Hillary Clinton: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Maybe Clinton is hoping that this much spinning will reverse time, ala Superman? From Clinton campaign strategist, Mark Penn:

Despite the best efforts of her six fellow candidates to trip her up, Senator Clinton stood strong and made her case on critical issues like Iran, Iraq and Social Security. She kept her focus on the real target in this election: Republicans and the Bush Administration. Instead of going after the other Democrats, Hillary made the argument for why change is needed and why she has the strength and experience to lead the Democratic Party in its efforts to make that change happen.

Sadly, Senator Obama caved to the pressure of the pundits and fundraisers who demanded that he go negative and abandoned the “politics of hope” message that sparked so much interest in him early in the campaign. Meanwhile, Senator Edwards doubled down in his effort to become the guy best known for attacking other Democrats. Not to be outdone, the rest of the pack followed suit and piled on in the hope that they’d get some media attention.

Even putting aside the primary risks, which we’re going to get into a bit later, this has an important general election effect should Clinton end up getting nominated: Americans do not like the type of answers she gave. Blaming it on people attacking her (when they were only pointing out the obvious, specifically referring to illegal immigration and the National Archive issue) or calling Tim Russert “unfair” or “unprofessional” (as noted here) are mere excuses, and bad ones at that. All of Russert’s questions very well could have been given on Meet the Press to any candidate of either party and no one would have batted an eye, really.

The impact of this debate is that Clinton is going to lose credibility, especially with the advent of Youtube and cable news (which didn’t really concern Clinton in 92, did they?). I’m not sure denying the mistake or blaming others is going to be a meaningful way to regain credibility.

Obama for his part sent out a campaign memo highlighting the problems Clinton had last night … but completely eliminated any mention of Barack Obama in prompting those questions or responding to the same. It seems slightly calculated to downplay any aggressiveness on his part. We’ll have to see if Obama keeps trying to have it both ways, or if it was just an isolated memo. Because the other candidates are not going to let Obama get away with washing his hands of any controversy (nor should they).