Peggy Noonan is one of the few right wing writers who, like me, managed to completely resist Hillary Clinton's charms during the Democratic race for the White House. But in her column today, out of a fully justified sense of joy, Noonan engages in a little shark jumping. Taste the righteous anti-Clinton bile:
They threw off Clintonism. They threw off the idea that corruption is part of the game, an acceptable fact. They threw off the idea that dynasticism was an unstoppable dynamic in modern politics, that Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton could, would, go on forever. They said: "No, that is not the way we do it."
They threw off the idea of inevitability. Mrs. Clinton didn't lose because she had no money or organization, she didn't lose because she had no fame or name, she didn't lose because her policies were unusual or dramatically unpopular within her party. She lost because enough Democrats looked at her and thought: I don't like that, I don't like the way she does it, I'm not going there. Most candidates lose over things, not over their essential nature. But that is what happened here. For all her accomplishments and success, it was her sketchy character that in the end did her in.
While I'd normally be up for a little tap-dancing on Hillary's political grave, we should have a certain fidelity to actual events while we don our tuxedos and top hats. It wasn't Hillary's sketchy character that did her in. If this were a morality play, that's how it would have worked out. But instead, it was Barack Obama and his outstanding candidacy that did her in.
Besides, Hillary lost by a razor thin margin. If she hadn't made the epic strategic blunders of not organizing for some caucuses and assuming the race would conclude on Super Tuesday, she might have won. Acting as if Hillary received a stinging electoral rebuke makes as much sense as George W. Bush celebrating mandate victories over Al Gore and John Kerry in his exceptionally close wins. (Come to think of it, Bush did do the latter.)
But Noonan's analysis is still more misguided. By focusing on Hillary's fate and implicitly claiming that the Democratic race boiled down to Hillary vs. Not Hillary with the Not Hillary guy winning, she vastly minimizes the scope of Obama's achievement. If Republicans want to be honest about what they're up against this fall, they'll have to acknowledge that only an extraordinary candidate could have defeated Hillary in this race. Fungible senators like Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and John Edwards weren't about to pull off such a trick.
Noonan's analysis has it exactly backwards. The candidate who was the issue in this race wasn't Hillary - it was Obama. When Obama appeared inevitable after Iowa and again after Super Tuesday, increased scrutiny caused Democratic voters to think twice about him. Hillary surged at the end because Obama sunk. Still, the fact that she surged at all belies Noonan's thesis that the Democrats rejected Clintonism. Were it only so.
As regards Obama, if Hillary Clinton hadn't been in this race, he would have wrapped things up after New Hampshire. He is a gifted and formidable politician. All politicians talk about change, but Obama is the first politician I can recall who personifies change. This is a powerful asset, and Republicans would be wise to avoid thinking that Obama advanced to the finals as the accidental beneficiary of the Democrats rejecting Hillary Clinton.
