The XX Factor: What women really think.

Seeing No Evil Can Come to No Good

It's interesting that Ruth and Rachael both used the word evil—as in, what Hillary said about RFK's assassination was unfortunate but not evil. Now, I wouldn't use that particular word to describe Clinton or what she said about Bobby Kennedy, either. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever described anyone on this side of—let's give Adolf the day off—Idi Amin that way, at least in part because it brings to mind Margo Channing's wonderful mocking of "Eve Evil, little Eve Evil,'' in All About Eve, and you shouldn't say that word and grin. But another way in which we in the media have not learned all we might have from the fiasco of 2000 is in our peculiarly American determination to see strategery everywhere but no evil, ever.

Which is why we bat down any impugning of motives with that sobering word: To question intent at all is to ascribe evil, and only nuts go that far. Paul Krugman did this just yesterday when he explained that Clinton's invocation of RFK's assassination is actually Obama's problem: "One more trumped-up scandal won't persuade the millions of voters who stuck with Mrs. Clinton despite incessant attacks on her character that she really was evil all along.'' So, there is nothing in between A-OK and ... that word he said? What an odd paradox in which we assume we are always being played—but never with really bad intentions. Especially since it was fear of appearing to be too hard on Junior that got us this president in the first place. And, as even his former press secretary Scott McClellan says outright in his new memoir, that's also how we marched off to his purposeless war. The assumption was that Bush (and even more to the point, Colin Powell) would never have told us the war was necessary if that weren't the case -- because who would do that? No one we'd put in charge. Just as Hillary would never have stirred the pot on purpose—because that would be evil and she isn't evil, thus she couldn't have done it. For a bunch of skeptics, we really have a weirdly high opinion of human nature.