HILLARY AND WEAKNESS.

HILLARY AND WEAKNESS. In the past week alone, four columns in the Washington Post have raised the issue of Hillary Clinton�s 2002 Iraq war resolution vote, and the problems it is causing her and her campaign:Following Clinton around New Hampshire, Ruth Marcus concludes that, �Democratic primary voters don�t want Kerryesque parsing. �Let the conversation begin,� Clinton�s banners proclaim, but she�s not saying what many of them want to hear -- words like �mistake� and �sorry.�� Bob Novak adds, �What�s wrong with Clinton was demonstrated by the Feb. 4 performance on NBC's 'Meet the Press' of a competitor, former senator John Edwards, who displayed the qualities she lacks. He took firm positions and admitted error, in contrast to Clinton's careful parsing.� Admitting his own errors in supporting the war, Richard Cohen says he does not �condemn Clinton [and other Dems running for president]�for voting for the war because I would have done the same. I fault them, though, for passing the blame to Bush as the guy who misled them. They all had sufficient knowledge to question the administration's arguments, and they did not do so. Not a single one of them, for instance, could possibly have believed the entirety of the administration's case or not have suspected that the reasons for war were being hyped. If they felt otherwise, they have no business running for president.� (By that logic, of course, Cohen ought to consider giving up his column for a progressive voice that got it right from the jump; not holding my breath on that one.) Finally, our own Harold Meyerson puts Hillary�s position into historical perspective:

Today, Hillary Clinton seems almost uncannily positioned to become the Ed Muskie of 2008. She opposes the U.S. military presence in Iraq but not with the specificity, fervor or bona fides of her leading Democratic rivals.�

Clinton, worried that she would look weak, now looks weak.One more, non-Post observation: Peter Beinart makes an interesting case that weakness (thought of in the sense of the most basic stereotypical gender norms) is, ironically, more of an asset today than it was back in 2002. Still, weakness is as weakness does. And the 2002 war vote, instead of making her look tough on defense, makes Hillary look like somebody too weak to stand up to a president and, thus, perhaps, too weak to be one.

--Tom Schaller