The Problem with Hillary

In January, 2003, I boarded a Golden Gate ferry and sailed across the Bay to the Ferry Building in San Francisco. I joined about 100,000 other demonstrators (the Chronicle, still under the sway of the general warmongering spirit of the times, estimated the crowd at about 732). Elaine, mother of my daughter's best childhood friends, went with me, and we marched all the way to Civic Center, where a diverse group of speakers on a variety of topics, both germane and irrelevant to the Iraq War, spoke to the crowd. On the way back, Elaine, understandably exhilarated by the show of solidarity, asked me if I thought the invasion would happen anyway.

"Of course," I said. "Nothing can stop it."

My confident prediction was based on little more than my opinion of George W. Bush. He had already demonstrated his penchant for pathological lying, and I didn't believe a word he said. He had begun his systematic shredding of the Bill of Rights with his jailing of Jose Padilla and establishment of his concentration camp on Cuba. Many experts had expressed their opinion that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, including Scott Ritter (a former weapons inspector), William Arkin (a defense analyst) and, most notably, Hans Blix, who had been driving around Iraq for months without finding anything. The idea of a connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein was ridiculous on its face.

The war, therefore, was a stupid idea. Hillary Clinton, Senator from New York, voted in October, 2002, to authorize President Bush to do whatever the hell he wanted to do. This was prior to the invasion. Also prior to the invasion, I voted with my feet to oppose the invasion. Thus, our relative positions were clear and marked by overt indicators. There is no going back.

I was right and Hillary Clinton was wrong. How could I possibly vote for a politician, who is briefed by insiders all day long, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who knows less than I do? Her subsequent attempts to explain her way out of her cowardly vote have contorted her into positions that would be the envy of a Chinese acrobat troupe. She cannot say she was "wrong," although the milling throngs in New Hampshire have asked her to say just that. "Knowing what I know now," she says, "I certainly would not have authorized Bush to conduct his war." Not so fast, Hillary. A little glib. Under the War Powers Act, the Iraq War is YOUR war. You told Bush to go ahead. And as far as knowing then what you know now? You see, I knew then what you say you didn't know then.

So what the hell were you doing? You were caving in, that's all. And because it seems to you that a good offense is the best defense, you're attacking the "simplicity" of Barack Obama's get the hell out approach. "Anyone can say, 'just leave'," you sneer. But you see, Hill: Obama was against the damn thing to begin with. He doesn't think we should ever have been there.

I just love the way your handlers describe your highly nuanced position on phased withdrawal. They say your position more closely "reflects the political mainstream." So that's why you say what you do now? You looked around the Senate chamber, read the editorials in the Washington Post and New York Times, and figured out what was good to believe? Is that the same thing as the right thing to believe?

Here's a clue. The political mainstream is not the same as the opinion of the American people. That's why you're getting all those tough questions. Those rock-ribbed people in New Hampshire are on to you. They don't ask questions like Andrea Mitchell and Tim Russert ask. They know you voted the way you did because your political calculations favored a "safe" approach of belligerence, and if the war was a success, whether it was the right thing to do or not, you would look like you made a smart call. When it went south, when it turned out there was no reason for the invasion at all, you started crabbing about Bush's incompetence in conducting this fiasco.

Nope, you still don't get it. You're going to have to admit you chickened out. You can't even say, "I made a mistake." When there are two boxes to check, and you know the right answer but check the other one because of your vaulting ambition, you didn't make a "mistake." You took the easy way out. That's what you have to say. You have to forgo your triangulating, calculating, outside-in approach to moral choosing. Or that vaulting ambition will not fall upon another, as the Bard said. It will fall on you.