Senator Barack Obama really took the gloves off this morning on NBC:
Amid some buzz, newspaper and blog reporting that noted that in the most recent Democratic debate it was all the guys gang-blasting Hillary Clinton, Obama has raised the issue of whether Ms. Clinton is now using that “high concept” media and blog perception to try and cushion herself from bare-knuckle campaigning. And for a candidate who some have started to compare to Democratic never-made-it Presidential wannabe the late, brilliant non-President Adlai Stevenson, the words were blunt:
Democrat Barack Obama, the only black candidate for president, accused rival Hillary Clinton on Friday of hiding behind her gender after she was pummeled in a debate with six male candidates.
“I am assuming and I hope that Sen. Clinton wants to be treated like everybody else,” the Illinois senator said in an interview with NBC’s “Today Show.”
“When we had a debate back in Iowa awhile back, we spent I think the first 15 minutes of the debate hitting me on various foreign policy issues. And I didn’t come out and say: ‘Look, I’m being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on the stage’,” he said.
“I assumed it was because there were real policy differences there, and I think that has to be the attitude that all of us take. We’re not running for the president of the city council. We’re running for the presidency of the United States.”
He was speaking a day after New York Sen. Clinton — the only woman running for president — urged women voters to rally behind her against “the boys club of presidential politics.”
He’s addressing an issue that lingers out there. Since the last debate, I’ve run across several people (particularly women) who thought it seemed like a bunch of guys jumping all over a woman. That is an unmentionable issue…which Obama has now mentioned.
But if using gender as a plus (in-effect suggesting to women a vote for her is a way to break into the boys’ club) it may not be enough. It may not be that suggesting it’s The Guys Against The Gal is going to help much because the issue truly may become….her stand on the issues. Note New York Times columnist Gail Collins’ latest:
Hillary Clinton stood on a stage for two hours Tuesday night, being yelled at by six men. Now this is what they mean by pressure. The most important job in the world is at stake and every single one of the other candidates walked into the presidential debate gunning for her. They began piling on from the first question. She took it all and came out the other end in one piece. She’s one tough woman. Kudos.
Her fighting spirit was all the more impressive because so many of the positions she was defending were virtually indefensible. It’s not easy to try to make a matter of principle out of a refusal to say anything specific about Social Security. And you really need a spine of steel to stand up on national television and explain why it was a good idea to vote for a bellicose Senate resolution on Iran that has given George W. Bush a chance to start making ominous remarks about weapons of mass destruction again.
Collins was one of many who felt the debate wasn’t Hillary Clinton’s finest hour:
What the debate did demonstrate was that the others deserve more time to make their case. Hillary might have looked immovable on that stage, but she sure didn’t look inevitable.
There are still two months before the first primaries, contests that as we all know only involve a tiny, tiny number of very, very special voters….Most of the nation has at least until next February to think about this, and Hillary really hasn’t sealed the deal.
But you do have to give her a few points for not letting the guys push her around.
So, again, there is the gender motif — not surprising since Clinton is the first truly serious woman in a presidential campaign sweepstakes.
The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speech writer who could be counted not to be in Clinton’s cheer leading section, also wrote a piece about Clinton and the issues. Noonan felt that Clinton in the debate showed herself to be the pre-1993 Hillary — the one who turned off Republicans and many others due to her view of the role of government:
The story isn’t that the Democrats finally took on Hillary Clinton. Nor is it that they were gentlemanly to the point of gingerly and tentative. There was an air of “Please, somebody kill her for me so I can jump in and show high minded compassion at her plight!”
…..The story is not that Mrs. Clinton signaled, in attitude and demeanor, who she believes is her most dangerous foe, the great impediment between her and an easy glide to the nomination. Yes, that would be Tim Russert.
The story is that she talked about policy. Not talking points, but policy. In talking about it she seemed, for the first time, to be revealing what’s inside.
It was startling. It’s 1993 in there. The year before her fall, and rise.
Noonan believes that in the debate Clinton showed she was really still part of the Old Left — a perhaps flawed assumption that many Americans after nearly 8 years of George Bush’s New Right aren’t perhaps nostalgic for the days when government seemed to be a bit more responsive and seemed to care for such piddling things as the environment, looking for ways to improve children’s health care and in general looking out for the average person’s interest rather than making the seeming first priority CEOs, big business and big oil.
But her underlying message is that Hillary Clinton will be aggressively fought on issues and perhaps what Republicans consider old baggage (baggage that many Americans may have written off by now):
There are people who’ve made quite a study of her life and times, and buy every book, from the awful ones such as Ed Klein’s to the excellent ones, such as Sally Bedell Smith’s recent “For Love of Politics,” a carefully researched, data-rich compendium on the Clintons’ time in the White House.
People who’ve studied Mrs. Clinton often ask why her ethical corner cutting and scandals have not caught up with her, why the whole history of financial and fund-raising scandals doesn’t slow her rise.
In a funny way she’s protected by her reputation. It’s so well known it’s not news. It doesn’t make an impression anymore. People have pointed out her ethical lapses for so long that they seem boring, or impossible to believe. “That couldn’t be true or she wouldn’t be running for president.” This thought collides with “And we already know all this anyway.” Her campaign uses the latter to squash the latest: “old news,” “cash for rehash.”
I’ve never seen anything quite like this dynamic work in modern politics. But the other night, for the first time, I had the feeling maybe it isn’t going to work anymore, or with such deadening consistency.
Once again, Noonan’s piece is peppered with assumptions that others agree with her characterization of Hillary Clinton. That’s a separate issue.
The issue is that all of the P.C., all of the sound bites will NOT shield Hillary Clinton from a vigorous and perhaps nasty debate on the issues, how solidly she does or doesn’t stand on them and her underlying concept of what government should be — one Republicans think is a slam dunk defeat. But, then the Republicans have not always been correct in their analyses the past two years.
Campaign 2008 is likely to be less The Old Boys’ Club against Hillary Clinton as The Old Baggage Rack being thrown at Hillary Clinton. Are the Clintonistas ready for it?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.