Yesterday, in a network interview, Barack Obama's chief strategist said in response to a question about Bill Clinton's truly odd resurrection of the "sniper fire" story: Hey, we're not bringing this up. But what I don't understand is why they are bringing this up.
Why, indeed. Plus the who, the what, the where and the when. Those are the questions that abound, because these days the Clinton campaign is less a campaign than it is some genre of journalistic mystery novel.
Who said what? Now why in God's name would he -- or she -- say that? Once the offending surveillance tape hits the airwaves, hordes of political analysts turn therapeutic sleuth and try to do determine why in hell the Clinton campaign insists on shooting itself in the foot.
The Clintons' blanket retort, of course, is that they're doing no such thing. Instead, they say, all the brouhaha over ... insert your pick of missteps here ... is merely the outcrop of the media's misogyny, which grimly materializes as "Hillary-bashing."
Occasionally husband Bill does offer alternative theories of these campaign screw-ups, such as what he alone seems to regard as his wife's superannuation that is already revealing a creeping dementia. Poor ol' gal. Just you wait till you're her age and see if you think it's funny.
But mostly, as noted, the campaign belittles the media coverage as nothing more than just more misogynistic Hillary-bashing. Most recently Mrs. Clinton herself, for instance, lashed out at a (female) National Public Radio interviewer for asking, in effect, why she was still wasting her and everyone else's time by doggedly staying in this race.
"What I want to know is, why do I get these questions?" -- presumably as a woman -- was Hillary's curt comeback.
In three little words: Because it's over. Because you've virtually no chance of winning. Because with every passing day fewer and fewer analysts see any hope of any path to your nomination. Because the harm you're doing to your party's unity far outweighs whatever dimmest chance you may in fact have of pulling this out. That's why. Why would any journalist ask that of the candidate in the indestructible lead?
Was NPR's question Hillary-bashing? Was it (male) Huckabee-bashing when the media and large slices of the Republican Party were asking Mike why he was staying in the race when -- despite John McCain's shortage of the necessary delegates votes to secure the nomination -- he had virtually no chance of winning?
Thursday, when Bill Clinton bizarrely revived the "sniper-fire" fiasco by spraying his audience with at least eight inaccuracies, he did say manage to say one thing that packed some truth for us all: "You know, I got tickled the other day. A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me."
It has indeed been amusing; as was Bill's observation, but only because of what Bill in typical fashion turned on its head. In a moment of even rarer truthfulness, what he would have said is, A lot of the way this coverage has been campaigned on has amused me -- and us.
But whether you find it amusing or not, a postmortem consensus on Hillary's campaign is finally taking shape. And it has nothing to do with Hillary-bashing or media frenzy or even politically commonplace "misstatements" of late. Instead, it has to do with everyday incompetence, as summarized this week by The Politico:
Clinton has overseen two major staff shake-ups in two months. She has left a trail of unpaid bills and unhappy vendors and had to loan her own campaign $5 million to keep it afloat in January. Her campaign badly underestimated her main adversary, Barack Obama, miscalculated the importance of organizing caucus states and was caught flat-footed after failing to lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday. It would be easy to dismiss all of this as fairly conventional political stumbling — if she hadn’t made her supreme readiness and managerial competence the central issue of her presidential campaign.
But since she has, a growing number of Democrats are comparing the Clinton and Obama campaigns — their first real exercise in executive leadership — and rendering harsh assessments of her stewardship.
The article went on to note that "in twin columns in Tuesday’s Washington Post, left-of-center columnists Peter Beinart and E.J. Dionne Jr. condemned Clinton’s overall management of the campaign and inability to build a durable message and infrastructure." Not external misogyny, but internal management -- bad management. In short, just plain and simple incompetence.
The Politico's own analysis was equally brutal -- peppered, as it was, by phrases such as "strategic missteps ... financial uncertainty ... personnel drama ... factionalized staff ... spendthrift approach ... chronically improvisational ... unable to run a tight ship" -- yet I have read, as have you, I'm sure, quite similar analyses in application to many a masculine pol's presidential campaign.
So let's put the misogyny, Hillary-bashing charge to bed, along with Elton John. I can assure you that Hillary, in her own mind, has, because as she gears up for another run in 2012 or '16, what she most wants and needs -- as she well knows -- is an accurate, objective and coldly honest analysis of what went wrong this time around.
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