That’s why it’s hardly surprising to see Hillary Clinton offering sound bites that would significantly undermine Obama’s presidential candidacy should he win the nomination. And it’s no wonder Hillary Clinton’s spokesman compared Obama to Ken Starr last week; demonizing the mild-mannered Starr was the Clinton Administration’s greatest feat of political jujitsu – and for the Clintons, there really is no difference between the two. Anyone who stands in their way – Democrat or Republican – is, quite simply, a blood enemy.
With the escalating aggressiveness of the political rhetoric on both sides, the Clintons have finally succeeded in their objective of dragging Barack Obama – the icon of “hope” and “change” – into the mud with them. They have done it without any apparent concern that it might mean sacrificing the party’s best chance to win The White House, destroying the sense of uplift and inspiration Obama has engendered in many young voters, and inciting ill will among and between loyal, long-time Democratic constituencies. If the Clintons can’t win, they just don’t care about the mess they leave behind; if they can, they are willing to do so at any cost.
Never say that the Clintons don’t know what it means to love. They do. But their affections begin and finish with their own obsession with political power, at the expense of every finer principle – and the well-being of America itself. In their willingness to say and do anything just to hold on, they’ve convinced a generation of voters that destructive, smash-mouth politics is simply the natural order of things. That is their legacy, and it is a sad one.
A race between Barack Obama and John McCain will be close and hard fought. But there’s at least a chance that it can trascend the ugly and debased partisan mud-wrestling that has profited the Clintons so much. A campaign based on issues – where neither nominee hates the other, nor encourages such hatred on the part of his supporters – might, in the end, be the only real antidote to the Clinton poison.