Frank Rich's Buried Lede: His Two-Page Handwritten Letter From Bill Clinton
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Another week, another Sunday for Frank Rich to weigh in on the presidential race. This week his main point: Experience is no ace in the hole for this primary race. Case in point: Political (and war) veteran John McCain vs. proud foreign policy neophyte (not to mention NIE-o-phyte) Mike Huckabee, and self-proclaimed candidate of "experience" Hillary Clinton vs. self-proclaimed candidate of "change" Barack Obama. All very interesting, but is that the juice of the column? Hell, no! Buried way down — as in, paragraph 16 of 19 — is the revelation that Bill Clinton sent Rich a personal, handwritten letter complaining about how Rich portryed his wife in a column:
In a two-page handwritten letter in response to a recent column of mine criticizing Mrs. Clinton's Senate votes on Iraq and Iran, Bill Clinton made a serious and impassioned defense of her foreign-policy record. On the subject of her support for the so-called Kyl-Lieberman amendment on Iran this fall, Mr. Clinton wrote: "If Senator Obama, for example, had really believed it was an indirect authorization to attack Iran, he would not have stayed away on the campaign trail, but would have come back to vote against it." That's a fair point — and a fair criticism of Mr. Obama as he continues to vilify this particular Hillary Clinton vote. If voting for Kyl-Lieberman was as grave a step toward war as Mr. Obama claims, there's no excuse for his absence.
Good point, but if Rich is correct, unimportant either way since it goes to Hillary's — and Obama's — record (and also something Hillary doesn't really want to emphasize because it's in both their interests to downplay the importance of that vote). The more telling observation is this one:
Bill Clinton wouldn't have shifted gears to refer to his wife constantly as a "change agent," however implausibly, if his acute political sensors didn't tell him that Americans are not just willing but eager to roll the dice.
His acute political sensors probably read the ABC News-Washington Post poll Rich cites, which has Obama ahead by 4 points in Iowa. Possibly those same sensors told him that if he wrote Frank Rich a 2-page letter, it might just get a mention in his column.
NB: I have to disagree with RIch's equating of "the invocations of 'cocaine' and 'Hussein' and 'madrassa' by surrogates" with "similar smear campaigns against John McCain in 2000." Here is the thing: Hussein is Barack Obama's middle name, for better or for worse, and he freely admitted his cocaine use years ago, in print. (And if anyone hammered home the word "cocaine" in that now-infamous Hardball segment, it was Joe Trippi, not Mark Penn) (and meanwhile, we are never far from a reminder of the, er, challenges of Bill and Hill's marriage: See Maureen Dowd's gratuitous cigar reference just today). Meanwhile, Bob Kerrey's mention of the madrassa rumor may or may not have been intentional, but for argument's sake I'm going to give this war vet the benefit of the doubt. By contrast, the smear campaign against John McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 campaign was as ugly and coordinated as it gets: Making phone calls to voters suggesting that McCain's Bangladeshi daughter — adopted from Mother Teresa's orphanage — was actually his own illegitimate black child. It's known as one of the most scurrilous political smears ever. Whatever memes Hillary's team may (or may not) have tried to push, it just doesn't hold a candle.
Photo of Frank Rich from the NYT; photo of Bill Clinton via frankejames.com.
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Huffington Post Rachel Sklar First Posted: 03/28/08 03:45 AM ET Updated: 05/25/11 01:20 PM ET