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Hillary only hope { June 12 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48610-2003Jun12.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48610-2003Jun12.html
Is Hillary the Only Hope?
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 12, 2003; 8:27 AM
Is it just remotely possible that everyone's buzzing about Hillary in '08 because of a widespread belief that George has it sewn up for '04?
It's way too early to know, of course, but one detects a certain lack of enthusiasm among Democrats that they can topple the statue of Bush in the wake of 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq. Not quite the miasma of despair over their inability to scratch Reagan's Teflon in '84, but not exactly what you would describe as great expectations. Even their best spinners can't hide this.
After all, just by writing a book, the former first lady has already generated more excitement than all the Democratic candidates put together. Two-thirds of the country, according to a recent poll, can't name a single Dem running for the White House.
The Democrats, in short, are in a deep funk.
Many party members are mad, practically slapping their foreheads and asking how a guy with such a brief public resume before he took over his father's old office can be riding so high in the polls. What about Enron? What about the environment? What about cutting taxes for the wealthy? What about the soaring budget deficits? What about alienating all our allies?
The question is whether the Democrats – or, more pointedly, one of the nine Democrats running for Bush's job – can persuade the country that he's overrated, and that whatever his wartime successes, his policies are bad for the country. The first step is just getting some attention, and that has proved difficult, as the Hillary boomlet shows. First the media said the war was wiping the candidates off the screen, but even with Iraq fading as a military story, Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards et. al. are not exactly filling the vacuum.
Salon is exercised enough to ask various leading lights whether Bush can be beaten, while Michelle Goldberg examines the ill-tempered Democrats:
"Grassroots Democratic activists believe America is in desperate trouble. At the recent Take Back America conference in Washington, which brought together the core of the party's liberal wing and the politicians who wanted to win its support, there was a conviction that George Bush is more than simply a bad president, an heir to Reagan or Nixon. He is the worst president ever, a leader so destructive to all that progressives value that the damage from his reign may be irrevocable. For liberals, Bush is a national emergency.
"Yet to the country at large, Bush appears to remain an affable fellow and resolute leader. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll taken last week shows that 67 percent of Americans believe the administration has not deliberately misled the public about Iraq's weapons, despite much reporting to the contrary. A recent Fox News poll indicates that most respondents said Bush's tax cuts won't help their families, but, astonishingly, the same poll shows that 47 percent think the cuts are a good idea, compared to 44 percent who think they're not. In the latest Ipsos-Reid/Cook Political Report Poll, the president's approval ratings were 61 percent. . . .
"There's a consensus among progressive Democrats that they lost the 2002 midterm elections because they were too soft on Bush. The overwhelming message of the Take Back America conference, organized by the Washington-based Campaign for America's Future, was that liberals should be aggressively unapologetic about their values and their anger, just as conservatives are. Meanwhile, John Podesta, Clinton's former White House chief of staff, will soon launch the American Majority Institute, a Democratic think tank with a $10 million annual budget designed to play offense against the right. The Hill, a Washington congressional newspaper, quoted former Clinton White House spokesman Joe Lockhart saying, 'Certainly right now the conservative right does a much better job of feeding the media beast facts and arguments that make their case. This will be part of the push-back effort.'
"The question is whether Democrats can make their anger work for them and communicate it outside their own confabs. After all, rage is a tricky thing in politics. It fuels the shock troops of the right wing, but it also can blow up in their faces (see Bob Barr and Newt Gingrich). For Democrats, it could galvanize an untapped resentment of Bush – or leave them marginalized by a media eager to parrot Republican attacks."
The New York Post casts this as unwelcome news for Hillary, but check out the numbers – especially the second set of numbers:
"The superhyped launch of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's new book isn't doing much for her popularity, a new national poll yesterday found. In a Quinnipiac University survey, 18 percent of Americans say 'Living History' makes them think less favorably of New York's junior senator. The book makes just 8 percent think more favorably of her.
"Most of those polled – 67 percent – said the new memoir of her White House years won't affect their view of the polarizing former first lady.
"The poll also showed that if Clinton were running for president, she would do far better than any of the other nine Democratic hopefuls.
"Among Democrats, 40 percent preferred Clinton, compared to 16 percent for Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, 10 percent for Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri and 8 percent for Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. The other candidates fare even worse."
