Just When It Can't Get Any Worse

Hillary. Stop.

Landed under sniper fire and had to run with your head down? Yeah, I know there were reports of gunfights and possible sniper fire in the hills. But if it’s too dangerous to send the President, they send his wife??? What, nobody gets excited when they lose a First Lady? Or they just want to make him look like a wimp sending a woman into harm’s way in his stead? C’mon, that’s what the Vice President is for.

There are things she cannot say about what she did and didn’t do in the White House. I know it’s tough that she can’t tell us what really happened in some of those meetings. There were ugly disputes and deals made. Hostile coalitions. Treachery. A host of enemies, both Republican and Democratic, who blamed her personally for influencing her husband’s decisions to approve or fight their plans and legislative efforts. We never get the real story about what happened inside the West Wing, not from anyone. And I’m not even sure we should. But damn. If you have to resort to fabricating excitement on the tarmac where the President dared not go, that’s just sad.

For a woman who has done so much, and run such a tough campaign, and put the numbers together in ways that actually add up… here’s your Swift Boat. Everybody gets one; the tale of terrorist tarmac is hers. They’ll play that clip all through the fall, and even people who like her will shake their heads and say “Yep. She’ll do or say whatever it takes. A Clinton is a force of nature, not to stopped by petty details like the truth.”

So once again it’s clear that the only two Democratic candidates left standing are about equally damaged by all the flying debris of a hard-fought campaign. And whichever one wins the nomination will be going into the fall with absolutely dreadful soundbites dogging them. But at least Obama’s belong to some other psycho. Hillary’s are her own, and unfortunately they speak directly to her greatest weakness. Nobody has ever denied that she’s a brainiac policy wonk with a plan and the drive to make it happen. Her weak spot has always revolved around questions of personality and character. She’s always lacked the folksy charm that might otherwise protect her. Her husband had it, but her own personal warmth quotient is somewhere in negative numbers. Any hope of persuading the superdelegates that she is more bulletproof in the general election than Obama has got to be evaporating rapidly. And this time she’s got no one to blame but herself.