Soccer Dad

The hillary conundrum

Charles Krauthammer identifies what's wrong and what's right with Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate. (or here.)
What's wrong:

Bill Clinton's greatest domestic achievement, aside from abolishing welfare, was free trade. The crown jewel was the North American Free Trade Agreement. He got that through Congress over sustained union opposition in 1993. Monday, Sen. Hillary Clinton proposed that NAFTA and other existing trade agreements be reassessed every five years.

The Post correctly called Hillary's retreat from free trade " opportunism under pressure," the pressure being the rampant and popular protectionism of her presidential rivals, particularly in protectionist Iowa. But while "opportunism under pressure" suggests ( pace Hemingway) cowardice, the better description of Clintonism is slipperiness. Adaptability. Cynicism, if you like.

What's right:

I could never vote for her, but I (and others of my ideological ilk) could live with her -- precisely because she is so liberated from principle. Her liberalism, like her husband's -- flexible, disciplined, calculated, triangulated -- always leaves open the possibility that she would do the right thing for the blessedly wrong (i.e., self-interested, ambition-serving, politically expedient) reason.

This is more than just a backhanded compliment.

Unlike the Democrats running for President, I believe the war against Islamism is the most important issue of the day. If there's one Democrat who has an inkling of this problem: it's Sen. Clinton. So if there's one Democrat who could do the right thing, she's the one.

Neither, is this an endorsement.

I could never vote for her because the Clintons' liberal internationalism on display in the 1990s -- the pursuit of paper treaties and the reliance on international institutions -- is naive in theory and feckless in practice. And her domestic policy sees state intervention and expansion as the answer to every human ill from mortgage default to the common cold. Nonetheless, if 2008 is going to be a Democratic year, as it very well could, Hillary would serve the country better than any of her Democratic rivals.

She is the one Democrat most likely to get it right.

Obviously, I hope she is not our next president.

UPDATE: Sen. Obama demonstrates exactly why, by default, Sen. Clinton would be preferable as president with an op-ed that could be called "No more Iraqs."

Sen. Clinton says she was merely voting for more diplomacy, not war with Iran. If this has a familiar ring, it should. Five years after the original vote for war in Iraq, Sen. Clinton has argued that her vote was not for war -- it was for diplomacy, or inspections. But all of us knew what the Senate was debating in 2002. John Edwards has renounced his own vote for the war, and he should be applauded for his candor. After all, we didn't need to authorize a war in order to have United Nations weapons inspections. No one thought Congress was debating diplomacy. No newspaper headlines ran on Oct. 12, 2002, reading, "Congress authorizes diplomacy." This was a vote to authorize war, and without that vote, there would have been no war.

Without the threat of war there would have been no impetus for Saddam to abide by any UN resolutions. As it was he was used to having France, Germany and Russia run interference from him in the diplomatic arena giving him a sense that he could get any with anything.

Sen. Edwards' recantation isn't a statement of strength. It is a demonstration of cowardice as he seeks to attract the same vote that Sen. Obama does. He is not standing on principle. If Sen. Obama thinks that it's tolerable for Iran to develop nuclear weapons or that diplomacy alone will stop that, he's terminally naive.

More via memeorandum.

hillary clinton, 2008.