Time's Joe Klein isn't buying the Hillary inevitability scenario:
"I won't be surprised if she never runs for president. She must be aware that it would be a crazy, ugly campaign. And in the exceedingly unlikely event that she won, her victory would be easily attributable to her husband's genius – and she knows that the first woman President shouldn't be elected like that. No, the Senate seems a most suitable perch for her privacy and humanity."
American Prospect's Tapped column blows the whistle on Hillary-bashing:
"If Clinton didn't exist, the right would have to invent her. Right now, dozens of conservative columnists and pundits are having an easy week at work, all thanks to Clinton's new book, which they can haul off on en masse without reading too closely, since they've already made up their minds about how much they dislike the senator from New York. Right now, millions of pieces of direct mail are warning ominously of a Hillary presidential run, which possibility enrages a sufficient number of mouth-breathing Clinton-haters to keep Beltway activist groups awash in donations from now through 2008.
"And tonight, thousands of Republican parents will rely on Clinton to scare their children into eating their vegetables – 'If you don't finish your broccoli, Hillary will socialize your day care!'
"The amount of sheer antipathy directed towards this woman is unbelievable. From Tapped's admittedly biased perspective, it even exceeds the high degree of unstinting dislike the left shows for Dubya. For heaven's sake, National Review Online did a four-piece package on Living History, a couple of days ago, and it looks like they've got two more up now. (Hillary even rates her own section, along with 'Politics,' 'Column,' 'Media,' 'Europe,' and 'Books & Sports.') Talk about flooding the zone!"
Hey, all publicity is good publicity when you're peddling a book.
USA Today's Walter Shapiro draws a contrast between Hillary-mania and George WMD Bush:
"Decades from now, we will still be fighting the Clinton Wars, endlessly arguing over Ken Starr, the vast right-wing conspiracy and a certain president's heedless and morally reprehensible conduct. Part of the enduring box office appeal of the Clinton chronicles is that every American knows enough facts to have a strong opinion. Such is the glory and the shame of the ultimate no-secrets presidency.
"Contrast this with the eyes-only administration of George W. Bush. Instead of tabloid gossip, Bush offers us a tantalizing and probably enduring mystery: Exactly why did we go to war with Iraq?
"In a brief question-and-answer session after Monday's Cabinet meeting, Bush declared, 'Iraq had a weapons program. Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out that they did have a weapons program.'
"The quandary facing Bush, America and Tony Blair's government in Britain is, of course, that this fearsome weaponry is MIA (missing in action). This vanishing act is not the same as discovering that Lewinsky actually spent the Clinton years in New Zealand, but it does undermine the agreed-upon justification for war. Bush has bristled with postwar certainty before."
Not everyone is rushing to read Hillary's memoirs, as the New York Daily News observes:
"On Capitol Hill, where much of the action of her book takes place, reaction was mixed. Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) said they were excited to read about Clinton's version of her turbulent White House years. Asked whether he'd read it, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) laughed and said, 'Yeah, I will, as a matter of fact.'
"Others were less enthusiastic, such as Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), who 'wouldn't spend a penny' to get Clinton's take on the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
"'I lived it. I don't have to read it,' snapped House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).
"Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) and former Reps. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) and James Rogan (R-Calif.) – House impeachment managers who prosecuted President Bill Clinton in 1998 – bristled over the book's description of their efforts as a 'group tirade denouncing my husband.' 'Her book attempts to re-create a history to suit her image as the forever victim,' Buyer said."
In his "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" column on ESPN.com, Gregg Easterbrook says Hillary should have given her ghostwriters more credit:
"One reason the establishment press won't point out Hillary's lies about authorship is that it is engaged in a symbiotic relationship with her. Sunday, the senator gave a prime-time 'exclusive' interview about her book to Barbara Walters of ABC; Monday, the cover of Time magazine was an interview with Hillary; Tuesday, she gives a prime-time 'exclusive' interview to Larry King of CNN; 'exclusives' with NBC, CBS, Fox, UPN, MSNBC, CNBC, ESPN/2 and the Food Channel can't be far behind. Any news organizations that noted Clinton is lying when she claims to be an author would be frozen out of this game.
"And didn't 'exclusive' once mean, 'to this news organization only?' Now 'exclusive' seems to mean, 'I am only talking to this news organization at this particular moment.' By such a definition, virtually all interviews are exclusives. Hmm, when TMQ began dating the Official Wife of TMQ, she assured me she was seeing me 'exclusively.'"
