You know the good-cop bad-cop routine from the movies, or from years of watching that television crime show, Law and Order. The frightened young man everyone knows committed the crime sits in the cold, harshly-lit interrogation room. The designated bad-cop goes ballistic – he cocks his fist and is about to beat the snot out of the obviously guilty punk, but the good-cop, or the one who drew that role, as this was planned earlier, grabs the bad-cop, leads him out of the room, returns and offers the punk a cigarette, makes some small talk, tells the punk how bad things look for him and how he may not be able to restrain his partner again, and, relieved, the punk confesses all. It works every time, at least on television.
Actually, it works in real life too. You decide to buy a car, and you work out what seems to be a fantastic deal with the salesman. You’ll get what you want and can you can actually make the payments – but then the salesman tells you he might be in trouble. Because he likes you so much he broke the rules – he has to clear this unusual deal with his mean boss, the sales manager. So you sit quietly, thumbing through the glossy brochures, and he finally comes back all hangdog. What you want is going to cost a bit more. Will that be okay? No? Would you like to look at anther model, not quite as fancy? Well, here’s a fine car we’ve had on the lot for some time. So you end up with the metallic-pink sedan. As car salesmen say, among themselves, there’s an ass for every seat.
So, as you recall, back in the sixties there was that anti-Nixon poster – Would You Buy a Used Car from This Man? At the time, and probably still, the least respected occupations in America were car salesman and politician. Those professions, or careers, or something, were always at the bottom of this list. With the car salesmen part of that had to do with the product. Remember the Pinto, the Gremlin and the Vega? But that was only part of it. In both cases the problem was really the process – no one likes getting jerked around by a smooth-talker in a cheap suit, pretending to be your friend. And of course, with politicians, it was all process and manipulation. There was no product. No one ever knew just what they were selling, exactly. Maybe they didn’t know either. Maybe no one knew.
So, on Friday, March 7, here we go again:
A day before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama were to compete for a small scattering of delegates in Wyoming, Clinton cast herself as the underdog and said the odds are not in her favor. Clinton’s campaign has sought to set low expectations for the Saturday caucuses in Wyoming as well as next week’s primary in Mississippi, states where her campaign believes Obama has a better shot at winning.
So, after weeks of saying that Obama was not fit to be commander-in-chief, unlike her and her noble and honorable Republican rival, we get the “shucks, this is hard stuff” routine. Yeah, right – and after a week of saying Obama was just like Karl Rove, or worse, and a liar, and weak, and, in suggesting she release her tax returns just like everyone else did, was using the same tactics as Ken Starr, the mean fellow who investigated her husband, we get this:
Earlier Friday at a town hall meeting in Mississippi, where some in the audience were undecided or leaning toward Obama, Clinton raised the possibility that she might run with the Illinois senator on the Democratic presidential ticket.
Clinton said: “I’ve had people say, ‘Well, I wish I could vote for both of you.’ Well, that might be possible some day. But first I need your vote on Tuesday.”
So all those who are furious with her for the attacks on Obama can now relax. She’ll let him be vice president, and presumably make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. You can’t have what you really wanted, but the metallic-pink sedan is a fine car, really.
This was odd on the same day when another big story broke:
A former adviser to Barack Obama who resigned Friday after calling rival Hillary Rodham Clinton “a monster” said Obama may not be able to withdraw all US combat troops from Iraq within a year as he has promised on the campaign trail.
Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winner author and unpaid adviser, made the comments in two separate interviews with foreign media while promoting her latest book. In a tight Democratic presidential campaign where attacks are becoming increasingly bitter, Power’s comments ignited a flurry of accusations between the two candidates.
Of course they did. The monster comment was stupid. The other comment was red meat for Clinton – she said it’s hard to know now what Obama’s real positions are. He’s said he was against the war, but one of his people points out that if things suddenly go in the weeds in Iraq he’d adjust the withdrawal accordingly. She has said she’d never do that. Let’s see – once she makes up her mind she never changes it, no matter how circumstances change, no matter what new facts arise. That’s sounds familiar – but then it worked for Bush, one of the reasons so many admire him. No, that couldn’t be – but there you have it.
Obama insisted he certainly will end the war in 2009 if elected and blamed Clinton for helping start it. She did. But he looks weak and she looks firm, to some. That seems to be the strategy.
Power’s resignation came in an interview with The Scotsman, of all things, where she said this of Clinton – “She is a monster, too - that is off the record - she is stooping to anything.” Bad choice of words – and the rule is you don’t get to say something is off the record after you say it. You say it’s off the record, whatever it is, before you start. It’s an informal rule, but a rule nonetheless. But Power is a Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize winner, not a press-savvy operative. She announced her resignation in a statement – the remarks were inexcusable and contradictory to her admiration for Clinton. It’s too late for that.
