NYT
The presidential campaign is sure getting hot. Mike Huckabee is inching ahead of Mitt Romney in Iowa, precipitating a fascinating national debate about whether Mormons or Baptists love Jesus more. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are engaged in a battle over who has wanted to be president longer — or rather, less long.
“I have not been planning to run for president for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for,” said Obama in (where else?) Iowa.
“He says that day after day,” said Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s spokesman. This sounded to the Hillaryites like a diss, and, indeed, Obama did appear to be suggesting that she was the product of long-running crass ambition while he, reluctant soldier, was simply responding to his country’s call.
“So we put out a document, finally, that had all the instances of his saying he wanted to run for president,” Wolfson explained.
The evidence began with a magazine article that claimed that Obama started planning his campaign when he became a senator in 2005. This was followed by quotes from friends and relatives attesting that he had mentioned his aspirations in 1992, 1988 and the third grade. Finally came the coup de grâce: testimony from his kindergarten teacher that back when he was 5, little Barack had written an essay titled: “I Want to Become President.”
Adding the childhood homework, Wolfson said yesterday, “was clearly an unwise thing to do.” So unwise, in fact, that the campaign attempted to argue that it was meant as a joke. (This was a hard sell since, as Patrick Healy of The Times noted, when the Clinton campaign jokes, it tells you it’s joking.
By yesterday the Clinton aides were running away from the story as fast as possible. Score one for Obama. “He basically gets away with saying she had a 20-year plan and he had no aspirations to run for president,” said Wolfson, in a less than happy tone.
Three thoughts:
1) The Clinton people are extremely lucky “The Daily Show” writers are on strike.
2) Anyone married to Bill Clinton shouldn’t get into arguments about who had the earliest political ambitions.
3) Didn’t we used to think it was a good thing when kids wanted to grow up to be president?
Personally, I would love to be able to vote for a candidate who’s spent his/her life preparing to serve the country as competently as possible. The one thing we don’t want is somebody who just lucks into the job and then doesn’t even seem to particularly want to do it. (Stop here and try to think of the name of a person who fits that description.)
The Democrats had a debate this week on National Public Radio — an extremely decorous affair without cameras or a studio audience. The candidates weren’t even allowed to thank the Iowa State Historical Museum for hosting the event and the people of Iowa for, well, just existing.
It quickly became clear that The National Intelligence Estimate did Hillary Clinton no favors when it expressed “high confidence” that Iran had dropped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. It took no time at all for John Edwards to point out that Clinton had supported that misbegotten Senate resolution declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization and proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.
“Many of us believe that,” said Clinton somewhat reluctantly, pointing out that a lot of other Democrats voted for it besides her. (Sure, and if Dick Durbin and Carl Levin tell you to jump off a bridge ...)
However, a meeting of the minds did seem to evolve over the need for “carrots and sticks.” Clinton called for carrots and sticks twice, and when Edwards echoed her, the debate seemed on the verge of a consensus that Iran is best handled with what, for variety’s sake, we can think of as a vegetables-and-twigs strategy.
Cruelly, however, the moderators brought in a tape of the resolution’s sponsor, Joe Lieberman, announcing that if economic sanctions don’t stop the Iranians from messing with Iraq “we really have to consider military action to stop them from doing it, perhaps by striking the bases around Tehran.” Strategically, this would appear to lie beyond carrots and sticks and somewhat closer to a really big log.
We have had these candidates with us so long now that their little tics and mini-panders echo like a dripping faucet. How long, when the topic turns to trade, will it take for Edwards to mention that his father worked in a mill? When we move on to immigration, how many times will Chris Dodd point out that he speaks Spanish? What the heck is Mike Gravel doing back on stage? Didn’t we get rid of him 10 or 20 debates ago?
Still, give them credit. Nobody tried to compete to see who could get most hysterical about illegal immigrants. And they all sounded as if they had been preparing for a long time.
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