post has it about right, I think:

Senator Obama is right to say the issue is judgment not years in Washington. If Mrs. Clinton loses the nomination, her failure will be traced to the date she voted to empower George W. Bush to invade Iraq. That is not the kind of judgment, or wisdom, required by the leader answering the phone in the night. For her now to claim that Senator Obama is not qualified to answer the crisis phone is the height of irony if not chutzpah, and calls into question whether her primary loyalty is to the Democratic party and the nation or to her own ambition.