Power said that she spoke with Obama by phone Friday and he “made it absolutely clear that we just couldn’t make comments like this in his campaign.”
Why? Clinton has called him worse, and her husband in South Carolina dismissed Obama as just a black candidate – you know, of limited and local or ethic appeal, to be humored, but not taken seriously. He smiled as he said that. And of course Clinton’s campaign immediately sent an email to supporters telling them about the monster comment and asking for contributions to “show the Obama campaign that there is a price to this kind of attack politics.”
It was a fine piece of work. Attack and attack and attack – and then play victim, saying the other guy shouldn’t do such things. It’s brilliant. And it works. She should sell metallic-pink sedans.
On the other matter, Power did say some things that left Obama open, that his position that withdrawing all our troops within sixteen months is a “best-case scenario” – he will revisit if he becomes president. And she got all logical – “He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a US senator - he will rely upon a plan - an operational plan - that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn’t have daily access now, as a result of not being the president.”
Clinton practically laughed – “He has attacked me continuously for having no hard exit date, and now we learn he doesn’t have one, in fact he doesn’t have a plan at all.” It seems she is arguing she has a plan and she needs no advice from anyone at all, and will certainly not consider the facts on the ground next spring. That’s bold. That’s leadership. That’s also very familiar. No wonder some have taken to calling her Cheney in a Pants Suit. But her team must have brainstormed this and decided it was a winner.
And this just looks weak:
Obama told voters in Casper, Wyo., that Clinton has no standing to question his resolve because she voted in 2002 to authorize the war.
“If it had been up to me, we would have never been in this war,” Obama said, his voice rising. “It was because of George Bush, with an assist from Hillary Clinton and John McCain, that we got into this war.
“I will end it in 2009,” he said. “She doesn’t have standing to question my position on this issue.”
In context, Power’s resignation came a day after that business with Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson comparing Obama to former special prosecutor Starr. It was criticizing Clinton, and, with Starr’s investigation her husband’s impeachment, Starr is a wildly unpopular figure among Democrats. So Howard Wolfson saying, “I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president” may have been brilliant too. Clinton, late in the day, told reporters Wolfson’s comment was different from the monster thing because “one is an ad hominem attack and one is a historical reference.” She said the Wolfson criticism “is a true statement.” You see, it wasn’t an attack at all – she’s not mean and down in the gutter like Obama. Not bad – she should sell cars. It all seems absurd, but perhaps there is an ass for every seat.
Christopher Beam here offers a picture of Power and some perspective:
The resignation matters symbolically, but that’s about it. Power has called herself an “informal adviser” to Obama, and she wasn’t exactly part of the regular campaign entourage. (She did travel with the campaign in Iowa and South Carolina.) Her stepping down doesn’t mean she and Obama can’t talk. It just means they can’t appear together in public. Plus, keep in mind that Obama has already rolled out his major foreign-policy initiatives. Power could have been useful given Clinton’s latest attempts to bring Afghanistan front and center, but again, this is a resignation - not a restraining order.
Yet again we see how Obama’s talk about a “new kind of politics” opens him up to charges of “same old, same old.” Power’s words were nasty, sure, but hardly as offensive as Bill Shaheen and Bob Johnson’s winking hints about Obama’s cocaine use. Their charges had political weight, whereas Clinton was never, in fact, a giant, rampaging Cloverfield-style she-beast. But because Obama has sold himself as Mr. Clean, his opponents can point to any dirt as evidence of hypocrisy.
So the Obama campaign should be more careful about which surrogates they put out front. But on the other matter, withdrawal from Iraq, Beam is less casual:
Obama promises to “remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.” Clinton’s stance is less decisive: She promises to convene the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to start bringing troops home within 60 days. But neither candidate has presented a definite “timetable for withdrawal,” let alone explained the logistics of pulling out such a massive force in such a short period.
The fact is, Power is exactly right. Whoever becomes president will be confronted with a much messier situation than the candidates acknowledge. “Best-case scenario” might not have been the ideal choice of words - “goal” sounds a little more optimistic - but Power was correct to say that “you can’t make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009.” Essentially her point was that things change - a fact that neither candidate has been willing to admit. It’s disappointing that the first person to do so gets sacked.
One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers agrees:
Obviously, I am deeply sorry for calling a career public servant like Senator Clinton a name. It was disrespectful and downright immature. But it wasn’t untruthful. Listen, a lot of people including myself have devoted immense time and energy to the Obama campaign because we firmly believe that a different kind of politics is possible. And Obama’s lead in victories, delegates and votes makes us hope that this time, this year, after all of the swiftboating, that the old negative tactics aren’t going to win the day. So when Clinton runs fear-mongering ads about sleeping children and when her husband dismisses Obama as a merely black candidate, when Senator Clinton herself says that John McCain is more qualified to be commander-in-chief than her Democratic opponent … it just seems monstrous to me.
