About six weeks ago, on “Meet the Press,” the NYT’s David Brooks raised an interesting comparison regarding Hillary Clinton.
“I think she should slow down the campaign, run what Mike Huckabee ran, a dignified campaign, not attacking her opponents, go through North Carolina and then get out. She really has very little opportunity to win.”
Now, Clinton obviously didn’t take Brooks’ advice about running a Huckabee-like campaign to heart, but the comparison still has some merit.
It seems like a long time ago, but throughout February and the first week in March, John McCain had built up an insurmountable lead in the Republican primaries. Mike Huckabee didn’t stand much of a chance, but he stuck around anyway, hitting the trail and making his case. McCain gently urged him to get out of the way, but Huckabee lingered, waiting. He didn’t do anything to undermine McCain or hurt the party, but hesitated before bowing out altogether.
It’s hard to know for sure what Huckabee hoped to accomplish, but I suspect he had two principal motivations: he wanted to demonstrate his skills as a candidate in case McCain would consider him as a running mate, and he wanted to be there just in case an unexpected scandal or event forced McCain from the race. If there were a surprise and McCain had to bow out, Huckabee would be the last one standing.
If Clinton is intent on staying in the race for another month or two, there are worse models for her to consider. In fact, there’s some evidence she may already be warming up to this style of campaigning.
Michael Crowley noted last night, “A few TV commentators have declared that her campaign is effectively dead either way, but that she may carry on for a while — maybe until June 3 — with a purely positive campaign whose last hope is a totally unforced error (a.k.a. “macaca moment”) that brings Obama down. And that, of course, is how Mike Huckabee closed out his own campaign — harmlessly traveling around with barely an ill word for John McCain.”
Would Clinton consider such an approach? Christopher Orr offered this report from a Clinton event in West Virginia:
Well, Hillary Clinton did make one reference to “solutions, not speeches” at the event she just held in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, but apart from that mild, implicit dig, she didn’t cast any stones Barack Obama’s way. Instead, her comments focused mostly on George W. Bush and seven years of poor GOP governance. Will this be the tone of her campaign in the two weeks leading up to the primaries in West Virginia, Oregon, and Kentucky? Who knows. But if you’re rooting for the Democratic race to take on a friendlier, more united character, it strikes me as a promising sign.
Agreed. The principal reasons to end the Democratic campaign are to prevent Dems from tearing each other apart, and to start getting ready for the general election. If Clinton were poised to spend the next several weeks trying to destroy Obama in the hopes the superdelegates would give her the nomination, the scorched-earth approach has the potential to be disastrous.
But if she’s willing to focus her efforts on McCain, Bush, and “seven years of poor GOP governance,” there’s less of a rush.
I’d just add that if Obama’s VP slot is at least somewhere on Clinton’s mind, embracing the Huckabee Option might be an especially good idea, especially if she’s willing to go after McCain and the GOP aggressively. I was chatting with someone not too long ago about possible Obama running mates and my friend noted that, historically, candidates want an aggressive running mate, willing to play the role of an “attack dog.”
If Clinton would consider a spot on the ticket, what better way to audition than to spend the next few (or five) months hammering McCain and the Republicans at every opportunity?