tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1 2008-10-13T16:24:49Z Movable Type 3.35 tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.7 2008-10-10T20:55:14Z 2008-10-13T16:24:49Z

This commentary has appeared on AC360/CNN.COM, Huffington Post, and Real Clear Politics. By Carl Bernstein In one of our many conversations as we crisscrossed the country during his campaign for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, John McCain said to me, "I've always tried to act on what I thought was the best for the country. And that has guided me.... The only thing I can do is assure people that I would act on principle." I traveled with McCain for weeks that political season, stayed in Arkansas with him, Cindy, and their children, and - for a Vanity Fair cover profile -- filled dozens of notebooks and tapes with observations from and about a potentially heroic politician who seems far removed from the man running for president today.

Vanity Fair cover profile -- filled dozens of notebooks and tapes with observations from and about a potentially heroic politician who seems far removed from the man running for president today. Three weeks after the 2008 Republican convention, on the cusp (maybe) of the first presidential debate, it is time to confront an awkward but profound question: whether in picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has committed -- by his own professed standards of duty and honor -- a singularly unpatriotic act. "I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war," he has said throughout this campaign. Yet, in choosing Palin, he has demonstrated -- whatever his words -- it may be permissible to imperil the country, conceivably even to "lose" it, in order to win the presidency. That would seem the deeper meaning of his choice of Palin. Indeed, no presidential nominee of either party in the last century has seemed so willing to endanger the country's security as McCain in his reckless choice of a running mate. He is 72 years old; has had four melanomas, a particularly voracious form of cancer; refuses to release his complete medical records. Three of our last eleven presidents (and nine of all 43) have come to office unexpectedly in mid-term from the vice presidency: Truman, who within days of FDR's death was confronted with the decision of whether to drop the atom bomb on Japan; Lyndon Johnson, who took the oath in Dallas after JFK's assassination; Gerald Ford, sworn in following the resignation of Richard Nixon. A fourth vice president, George H.W. Bush, briefly exercised the powers of the presidency after the near-assassination of Ronald Reagan. Given that history, what does John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin -- the cavalier, last-minute process of her selection and careless vetting; and her over-briefed, fact-lite performance since -- reveal about this military man who has attested to us for years that he is guided by his personal code of honor? "Two things I will never do," McCain told me, "are [to] lie to the American people, or put my electoral interests before the national interest" -- an obvious precursor of "I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war." McCain, I wrote for Vanity Fair, "often speaks of the duty to follow his conscience in politics, rather than polls or party discipline. This, he says, comes from having escaped death and becoming 'more aware of the transience of everything we do.'" "I've always had a pretty good idea about how to define something as to whether it's right or wrong," he told me. "I don't mean that I'm better or worse than anybody else. I just mean that when I see an issue and think about it and talk to people, I do generally have the ability to know what's the right course of action, even if it may not be what the majority wants. So I have a certain amount of confidence that I don't have to have a majority opinion on my side." It does not take a near-death experience to know that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be commander in chief, or that -- in choosing her -- McCain has ignored his own oft-avowed code of conduct. "McCain made the most important command decision of his life when he chose Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee," noted David Ignatius in the Washington Post. "....No promotion board in history would have made such a decision." -------- Above all, the John McCain I covered in 1999-2000 was -- he said -- convinced that two factors were undermining the interests of the United States: its cultural wars, causing political gridlock in Washington and civic discontent across the land; and the unbending agenda of the right-wing of the Republican party that, in his view, had been captured by the Christian conservative movement and bore disproportionate responsibility for the poisonous state of American politics. Exhibit One: the scorched-earth campaign that George W. Bush was then waging against McCain's insurgent run for the Republican presidential nomination. Yet, McCain, is, in fact, running the kind of campaign against Barack Obama that George Bush ran against him in 2000, which he regarded rightly as dishonest, dishonorable and diversionary in terms of the truth about him and about the nation's problems. The conservative commentator George Will has been especially incisive of late about the "dismaying," "un-presidential temperament" of McCain and the sleazy tenor of his campaign. Karl Rove (!) has responded to the incessant lying of McCain's ads (one claims falsely that Obama has promoted "comprehensive" sex education for five-year-olds -- he had, in fact, endorsed legislation to insure that kindergartners were warned about sexual predators), by