During her questioning of Gen. David Petraeus this week, Sen. Hillary
Clinton said to the general, "You have been made the de facto spokesmen for
what many of us believe to be a failed policy. Despite what I view as your
rather extraordinary efforts in your testimony ... I think that the reports
that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief."
Petraeus's supporters say Hillary was calling him a liar. When you read it,
particularly if you focus on the second sentence, that's how it seems. But
if you actually heard her say it, it sounded like she was making a
compliment and then sort of taking it back. NPR correspondent David Welna
heard it the same way, too, describing it as a "careful weaving of praise
and skepticism."
Since everyone's made up their minds about the good general, let's talk
about that careful weaving instead.
Hillary Clinton doesn't say anything by accident. This is the key difference
between her and her husband. Bill is an oleaginous people pleaser, a cross
between Franklin Roosevelt and the guy looking for a free drink at the end
of the bar. If he sidles up to someone who loves Tito Puente, he'll be quick
to say, "Oh, I've been listening to him for years!" If he meets someone who
hates Tito Puente, he'll shed a single tear and bite his lip that he just
couldn't get Puente's albums banned, because of that awful
Republican-controlled Congress. And sometimes he'll please both parties
simultaneously. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, when Bill comes to a fork in the
road, he takes it. But in his eagerness, you can sometimes catch the
duplicity.
With Hillary it's much harder. She plans everything. Her notion of
spontaneity is changing her brand of day planner without having a meeting
about it first. One can imagine her practicing every important pronouncement
in front of a mirror with color-coded flashcards. "She does her homework"
has to be the most bipartisan accolade of our age.
But just because Hillary is about as impulsive as a pet rock, it doesn't
mean that she's as different from her husband as it seems. Both have
mastered the art of having it both ways. Indeed, Clintonite "triangulation"
and "Third Way" politics were always about having your cake and eating it
too. For instance, Hillary has managed to be the leader of a rabidly
anti-war party and the most hawkish Democrat in the field at the same time.
It's just that Bill could speak with a forked tongue on the fly. Off the
cuff he said he agreed with the minority but would have voted with majority
when it came to the first Gulf War. He tried pot but didn't inhale. Monica
Lewinsky had sexual contact with him, but he never had sexual contact with
her.
What Bill says with rakish bluster, Hillary pulls off with schoolmarmish
fog.
For example, in a recent interview with Salon, Walter Shapiro asked Hillary
Clinton whether she took offense to commentators using only her first name.
She said that she has an "open mind" about the practice but sympathizes with
feminists who complain that it's demeaning. But she also thinks it's just
fine for her own campaign to refer to her relentlessly - and sometimes
almost exclusively - as "Hillary." In one convoluted paragraph she manages
to admit that she does something that is sexist for others to do, but claims
to have an open mind about it.
During the YouTube-CNN Democratic debate, she was asked what a liberal is
and whether she is one. In a brilliantly crafted non-answer, she explained
that the word "originally meant that you were for freedom ... that you were
willing to stand against big power and on behalf of the individual." But,
"in the last 30, 40 years it has been turned up on its head" as a word to
describe "big government." That's exactly right, though she made it sound
like mean-spirited conservatives slandered the word, assigning no blame to
liberals themselves.
Indeed, it actually sounded like the woman who wanted to nationalize
one-seventh of the U.S. economy was never in favor of big government. But
rather than admit she's a liberal, she pulls the rhetorical rip cord and
parachutes to safety: "I prefer the word Œprogressive,'" she proclaimed,
"which has a real American meaning, going back to the progressive era at the
beginning of the 20th century. I consider myself a modern progressive."
Refusing to define that, she moved on, neglecting to mention that
progressives - modern and old-fashioned alike - believe in big government,
too.
Clinton's criticism of Petraeus was offensive on the merits, but it was
interesting because Hillary failed to tell every constituency what it wanted
to hear. I guess practice doesn't always make perfect.