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It's interesting that you're focusing on Obama and I on Clinton. But if she does have superior positions and intellectual firepower, plus near-universal name recognition and every institutional advantage in the world, doesn't that make her inability to sell this Aston Martin of a candidacy even worse? What an indictment of her political skills—and surely some indication of what she could accomplish if elected, no?
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Have you no shame, Madam, in your shocking refusal to see things exactly as I do? Nah—but tone and temperament do matter, not only in winning elections but in working with Congress, moving public opinion, and negotiating with our allies and adversaries around the world. I just didn't hear Hillary's answers the same way you did, Hanna; treating relatively minor differences between her health-care plan and Obama's as monumental and catastrophic seems to me to be precisely the kind of all-or-nothing thinking that doomed her previous efforts. And even if she were better on paper, after the Bush years a lot of people want a president they can stand to watch on television.
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On the campaign trail, Chelsea Clinton compares her mom to Margaret Thatcher. But can you imagine Thatcher whimpering that it seemed like she always had to go first in debates, and that just wasn't fair? One thinks not, and I was surprised when Hillary Clinton did so last night. In so enthusiastically casting herself as the injured party, she undercuts her central argument about what a rock she is and comes across as more a whiner than a fighter.
Barack Obama had just refused his shot at aggrievement; he said he took her at her word that she didn't know anything about how a photo of him in traditional African garb got leaked to Matt Drudge. Then he briskly moved on. So, it seemed extra small when, after repeatedly extending a back-and-forth on health care, she then complained at length about being asked to go first in answering the next question, about NAFTA. Normally, debaters like to go first, but she tried to make this seem like part of the vast media conspiracy against her:
"Can I just point out that in the last several debates I seem to get the first question all the time, and I don't mind, you know, I'll be happy to field them. But I do find it curious, and if anybody saw Saturday Night Live,'' she said, referring to a skit in which the press is seen waiting Obama hand and foot, "you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow. I just find it kind of curious that I keep getting the first question on all these issues,'' she repeated, throwing her arms up in frustration, "but I'm happy to answer it.'' Just like your mom is happy to sit home in the dark alone, insisting Oh, don't worry about me.
Clinton also tried to stop Brian Williams from cutting to a commercial -- a losing proposition if ever there was one. And she suggested that she would have made her tax returns public by now if she weren't already too overburdened to sleep. When asked if she would release the returns before the Texas and Ohio primaries next Tuesday, she answered, "I can't get it together by then, but I will certainly work to get it together. I'm a little busy right now; I barely have time to sleep.''
She did show 12 kinds of chutzpah, though, in calling out Obama for merely denouncing rather than denouncing and rejecting Louis Farrakhan, who recently endorsed him: She noted that she, by contrast, had made clear during her first Senate race that she would not accept the support of an independent party with a history of anti-Semitism. Which was a bold boast, given that this was around the same time she listened as Yasser Arafat's wife, Suha, accused the Israelis of gassing women and children on a daily basis; after the speech, Clinton rose and kissed Mrs. Arafat on both cheeks.
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Over on his blog at Psychology Today, frequent Slate contributor Peter D. Kramer (author of, among other things, Listening to Prozac) notes what plenty are rushing to note: that Clinton, having accused Obama of Xeroxing, went ahead and echoed other people's lines herself last night. But Kramer—astute psychiatrist that he is—probes a little further and notices that she cribs when she's reaching to express emotion, when she's trying to be heartfelt. And then he pushes a bit more, beyond the usual gender point that it's ironic to find the female failing to convey empathy persuasively. Instead, Kramer focuses on the partisan implications: Democratic candidates, he proposes, "only prevail if they have substantial social skills." Republicans can get away with being stiffer, less sincere. Think of the losers Kerry, Gore, Dukakis: wooden, not "whole people" on the stump. And think of Nixon, a winner. If you buy Kramer's formula, the best Democratic choice this time around is obvious. Does the insight, I wonder, also suggest McCain wouldn't be wrong to bet he could get away with less than his usual straight talk?
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All three of the Democratic presidential contenders insist that the next occupant of the Oval Office has got to be more open and honest with the American people. After seven years of gut-instinct infallibility, who could disagree? Yet when asked at last night's debate to be honest and open about their own greatest shortcomings, John Edwards did a searching moral inventory and concluded that he might have too much empathy: "I sometimes have a very powerful emotional response to pain.'' Hillary Clinton allowed that she wants change so badly that she does not, in fact, possess infinite patience: "I get, you know, really frustrated when people don't seem to understand that we can do so much more to help each other.'' Not only is she impatient, but "sometimes I come across that way.''
Only Barack Obama named a true human failing -- that he can be disorganized, to the point that his staff knows never to hand him a piece of paper more than two seconds before he needs it "because I will lose it ... and my desk and my office doesn't look good. I've got to have somebody around me who is keeping track of that stuff.'' Which shouldn't be a big deal, but because politicians so rarely cop to anything real, it is. Sometimes, whether accidentally or on purpose, candidates actually provide us with important information about themselves. And for voters who really do want more honesty -- and self-awareness -- from their next president, this was one of those times.
The answers Obama and Clinton gave line up with what we already know about them. Instead of obfuscating, Obama has written about how he messed around with drugs as a teenager and went through a period when he and his wife, Michelle, were barely speaking. Whereas Clinton, who is asking to be judged on the basis of her experience as First Lady, was certainly not a known champion of transparency when she lived in the White House the first time. From the beginning of her husband's presidency, her attitude toward the press was combative, even when it didn't need to be. Her secretiveness about health-care reform undermined her efforts on the biggest job she ever took on. To this day, no one knows how the missing Rose Law Firm billing records mysteriously reappeared in the White House residence two years after they were subpoenaed. Part of her pitch is that she's learned from her past mistakes, yet in her autobiography, Living History, history has been airbrushed beyond recognition. Which makes Obama's admission of the absolutely obvious -- nobody's perfect -- a bigger mark in his favor than it really ought to be. Now it will be interesting to see if voters are being honest when they say they want honesty.
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