First, when she came back from her visit to Iraq last month, she felt the need to announce a policy of capping American troop levels, opposing the "surge" and threatening the likely de-funding of the Iraqi government if it didn't meet impossible goals. (Presidential aspirant and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden blasted this Clinton policy as itself irresponsible and foolish, as it would undercut the very Iraqi government that everyone says must take charge upon our departure.)
Then, a couple of weeks ago, she said the president would be irresponsible if he didn't end the war by the end of his term. She reinforced that argument last weekend at the Democratic Party winter meeting when she promised to end our involvement in the war immediately upon her taking office as president in January 2009.
Hillary Clinton apparently felt the need for these swiftly escalating efforts at flamboyant anti-warism to match the "bring the troops home within months" proposals of her two strongest challengers: former Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Obama.
Compounding this dangerous leftward pull on the Democratic Party presidential aspirants is the fierce economic populist message of former Sen. Edwards, who is currently running disconcertingly (for Clinton and Obama) strongly nationwide -- particularly in Iowa. As he increases his tax-the-rich, class-envy rhetoric (a message that episodically works well in the odd state and in the personal injury courtroom, but has not yet elected a president in the modern era), I suspect that Obama and Clinton may feel the pressure to at least partially match such divisive policy.
Of course, it is typical of presidential nomination campaigns to run to the left in the Democratic Party and to the right in the Republican Party. But what makes this cycle so dangerous for Hillary Clinton is that the campaign is starting so early. With almost a year before the first votes are cast, she must match the leftward lurch of her opponents -- so long as that is where the center of gravity of Democratic Party primary voters are -- for a full year (rather than the few months that have been the case for previous front-runners until this election cycle).
If the news from Iraq turns around over the next year and a half, the Democrats, as the party of defeat, will likely themselves be defeated.
But even if the news from Iraq stays bad, or gets worse, the increasingly dangerous world that such events would reveal to the American electorate may well suggest to the voters that, whatever the mistakes of George Bush, in such a dangerous world they cannot rely on the hard-core anti-war mentality of Hillary Clinton, or any other cut-and-run Democrat (or Republican).
It will be a vital test of Hillary Clinton's political judgment, nerve and innate confidence in the fundamental strength of her candidacy if she can now put the brakes on her leftward drift and avoid a full year of mispositioning herself for the general election in November 2008.
Tony Blankley
Tony Blankley, a conservative author and commentator who served as press secretary to Newt Gingrich during the 1990s, when Republicans took control of Congress, died Sunday January 8, 2012. He was 63.
Blankley, who had been suffering from stomach cancer, died Saturday night at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, his wife, Lynda Davis, said Sunday.
In his long career as a political operative and pundit, his most visible role was as a spokesman for and adviser to Gingrich from 1990 to 1997. Gingrich became House Speaker when Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives following the 1994 midterm elections.
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