saying, yes, the McCain camp's mendacity has "gone one step too far." Meanwhile, McCain's frequent invocations of the need for bi-partisan statesmanship are interspersed with the angry themes of cultural warfare and of the Republican convention orchestrated by his handlers, the most dominant of them practitioners from the campaigns of George W. Bush: attacks on "tax-and-spend Democrats," on the dependable liberal bogeyman, on "the angry Left," on Constitution-rewriting federal judges (including, incongruously, three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold McCain's singular legislative achievement: the campaign-finance act he authored with Democrat Russ Feingold). "If hypocrisy were gold, the Capitol would be Fort Knox," McCain once famously said. "Some of those guys," he said, referring to his fellow senators, "have they even had lives? What have they done?" He added, "Aw, jeez, this is exactly the kind of thing that gets me into trouble." Indeed. McCain's first choices to be his running mate were former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and Senator Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-Independent from Connecticut, and former vice presidential nominee of his former party. Neither passed the ideological litmus test of the Republican-Right -- "The Base" -- because each holds pro-choice views. Certainly both are qualified to step into the presidency in terms of national security credentials -- regardless of whether one agrees with their particular politics -- in the event of the death of the president. McCain's "Hail Mary" pick -- Palin -- was hastily decided on the next-to-last day of the Democratic convention, by which time it was evident that Obama's convention was winning over independent voters; all that remained was the final night and the opportunity for Obama to deliver a speech that would further work to his advantage, and debilitate the McCain campaign. Only by exciting "The Base" could McCain remain competitive and win, it was calculated. The distance from McCain's ads and assertions about his presidential opponent and Democrats generally, and his decision to run a "persona-based" campaign, as opposed to being specific on the issues, is of a piece with his choice of Palin to be his running mate. As another conservative commentator sometimes critical of McCain -- Peggy Noonan -- has noted, the "narrative" of a life [McCain's, Palin's], takes over from existential political fact in the type of campaign run by McCain and his handlers. We have heard an awful lot in the past few weeks, especially from Sarah Palin, about John McCain "The Maverick," just as we did in the convention narrative. But what McCain has actually been doing in this campaign, rather than actually being The Maverick, is conveying the appearance of iconoclasm, and playing to the crowd. (Hence, perhaps, "suspending" his campaign -- and trying to postpone the first presidential debate while his poll numbers are sinking -- to deal with the financial crisis?) At this point, the maverick claim seems no more genuine than Sarah Palin's charade foreign-policy tour of Manhattan with no witnesses -- reporters -- permitted to observe the proceedings. The issue of Palin's relative ignorance about international affairs and the larger world beyond America's shores (compared to previous vice presidential nominees), her attendant arrogance in seeming to revel in it, and McCain's decision to subject the country to it in choosing a possible president -- is the biggest question in this election, or perhaps ought to be. It goes to the core of who the John McCain of this campaign is. Another conservative commentator, David Brooks, wrote last week: "Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness." The more we learn, the more we realize the vetting process was -- given the rush of the circumstances -- hopelessly inadequate: McCain didn't know many aspects of Palin's record or her reputation (none of which is to say she wouldn't be a congenial fit as, say, Secretary of Interior in a McCain administration). McCain's first choices for a running mate -- Ridge and Lieberman -- were light years ahead of Palin in the vice presidential-qualification department. But they didn't meet the ideological test, exactly the ideological litmus test that McCain has attacked his whole political career and told us he would never succumb to. John McCain is a serious man, as anyone who has spent time with him knows. But he has not run the kind of serious campaign he once promised. Not for the first time, as many of his fellow Republicans (as opposed to friendly reporters and sympathetic Democrats) had long maintained, McCain's more reckless inclinations and lesser impulses prevailed. A great political movement that would transcend rabid partisanship and hard ideology does not seem in the cards. And if he wins the election, Sarah Palin -- who in her first post-convention discussion of foreign policy indicated a willingness to go to war with Russia over Georgia -- stands a heartbeat away from the presidency. Ultimately it is the choice of Palin, made in the moment when action speaks loudest, that may undermine a quarter-century of assertions by John McCain about the preeminence of duty, honor and country in his political schema. ]]> tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.18 2008-10-09T18:06:04Z 2008-10-14T18:09:28Z

Does John McCain "pal around with terrorists?" Certainly McCain's continuing "association" and relationship with the convicted Watergate burglar and domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy might suggest that is the case, if we are to apply the standards drawn by the McCain campaign.