Waiting to watch hearings on whether the Bush team misled the country on Iraqi WMDs? Don't hold your breath:
"The Senate and House Intelligence Committees will hold their own hearings into whether the Bush administration inflated intelligence information about banned Iraqi weapons when making its case for war, but rejected Democratic calls for a formal investigation," says the Wall Street Journal. "The moves demonstrate rising Republican concern that Democrats may be gaining traction with voters on the issue."
Why? Because the intel hearings will be behind closed doors.
The gridlock that has long stalled the debate over prescription drugs suddenly seems to be easing, as USA Today reports:
"President Bush urged Congress yesterday to pass a bill providing prescription drug coverage for seniors by the Fourth of July, and the Senate's top Democrat agreed that such a plan is likely to pass there in short order.
"Action by the House of Representatives and Senate would be the culmination of years of lobbying by advocacy groups for the most fundamental change in the Medicare system since it was created in 1965. Signing a bill also would give the president bragging rights for delivering on a campaign promise.
"But the plans gaining momentum in Congress don't include a controversial approach the Bush administration initially advocated: using prescription benefits as an incentive for seniors to join managed-care plans, a change designed to help control rising Medicare costs."
Ah – here's the catch.
"The idea of denying drug benefits for those who chose to stay in the traditional Medicare program prompted a public outcry and an administration retreat. But deficit hawks warn that adding the benefit without new cost controls will worsen Medicare's fiscal problems just as the big baby-boom generation is beginning to reach retirement age."
By which time most of these folks will be out of office and it will be someone else's problem.
The domestic price of putting pressure on Israel is becoming clear, as this New York Times piece demonstrates:
"Supporters of Israel in and out of Congress assailed President Bush today for criticizing Israeli attacks on Palestinian militant groups as the administration worked to protect its Middle East peace initiative from a new cycle of violence.
"On a day of new attacks and counterattacks by Israeli and Palestinian militant forces, diplomats said there was concern in the administration that without dramatic improvement of some kind, the peace initiative known as the road map could founder. . . .
"At a hearing of the House International Relations Committee, Representative Gary L. Ackerman, said that Mr. Bush's rebuke might lead his critics 'to think of the word hypocrisy.'
"'How can we take certain actions in response to terrorism, and then tell others that when they do the same exact thing that it is not helpful?' Mr. Ackerman, a New York Democrat, said."
That long-shot California recall campaign is looking less like a long shot, says the San Francisco Chronicle:
"Mike Todd says there is something 'viral' about the work collecting signatures to oust Gov. Gray Davis from office. It spreads and multiplies on Internet chat rooms and conservative talk radio, outside the sliding doors of Target and Wal-Mart, in strip mall parking lots and offices, until it becomes a force in itself.
"'I don't want to sound esoteric here,' said Todd, standing outside a Target store near Fashion Gal Plus and the Bible House, 'but there is almost a revolution going on.'
"Or something like it. It is becoming increasingly clear, say organizers, that because of people like Todd, along with hundreds of thousands of registered voters signing petitions across the state, California is about to witness the first gubernatorial recall election in state history.
"It is happening faster than anyone predicted. As of Tuesday, organizers said they have collected nearly 700,000 signatures, more than half of their 1. 2 million target, although only a fraction have been turned over to the secretary of state. The vast majority of the signatures are coming because U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, a San Diego County Republican who wants to become governor, is using his considerable fortune to hire people to gather signatures, produce radio spots and send out 1 million pieces of mail to Republicans."
As if the New York Times didn't have enough problems, a long-dead correspondent is now under fire:
"More than 70 years later, a Pulitzer Prize won by a Moscow correspondent for the New York Times is being reconsidered," says the New York Daily News.
"A subcommittee of the Pulitzer board is reviewing the 1932 award won by Walter Duranty, an admirer of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Specifically, the board said, it is responding to complaints from those who want the Pulitzer revoked.
"Duranty earned the prize for stories about the Soviet dictator's five-year plan that were published in 1931 – before millions perished in the Stalin-engineered famine that ravaged Ukraine. Duranty denied in reports for the Times that there was a famine. Thousands of letters, E-mails and preprinted postcards have been sent to the Pulitzer board in a campaign begun early this year by Ukrainian groups in the U.S. and abroad."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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