David Corn: Hope Vs. Experience (RE: Clinton)

[babylonsister]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/21/hope_vs_experience.php

Hope Vs. Experience
David Corn
March 21, 2007



David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation and the co-author, along with Michael Isikoff, of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War.

I was at a lovely Washington dinner, sitting across from an FOH—friend of Hillary. “Barack’s fine,” she said. “Smart, capable, has the right positions. But this current gang in the White House has made such a mess of things that we’re going to need someone who’s ready to hit the ground running, someone who knows how the government works, who won’t need to get up to speed, who can right away start to do what needs doing, who won’t be learning on the job. And she and Bill will be ready.”

A few days later, I was talking to another person who is close to the junior senator from New York. “I’ve helped Barack,” this Clinton pal said. “Raised money for him, would do so again, think the world of him, agree with him on all the positions. He was even right about the war. But we have to have someone who on that first day in office can turn things around—someone who understands how to do things in Washington. And no one knows that better than Hillary and Bill.”

See the pattern? (Usually columnists need three anecdotes to declare a trend; I’m saving time.) Both of these Hillary fans are intelligent, independent-minded and politically savvy players in the capital. They don’t need to read from a script. But I suspect there is a script, formal or informal, that the Clinton crew is using in the influentials primary—the battle for the hearts (or at least the minds) of opinion-makers, political operatives and, of course, funders. It’s an obvious spiel: Senator Obama is a tad bit green. Who knows how he’ll perform should he reach 1600 Pennsylvania? And he’s no Bill Clinton.

It’s hard to say how such a pitch is playing inside the Beltway or among the Democratic elite elsewhere. More important, it’s tough to figure how it will resonate with Democratic primary voters—if publicly voiced by Senator Clinton or her partisans. Will her presidential campaign reprise the two-for-the-price-of-one theme the Bill Clinton campaign deployed in 1992? That could be dangerous. Pushing this notion could raise questions about who would really wear the pants in a Clinton II presidency and prompt further concerns about dynastic politics. Do Americans want to be governed by one of two families for 24 straight years (and possibly 28)? Hillary Clinton already has to contend with the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton issue. Playing up the with-Hill-you-get-Bill angle would bring more attention to the matter.

But put aside Bill for the moment. There will be plenty of time to chew on that. The core of the Clinton attack on Obama will be the natural one: experience. In conventional terms, the guy is a newbie. His tenure in Washington is shorter than the duration of the Iraq war. He has character, depth, authenticity and smarts to spare. And as a recent Washington Post profile noted, he was a skilled legislator and politician as an Illinois state senator, forging and enacting progressive measures dealing with significant hot-button topics: health-care reform, the death penalty, campaign finance reform and racial profiling. But running the federal government? In the post-9/11 era? And steering the entire globe in a better direction? Washington ain’t Springfield (though one rather successful president did get his start in the Illinois state capital).

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