This commentary first appeared on Huffington Post, October 13, 2008. By Carl Bernstein Does John McCain "pal around with terrorists?" Certainly McCain's continuing "association" and relationship with the convicted Watergate burglar and domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy might suggest that is the case, if we are to apply the standards drawn by the McCain campaign. In 1998, Liddy gave a fundraiser in his Scottsdale, Arizona home for McCain's senatorial re-election campaign -- the two posed for photographs together; and as recently as May, 2007, as a presidential candidate, McCain was a guest on Liddy's syndicated radio show. Inexplicably, McCain heaped praise on his host's values. During the segment, McCain said he was "proud" of Liddy, and praised Liddy's "adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." From the program: LIDDY: Your experience in the Hanoi Hilton is remarkable. I mean, I put in five years in a prison [for masterminding the Watergate burglary, and associated crimes], but it was here in the United States, and they didn't torture - the only torture that I had was being forced to listen to rap music from time to time. McCAIN: Well, you know, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of your family. I'm proud to know your son, Tom, who's a great and wonderful guy. And it's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon. And congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great. Which of Liddy's "principles and philosophies" was McCain referring to? Liddy's advocacy of break-ins? Firebombings? Assassinations? Kidnappings? Taking target practice with figures nicknamed Bill and Hillary? During the same period that Bill Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, Gordon Liddy was making plans to firebomb a Washington think tank, assassinate a prominent journalist, undertake the Watergate burglary, break into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, and kidnap anti-war protesters at the 1972 Republican convention. Re: Liddy's "continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great:" Did McCain mean to include Liddy's instructions to listeners of his radio show in 1994 (around the time Ayres and Obama were on a board together discussing education programs and other plots) on how to shoot Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents (aim for the head)? If ATF agents attempt to curtail a citizen's gun ownership, Liddy counseled, "Well, if the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests." More recently, Liddy explained making the Clintons objects of shooting practice: "I did relate that on the 4th of July of last year, when I and my family and some friends were out firing away at a properly-constructed rifle range and we ran out of targets, and so we - I drew some stick figure targets and I thought we ought to give them names. So I named them Bill and Hillary, thought it might improve my aim. It didn't. My aim is good anyway. Now, having said that, I accept no responsibility for somebody shooting up the White House." The Liddy-McCain symbiosis has been mentioned in a number of posts on the Internet - mostly by bloggers and sites identified with The Left. But the documentation of their interaction (Liddy has also contributed financially to McCain's presidential campaign) is not a matter of Left or Right: It is astonishing that, given the prominence of the Ayers matter accorded by virtually every "mainstream" news outlet in America, there has been virtually nothing on the subject in the major newspapers and broadcast networks. This is a real journalistic failure and abrogation of responsibility. Is Liddy any less a domestic terrorist than Bill Ayers? It is a zero-sum argument, for sure. I do not believe, incidentally, that John McCain shares the most abhorrent of Liddy's values, as expressed in Liddy's actions during the same period that Ayers was a Weatherman - and which Liddy continues to express, unapologetically, to this day. But McCain has now become so unmoored from the principles he once espoused, so shameless in his courtship not only of the Republican "base" but in his eagerness to unleash a poisonous arsenal of character assassination and guilt-by-association - and plain-and-simple incitement of people's fears and prejudices - that, now, inevitably his and Sara Palin's rallies and campaign events have taken on the aura of mobs at times. "Kill him," a man in the crowd responded last week, when Palin declared -yet again - "He's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." In Virginia, the State Republican chairman announced a set of talking points to campaign volunteers - stressing the incendiary connection, reported Time