Throughout the primaries there has been a credulous discussion about the different reasons why Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War authorization bill. Senator Clinton has said that she thought the president should have the authority to threaten force so he would have better negotiation leverage. Senator Obama has said she showed poor judgment in trusting President Bush to use that authority wisely.
Neither one of these things is true. Let's get real. She voted for the Iraq War because she thought it was in her political interest. I'm not one to think that every wink and nod of Senator Clinton is a meticulously thought out political strategy. But come on, this isn't a laugh here or a tear there - this was the biggest political vote of their careers. Did they take politics into consideration? Of course!!!!
And what was the political calculation here? All the Democrats who had national ambitions thought they would be called weak on national security if they didn't vote for the war. You know it, I know it and everyone who was paying any degree of attention knows it.
So, what does this vote reveal about Senator Clinton? She is willing to side with Republicans on matters of great importance to avoid the appearance of weakness. Instead of challenging the Republican frame on national security, she succumbs to it.
It's not just the Iraq authorization vote. It's the Kyl-Lieberman amendment where she agreed that Iran was killing our soldiers and was a terrorist threat to us (on very flimsy evidence), thereby paving the way for another possible war. We might or might not have that war, but she was willing to take that risk so she didn't appear weak on national security.
She also accepts the Republican position that negotiating with our enemies is a foolhardy and naïve idea (I know, Reagan was such a naïf when he negotiated with the Soviets). Why does she take this extreme position? Because otherwise the Republicans might call her ... weak on national security.
So, how will she react if God forbid there is a serious threat to this country when she is president? I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming she will not pull the trigger on imagined threats dreamed up by neocons. But if there is a real threat, what do we want our president doing? Worrying about the consequences of her decision to the real security of this country or worrying about how she'll be perceived by the Republicans?
Will they call her weak on national security? Should she pull the trigger to show them how tough she is?
At this point, every Republican reading this is screaming, "But she should pull the trigger! You said there was real national security threat!" It seems we have forgotten the days when firing first was not our only option. Remember when we had the Cuban Missile Crisis and John F. Kennedy was a hero for not getting us into war?
Remember when we thought war was a bad idea? Remember when we realized the true costs of war and didn't treat it as just a video game for America to win? Remember when avoiding war was considered a strong act of presidential leadership, not a weak one?
Sometimes war is necessary. But, although you couldn't tell these days, sometimes it isn't. We need a president strong enough to tell the difference. Is someone who has been tailoring all of her foreign policy moves to avoid criticism by the warmongering Republicans going to be able to show that kind of judgment, that kind of strength?
If we had a current day Cuban Missile Crisis, would Hillary pull the trigger just to show the Republicans she wasn't weak on national security? You can reasonably say she wouldn't. But even her most ardent supporters, in their heart of hearts, would have to admit they aren't quite sure. That has been her pattern. That has been her experience. That has been her record.
How sure could you possibly be that she wouldn't act in what she perceived was her political interest rather than what the moment truly called for? Now, I understand that every politician considers their political interest to some degree (though, to what degree matters a tremendous amount). But that's not the only problem for Senator Clinton. The other problem is that she has calculated her political interest all wrong.
She would be better served to take on the Republicans on the idea of what is truly a strong foreign policy. For example, when Barack Obama was challenged on his idea that we should meet with foreign leaders we don't like, he did not back down. He didn't accept the current Republican position. He held strong to what we have done in this country from George Washington to Bill Clinton. We meet with our adversaries, we hold to our position and we negotiate from strength. The current Republican position is a radical departure from previous bipartisan foreign policy. You don't bend to that position, you meet it head on. That's strength.
Instead, Hillary Clinton has calculated that being Republican-light in the area of national security is the better approach. She accepts John McCain's position that being hostile to all of our adversaries is the correct path. But then she argues that she won't be quite as hostile. When you accept their position from the beginning of the debate, you have already lost. The frame is the name of the game.
And Senator Clinton has never fully understood or accepted this. She buys into all of the Republican frames and then wonders how they keep losing legislative battles to the most unpopular president of all time. Once you accept that cutting off funding for the war is cutting off funding for the troops then you've already lost the argument before it began.
Since she has never understood this, why would you have any confidence that she would magically change when she becomes president? Why would you have any confidence that the next time we have a crisis she won't take aggressive military option just to show people she is not weak on national security?
That's a chance we can't afford to take.
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Posted April 1, 2008 | 11:33 AM (EST)