All things being equal, seeing and hearing the top two Democratic presidential hopefuls fight over Iraq policy is far preferable to a debate between the two over race. But given the last few days, it’s only slightly preferable.
We got a very good sense of the Clinton campaign’s basic pitch on Obama’s Iraq position during Hillary Clinton’s appearance on “Meet the Press” yesterday.
“What [Bill Clinton] was talking about was very directly about the story of Senator Obama’s campaign, being premised on a speech he gave in 2002. And that was to his credit. He gave a speech opposing the war in Iraq. He gave a very impassioned speech against it and consistently said that he was against the war, he would vote against the funding for the war. By 2003, that speech was off his Web site. By 2004, he was saying that he didn’t really disagree with the way George Bush was conducting the war.
“And by 2005, ‘6 and ‘7, he was voting for $300 billion in funding for the war. The story of his campaign is really the story of that speech and his opposition to Iraq. I think it is fair to ask questions about, ‘Well, what did you do after the speech was over?’ And when he became a senator, he didn’t go to the floor of the Senate to condemn the war in Iraq for 18 months. He didn’t introduce legislation against the war in Iraq. He voted against timelines and deadlines initially.
“So I think it’s important that we get the contrasts and the comparisons out. I think that’s fair game.”
Clinton was so fond of this assessment that she repeated it, almost word for word, a few minutes later in the same interview, and then the campaign distributed a copy of her remarks to its press list.
The broader dynamic is pretty interesting because it highlights the strengths and weaknesses of both Clinton and Obama.
For her part, Clinton’s strength is that she has a firm command of military affairs, and purports to have more experience on these issues. Her weakness is that, when confronted with the biggest question of her career (whether to support the 2002 AUMF), Clinton made the wrong call. (Twice in yesterday’s “MTP” appearance, Clinton said she had been misled by the Bush White House.)
Obama’s strength, obviously, is the opposite. He got the big question right, in almost prescient terms. His weakness is that he is perceived as less experienced on matters pertaining to the military and foreign affairs.
The trick of it, of course, is that over the last four years, Obama and Clinton have been Senate colleagues, voting largely the same way on Iraq policy. Clinton mentioned that she thinks it’s “important” to “get the contrasts and the comparisons out.” Counter-intuitively, that means focusing our attention on 2002 and 2003 — which would seem to work to Clinton’s detriment, because that’s when her position was at its most mistaken, and Obama was at his strongest.
Now, it’s worth noting that Clinton’s point is largely (but not entirely) right when it comes Obama’s Iraq record. Obama didn’t take office and instantly become the leading opponent of Bush’s war policy. He eventually supported cutting off funding, but it was not his initial position. He eventually unveiled legislation to force the president’s hand, but it took him a couple of years to get there.
But here’s the thing that makes Clinton’s criticism complicated: at every step, Clinton either voted exactly the same way as Obama, or was to his right on the issue. In other words, Clinton is criticizing Obama for casting the same votes she cast.
And why is she doing this? Because, when you really break it down, Clinton’s criticisms have nothing to do with Iraq and everything to do with consistency. It’s seems bizarre, but all of the charges she made on “MTP” about Obama’s position on Iraq had almost nothing do with the merit of Obama’s position on Iraq.
In effect, Clinton seems to be arguing, “If Obama were a better war critic, he wouldn’t have been voting like me the last few years.” The audience isn’t supposed to come away from this thinking Obama’s wrong — by Clinton’s logic, he’s right — but rather, that Obama’s unreliable.
Ezra added:
The issue isn’t the issue — about which Obama was correct — it’s his consistency on the issue. Barack Obama was right on Iraq, and Hillary Clinton was wrong. Obama could have made a couple more speeches, but there really wasn’t much he could do to divert the course of the war as a lone Senator. By contrast, there was very much Hillary Clinton, and her husband, could have done to divert the war — and all it would have taken was exactly what Obama did. A prescient, fiercely oppositional speech during the run-up to the invasion. Nor has Clinton, who routinely promises to end the war once in office, exercised political leadership in the Senate, using either her media power or parliamentary pull to sustain a brave stand against the conflict. Instead, she has spoken of her desire to end it and, in reality, gone along with the cowed, ineffectual approach of the Senate Democrats: Register opposition, vote against bills, eventually pass spending measures that continue the war.
I just don’t see how this becomes a winning issue for the Clinton campaign. Am I missing something?