magazine, between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon. That is scary," the Republican chairman said. The most recent McCain ad on the subject shouts, "Obama worked with terrorist William Ayers when it was convenient" - perhaps suggesting, indeed, even that the candidate was there planting bombs. The intended message of the McCain campaign is, of course, that Obama is less than patriotic - enunciated even by the candidate's wife, Cindy: "The day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body," she recently told a crowd of several thousand, which also heard her husband and Palin sound similar notes. (The chairman of the Lehigh, Pa., County Republican Party, William Platt, "implored the crowd to work hard to elect McCain or wake up November 5 to see 'Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama,' as the president," reported The Washington Post.) Like Cindy McCain, the campaign's "Ad Facts" also trumpet - misleadingly - the only troop-funding bill that Obama voted against, in 2007 - without noting that Obama first voted for the bill, in a version that included a timetable for withdrawal. Nor did Cindy McCain mention that her husband, too, voted against the troop-funding bill - in the version that contained withdrawal language. Thus has John McCain embarked on a scorched-earth death struggle for the presidency - cultural warfare that knows no bounds, exceeding perhaps even the mendacity and ferocity of the campaign waged against him by George Bush in 2000, and of which McCain once said there was "a special place in hell" for the Bush operatives who smeared him. (McCain also said of the Swift-boat attacks against John Kerry by Republicans in 2004: "I deplore this kind of politics. I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable.") The lethal weapon of the McCain campaign's dreams is the explosive allegation that, in Palin's words - Obama "pals around with terrorists." McCain, wisely, did not raise the matter himself in the last presidential debate. Why? At the time, much of the commentariat attributed the omission to McCain's purported concerns that Obama would respond by reciting the history of McCain's "association" with the S&L swindler Charles Keating, for which McCain was cited by the Senate Ethics Committee early in his career, for exercising "poor judgment" for intervening improperly with federal regulators on behalf of Keating, as part of the infamous Keating Five scandal. But the more likely explanation of why McCain avoided a debate confrontation about "palling around with terrorists" is McCain's very real - and recent - symbiotic association and praise for another (not Ayers) domestic terrorist emblematic of the Vietnam era: G. Gordon Liddy. tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.9 2008-10-03T22:23:00Z 2008-10-10T23:17:58Z

This commentary first appeared on AC 360/CNN.COM, October 3, 2008. By Carl Bernstein Who won the Palin-Biden debate? Barack Obama, I suspect. Who was the big loser? In an historic fortnight that had already underscored his erratic nature, John McCain. The fact that Palin was able to string her sentences together last night – which she couldn’t manage to do in her unscripted interviews with Katie Couric — shows only how low McCain has strapped his presidential quest.

This commentary first appeared on AC 360/CNN.COM on October 3, 2008. By Carl Bernstein Who won the Palin-Biden debate? Barack Obama, I suspect. Who was the big loser? In an historic fortnight that had already underscored his erratic nature, John McCain. The fact that Palin was able to string her sentences together last night – which she couldn’t manage to do in her unscripted interviews with Katie Couric — shows only how low McCain has strapped his presidential quest. Sarah Palin’s task was an impossible one: to demonstrate that she is ready to be president of the United States. McCain put her in that impossible position; and her performance — all prep and no depth — demonstrated the bind he has put himself in. Yes, he “energized the base” with his Hail Mary pick of Palin as a running mate. But he also demonstrated cynical disregard for the requirement of stable governance were he to be elected president, and then — through his incapacitation or death — Palin be called upon to exercise the powers of the presidency. Just how scary a notion that is went on full display last night: She appeared to lack any semblance of the requisite depth, knowledge, or sense of history we should expect in a president or vice president; then she sought to excuse it by saying, “I’ve only been at this for five weeks.” Yes, she could wink, she could tell Biden, “Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again,” and she could