Sullivan adds this:
If you apologize to monsters like the Clintons, they just go in for the kill more. Once you blink in a war with them, it’s over.
That’s the way the game is played. Ask someone who’s been there, like Gary Hart:
By saying that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the country, particularly in times of crisis, Hillary Clinton has broken that rule, severely damaged the Democratic candidate who may well be the party’s nominee, and, perhaps most ominously, revealed the unlimited lengths to which she will go to achieve power. She has essentially said that the Democratic Party deserves to lose unless it nominates her.
Yes, she really has said that the Democratic Party deserves to lose unless it nominates her, and it’s becoming less subtle. Her campaign seems to have settled on her new image, the Fighter. We’ll see if that works.
Sullivan, a conservative and Republican, and Obama supporter, notes the danger:
What the Clintons are doing to Obama on national security will be Karl Rove’s trump card this fall. They know this. They don’t care. What the Clintons always do is reduce everyone to their mediocre, hair-pulling level. It’s essential that they drag the promise of politics down to their empty, careerist, poll-driven cynicism - or else they lose. That’s why, I think, Obama is right actually to resist any personal negative campaigning. The rest of us have to do that for him. If he is reduced to the Clintons’ level, the Clintons - and all they represent - win.
And he notes the bigger issue:
This is a generational struggle - although plenty of older folks get it completely. As such, it usually does take more than one insurrection to move past the past. Usually, we might wait for the forces of reaction and inertia and cynicism to fade away. The trouble is: we cannot afford more Rove-Morris politics given the enormous dangers we now face at home and abroad. And if you give the Clintons any power, we know they will use it to destroy - not just limit - any threat to them. They know the threat Obama and his politics present to them and their machine. They will never forgive his presumption. And you cannot assume they will at some point allow him to take over. The battle really is now.
No more used car salesmen?
Marc Ambinder sees another problem:
If Clinton wins the nomination, there will be many Obama staffers, particularly mid-to-high-ranking aides, who will refuse offers to help with the general election. The walk-away rate will be unprecedented.
She will stand alone. Maybe George Bush can call her and cheer her up.
But Sullivan goes further:
The new meme is that politics has returned to normal and that this election will now be run by Clinton rules. Many are relieved by this. You could sense the palpable discomfort among many in Washington that their world might actually shift a little next year. But if elections are primarily about fear and mud, and who best operates in a street fight, Beltway comfort returns. This we know. This we understand. This we already have the language to describe. And, the feeling goes, the Clintons can win back the White House in this atmosphere. What she is doing to Obama she can try to do to McCain. Maybe Limbaugh will help her out again.
But what that misses are the cultural and social consequences of beating Obama this way:
I don’t mean beating Obama because the Clintons’ message is more persuasive, or because the Clintons’ healthcare plan is better, or because she has a better approach to Iraq. I mean: beating him by a barrage of petty attacks, by impugning his clear ability to be commander-in-chief, by toying with questions about his “Muslim past,” by subtle invocation of the race card, by intermittent reliance on gender identity politics, by taking faux offense to keep the news cycle busy (”shame on you, Barack Obama!”) and so on. If the Clintons beat Obama this way, I have a simple prediction. It will mean a mass flight from the process. It will alter the political consciousness of an entire generation of young voters - against any positive interaction with the political process for the foreseeable future. I’m not sure that Washington yet understands the risk the Clintons are taking with their own party and the future of American politics.
People are tired of this all, or so Sullivan claims:
The reason so many people have re-engaged with politics this year is because many sense their country is in a desperate state and because only one candidate has articulated a vision and a politics big enough to address it without dividing the country down the middle again. For the first time in decades, a candidate has emerged who seems able to address the country’s and the world’s needs with a message that does not rely on Clintonian parsing or Rovian sleaze. For the first time since the 1960s, we have a potential president able to transcend the victim-mongering identity politics so skillfully used by the Clintons. If this promise is eclipsed because the old political system conspires to strangle it at birth, the reaction from the new influx of voters will be severe. The Clintons will all but guarantee they will lose a hefty amount of it in the fall, as they richly deserve to. Some will gravitate to McCain; others will be so disillusioned they will withdraw from politics for another generation. If the Clintons grind up and kill the most promising young leader since Kennedy, and if they do it not on the strength of their arguments, but by the kind of politics we have seen them deploy, the backlash will be deep and severe and long. As it should be.
