Don’t count Hillary out just yet

Ah, the wisdom of American punditry. Just as Barack Obama starts to display a surprising amount of strength, many American columnists are looking at the prospect of “President Obama” as being a fait accompli.

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The “surging presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama” gushed the New York Times in a front-page article about the New Hampshire contest. The Washington Post claimed Obama’s campaign successes have triggered “wholesale reevaluations” of Mrs. Clinton’s viability. Canada’s National Post followed suit by comparing Hillary Clinton’s fight to hold back tears to 1972 presidential candidate Senator Edmund Muskie’s tears, which the paper said helped sink his campaign. Even Canada Free Press’s column by Bob Parks has acclaimed Obama as the inevitable winner of Campaign ’08. The airwaves were abuzz with talk radio and television programs speculating and reporting Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions to be among the dearly departed. Not so fast, guys, there’s only been one caucus and one primary and Hillary won the primary. There are forty-eight more primaries to go and I wouldn’t count Hillary out just yet. For one thing, Hillary is a really tough broad. Like Count Dracula, there is very little that can kill her, not the least of which is a goofy upstart junior senator from Illinois I can understand the pundits being nonplussed by the turn of events, given that there appeared to be a media coronation of Hillary starting some six-month prior to the Iowa Caucuses. But to say Hillary Clinton’s aspirations are dead after two states started looking at and selecting candidates is silly. Many pundits have rationalized Hillary’s misty eyes as a moment of weakness, a view of the candidate’s vulnerability, a # in her armor. I beg to differ. Hillary’s quavering voice and misty eyes were coldly calculated political theater. I don’t doubt that she felt disappointed and even jealousy for all the adulation that a lightweight, such as Obama, has received in the campaign so far just for showing up. Mrs. Clinton was playing to women in that cafe when she wistfully told them how difficult this whole campaign was and how important it was. She also did not fail to slag her opponent when she told her small and intimate audience that “some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not.” It’s classic Clinton, tightly scripted with little left to chance. For the pundits to write Mrs. Clinton off so easily and so readily betrays a misunderstanding of that woman’s ambitions. It’s readily apparent that Hillary has had her eyes on the Oval Office for close to two decades now and I believe in some respects she feels entitled to it. To say that because of a very poor showing in the Iowa Caucus and the thinest win of the New Hampshire Primary she is finished is to totally underestimate what Hillary Clinton is capable of achieving. Out of a total of some $140 million raised by all the Democratic Presidential candidates to date, Hillary Clinton has raised in excess of $100 million. In addition, she has a well-oiled political machine with a formidable war room and troops like Paul Begala and Ragin’ Cajun James Carville, who are likely the two most proficient political operators in America, next to Carl Rove. Add to that, her husband, Slick Willie, who is stumping on her behalf and a whole army of fawning Hollywood glitterati that are lending their support. The reports of Hillary Clinton’s political demise are greatly exaggerated. Now that Barack Obama has turned into a formidable candidate, the media will begin to scrutinize him much more carefully and there are definite warts and wrinkles that the limelight seems to have bathed away. For openers, there are all sorts of questions that need to be asked and answered about Obama’s purchase of land adjacent to his mansion in Kenwood from controversial Illinois businessman Antoin Rezko. It appears Obama purchased the land from Rezko for somewhat less than Rezko paid for it. Then, there’s the question of experience. Obama has been a senator for only three years during which he achieved very little. His experience in foreign policy is limited to when he went to in kindergarten in Indonesia. His inexperience made for some good comedy when he talked about pursuing Taliban insurgents into Pakistan with or without the approval of that country’s government. Finally, Obama is also the most left-wing Senator in the US Congress. The way the American media is carrying on about this issue betrays just how deeply the American public has bought into the 22-minute sitcom mindset. Hillary Clinton is far from dead, politically. A caller to a talk show put it best today when he told the host that Hillary Clinton “will never be dead, unless she is destroyed at the molecular level”. That pretty well sums it up.