remind us again and again that she is a hockey Mom from the land of Joe-Six-pack (as if Western Republicans don’t swill Pinot Grigio with the rest of the country at their fund-raisers). She seemed incapable of thinking through the American condition and responding to it except by scripted answers, theatrical gestures, and tested buzzwords — and by announcing at the outset that she would decide which questions from the moderator to answer and which to ignore. Yet Biden’s performance (deeply knowledgeable, sensible, and generally responsive to the questions) was perhaps the best evidence that — considered non-ideologically, but rather on judgment and temperament — Obama may be ready to be president, and McCain — who ought to be ready — is not. Time after time, Biden had to tell Palin what John McCain’s real record is — as instance after instance — she misrepresented it (or misunderstood the legislative process), repeated easy slogans and bromides and, for the most part perhaps, offended the intelligence of voters who are not already die-hard, ideological proponents of right-wing Republicanism, creationism, or simplistic solutions to tough problems. “Maverick,” “Maverick,” “Maverick,” she kept repeating about John McCain and herself. Perhaps Biden’s best moment in the best night of his career as a candidate (and I have heard him at his awful worst — i.e., being his own worst enemy) came when he challenged McCain’s constant claim to the Maverick title. The tactical and intellectual deficiencies of the McCain campaign have been best analyzed by conservative and Republican commentators, and even politicians. George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Peggy Noonan, Chuck Hagel, come quickly to mind. (Hence, Krauthammer, following last night’s debate: “You can’t blame McCain. In an election in which all the fundamentals are working for the opposition, he feels he has to keep throwing long in order to keep hope alive. Nonetheless, his frenetic improvisation has perversely [for him] framed the rookie challenger favorably as calm, steady and cool.”) As a former White House (Republican) chief of staff said to me, “Palin is evidence of desperation; she is an embarrassment.” That is the bottom line. (I generally check in with Republicans — not Democrats — to assess how the McCain campaign is doing.) He noted, “She wasn’t vetted, really; it’s an open secret in Washington, but the details of the negligence are better known to Republicans than Democrats.” That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a future in the Republican galaxy, lacks star power, or couldn’t be a fine Secretary of the Interior in a McCain administration. It’s too bad. Earlier in his career, until the presidency finally seemed within his grasp, McCain had demonstrated a real willingness to seriously and thoughtfully take on both his party and the Washington establishment when he thought they were wrong — albeit mostly on one issue: pork, an issue he has been heroic on. But his real opportunity to show independence of his party’s reigning dogma and cultural-warrior-infantry was in his choice of a vice presidential running mate. Instead, McCain, who has lectured us about duty, honor, country first, has left many independent-minded voters who might want to vote for him at an impossible, dangerous impasse: an unprepared vice presidential candidate running on a ticket with the oldest presidential nominee in history — a 72-year-old with four cancer surgeries and medical records he has ordered sealed. Conventional wisdom has almost always held (JFK-LBJ being a notable exception) that a presidential nominee’s choice of vice president makes no difference in the outcome of the election. This time it is likely to be determinate, because it tells us so much not only about Sarah Palin, but also John McCain’s state of mind today, and the promise that his political career once held and now appears to have been left behind. tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.10 2008-08-27T22:42:04Z 2008-10-10T23:18:22Z

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on August 28, 2008 By Carl Bernstein By Carl Bernstein Barack Obama is getting the convention he wants, under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. The convention he is building reflects him and his priorities: it’s thoughtful, not just red-meat; and he’s in surprising control of the message, given the forces he’s dealing with. Indeed, the convention-building and the message may be far more sophisticated and effective than we instant commentators were prepared to discern. Witness the opening night grousing on-air about the convention’s supposed thematic absence, and aversion to instant butchery of the opposition.