And he cites evidence no one wants more of this, given Obama’s record fundraising from millions of small donors:
He has brought many, many Republicans and Independents to the brink of re-thinking their relationship with the Democratic Party. And he has won the majority of primaries and caucuses and has a majority of the delegates and popular vote. This has been a staggering achievement - one that has already made campaign history. If the Clintons, after having already enjoyed presidential power for eight long years, destroy this movement in order to preserve their own grip on privilege and influence in Democratic circles, it will be more than old-fashioned politics. It will be a generational moment - as formative as 1968. Killing it will be remembered for a very, very long time. And everyone will remember who did it - and why.
Maybe so, but Josh Marshall has a cold look on what she has achieved:
Late Tuesday night I wrote that the upshot of the March 4th contests was that Clinton had beaten Obama up a bit and he hadn’t responded. She’d not only bloodied up his poll numbers a bit by throwing all sorts of stuff at him. She also showed that it wasn’t at all clear that Obama was enough of a fighter to stand up to this stuff or get back in her face. More than the delegate numbers, that was the challenge March 4th had left him with.
But since then she’s just been slapping this guy around like crazy. She’s on the offense every day, dictating the terms of the discussion and getting results.
This “monster” thing is a good case in point. That’s a pretty over-the-top thing for a key campaign advisor to say. But what it tells me more than that is that the Clinton campaign has these guys rattled really bad. Some of this is no doubt due to the fact that Power is a bit out of her element. She’s more from the academic/policy world than the political/policy world. But, again, rattled. The Clinton folks have been bashing Obama like crazy. Now they follow up by explicitly demanding that Obama fire one of his key foreign policy advisors and … how, long did it take? An hour? And she’s gone.
If boxing is our metaphor she’s got him cornered on the ropes on one side of the ring and she’s just landing punch after punch. And all he can manage are the defensive moves that her constant attacks dictate.
But then, what can he do? He’s trapped:
I have a pretty good sense of where the Obama supporters are at the moment. And a lot of the more intensely engaged of them are telling each other that what Power said is exactly right. And I can see why they’re mad at Hillary after a lot of what’s happened over the last couple weeks.
But you know what? Ice cream’s fattening and we all die too. Get over it. This is about getting inside Obama’s (the collective Obama, let’s say) head, psyching him out, forcing mistakes and then going right back on the attack all over again. Getting the Obama folks pissed and gritting their teeth and off their game is precisely the point.
The Obama folks can either withdraw to a world where the “new politic” reigns or focus on the fact that here in the real world there are two “old politics” practitioners standing between him and the presidency and he needs to decide how he’s going to deal with that fact.
… To understand how politicking works you need to look not at the often terribly silly discussion points of the unfolding debates. You need to look at the larger picture the engagement is telling people. And right now this one’s saying that Obama won’t fight back, that he’s easy to fluster, that he’s weak. And that’s precisely why Team Hillary is taking this tack.
See also Matthew Yglesias:
So thinking a bit more reflectively about this Samantha Power business, I’m pretty pissed off. Sure, you can rail against the perfidy of the Clintons, but this sort of ritualized calls for resignations is all in the game. Having her resign, by contrast, is just playing the game poorly. Remember when fresh strategic thinking and common sense were going to break with the conventional wisdom? I do. The “monster” business was a dumb thing to say, and certainly the kind of thing you apologize for, but no kind of indication that she was a bad person to get foreign policy advice from.
And there’s Kevin Drum here:
I’m trying to figure out if I agree with this or not. My first take was just the opposite: I thought this reflected well on Power, who resigned and issued a fulsome apology rather than allowing this whole thing to spiral out of control and hurt the candidate she was working for. Good for her. And since Obama can obviously pick up the phone and call her anytime he wants, this doesn’t really have any substantive impact.
On the other hand, Matt is right about the optics. Power really is an interesting foreign policy advisor who brings some fresh ideas to the table, and even symbolically you hate to see someone like that get thrown under the bus over a brief indiscretion. It’s a sign of how nasty this campaign is getting that the Obama team apparently didn’t think it could afford to insist that she stay aboard.
Maybe you just have to know who you’re dealing with, as Reagan’s old speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, points out here:
Clinton is hardy, resilient, tough. She is a train on a track, an Iron Horse. But we must not become carried away with generosity. The very qualities that impress us are the qualities that will make her a painful president. She does not care what you think, she will have what she wants, she will not do the feints, pivots and back-offs that presidents must. She is neither nimble nor agile, and she knows best. She will wear a great nation down.
So it will be another four years, or eight years, of that. It will be the triumph of cynicism. She will have saved us from useless hope. And she will have what she wants.
