Bill Clinton is fond of injecting doubt about Barack Obama's ability to weather radical right wing attacks in the general election. After all, his argument goes, Hillary has been completely vetted, and is still standing. Why then, he continues, take the risk of an Obama candidacy?
Obama's victories suggest that Bill Clinton's arguments have not been widely embraced. For one thing Bill Clinton is not exactly the perfect vehicle for delivering that message, having shown himself to be a risk to her campaign by his own misstatements.
The last debate, however, pointed to a risk of a Clinton candidacy even larger than Bill himself. Asked whether she would release her tax returns, Hillary waffled, finally agreeing to do so prior to the nomination, but not before Ohio/Texas primary day. Her excuse: she is too busy on the campaign trail to collect all those documents.
Huh? Her tax returns are already done and submitted to the IRS. She does not have to collect papers. All she need do is leave her accountant a voice mail (about 15 seconds), and have him hit the "send" button on his computer that stores her returns. If she can watch Saturday Night Live and MSNBC (she referred to her having watched them during the debate), then she certainly has 15 seconds to provide her accountant instructions to send out her tax returns.
Then, today, we are told by the campaign that there will be no tax returns released until after she secures the nomination.
Let us agree with Hillary that the American people care about their jobs, their children's education, the Iraq War, healthcare, and other issues that directly impact them, and not candidates' tax returns.
Nonetheless, it is hard to listen to the waffling, and then the redrawn line-in-the-sand, without assuming that there must be some very embarrassing information in those returns that would turn off voters. Why else would she just not release them, and remove doubt?
If this information were minor embarrassments, she would have released the returns months ago when she was still the overwhelming frontrunner, let the news cycle a few days, and then die a death of boredom. It cannot be embarrassment at their wealth or income, because that is obvious -- one does not loan a campaign their last $5 million.
Thus, the Clintons are asking voters -- most immediately in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont -- to take the risk that tax returns that they are keeping secret, seemingly at all costs, do not trip them up miserably in a general election.
Waffle, promise and then withdrawal of that promise... it is not the press, not the Obama campaign, not even the radical rightwing, but the Clinton campaign, in another tactical blunder, that has succeeded in raising the stakes on this matter.
Is Hillary, as she claims, completely vetted? Not, anymore, without release of those tax returns.