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on August 28, 2008 By Carl Bernstein Barack Obama is getting the convention he wants, under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. The convention he is building reflects him and his priorities: it’s thoughtful, not just red-meat; and he’s in surprising control of the message, given the forces he’s dealing with. Indeed, the convention-building and the message may be far more sophisticated and effective than we instant commentators were prepared to discern. Witness the opening night grousing on-air about the convention’s supposed thematic absence, and aversion to instant butchery of the opposition. Task Number One for Obama: Defining himself as a person, not just a politician: telling his story and that of Michelle Obama and their family. An American story, meant to definitively undermine the oppo-narrative of the Clinton campaign, and now the Republican oppo-narrative – that he is some kind of vaguely alien, exotic candidate. (For some undecided voters, that also means uncomfortably black). Michelle Obama – as well as the team that produced her bio-pic – delivered with perfect pitch on Night One. This was the real opening business of the convention, the essential themes to get right. As well as to establish an umbilical connection between Obama and the greatest of Democratic traditions and immutable principles… a generational passing of the torch that Caroline and Ted Kennedy declared unmistakably – and emotionally – had now moved past the Clintons. It would be hard to underestimate how personally difficult the defection of the Kennedys has been for Hillary and Bill Clinton: consider how, as an adolescent, Bill idolized JFK, emulated him as a politician; that JFK Jr. was among the first contributors to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign; and that Caroline’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy, formed a close friendship with Hillary (in private, they shared a wicked sense of humor), and told friends that, of all her successors as First Lady, she was most fond of Hillary Clinton. Caroline and Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama on January 28 was a critical blow to Hillary’s campaign). Task Number Two: Defining Obama’s Politics: Anyone who has talked to Obama knows he genuinely believes in ending the cultural wars that have poisoned the politics of past generation; and, whether you agree with his solutions or not, he has given great thought to the condition and state of America—its problems, its strengths, and how to initiate a tectonic (and generational) change in political direction. What he has not done, say even many of his allies, is get very specific during the campaign about programs, numbers, legislation. (See Task 4.) Mark Warner’s keynote speech was on a plane not usually in evidence at conventions: subtle, powerful, inspirational, cerebral, practical – and as convincing a case as can be made for the underpinnings of Obama’s politics and a post-Bush, post-Clinton, post-partisan agenda. He made the connection between the man and his politics. Substantively, there were reminders of how thoughtful, humane, and forward-looking Bill Clinton’s politics looked some 15 years ago. Task Number Three, a Houdiniesque Proposition: Easing the Clintons off center stage (inevitably, still kicking) and into the kind of major supporting roles in the Obama campaign that capture all the unique Clintonian star power, and even compels Hillary and Bill Clinton to help Barack Obama win the presidency. This Houdiniesque proposition recognizes that the Clintons, campaigning for Obama in the right places, and pushing the right political and media buttons, can deliver as no other Democrats in America. And that it is in their interests to do so, thus rescuing Bill Clinton’s damaged legacy from a brutal primary season’s beating (and his own self-destructive instincts); and even further enhancing Hillary’s stature as a leader in the party and the nation — without further threatening Obama. Hillary’s speech last night was the crucial first step: a huge stride toward uniting her genuine movement of women and blue-collar workers with Obama’s formidable new Democratic movement that almost couldn’t close the deal by the end of the primary-caucus season. If she and Obama can fuse those two movements in Denver without a divisive struggle on the convention floor (as seems likely), Obama is a lot closer to being able to win the presidency than he was a week ago. And already, Hillary has delivered for him, big-time – despite some carping that she didn’t go far enough. Now, look for both Clintons to begin campaigning in critical battleground states as early next week. And for Bill Clinton to deliver a powerful speech on Obama’s behalf tonight, throwing the hall into predictably pandemonious excess (as did Hillary), leaving no doubt among Democrats of all persuasions that John McCain and Bush-Republican policies are a totally unacceptable alternative to Barack Obama. A footnote to the ongoing Clintonian psychodrama that, as usual and quite reasonably, has mesmerized the media and continues to hang over the political landscape in Denver and beyond: First, the essential dynamic: that the Clintons do not like Obama, hate how he systematically went about burying their attempt at a Clintonian restoration to the presidency; and they have never found it easy to be gracious in defeat. The final, gratuitously vicious wound (in their view) was Obama’s decision not to make Hillary his vice presidential nominee. Fact: Once the “Atlantic Monthly Memos” were published — with Mark Penn’s overt strategy of smearing Barack Obama as coming from an “unAmerican” background — there was virtually no chance Hillary would have been acceptable to Obama or his wife. The only possibility, say his aides: if it were indelibly clear that he could not win the presidency without putting her on the ticket. Obama and his small cadre of top aides were convinced there is a far better way, without the oxygen-consuming formula of Hillary-as-Veep now on display at the convention: Put the Clintons to work for the Obama-Biden ticket, getting them to fly the Democratic flag against John McCain, and — based on Obama’s real respect for them both and their singular accomplishments – giving them outsized roles in national life during an Obama administration. Meanwhile, the Clintons — as if to underscore the personal (as differentiated from simply political) chasm between Obama and themselves — let it be known that Mark Penn had a hand in drafting both their convention speeches. Task Number Four: Delivering — beyond the Obama aura and the oratory — with specifics: His speech on the last night of the convention. It is instructive to watch Obama’s remarkable speech to the 2004 Democratic convention: he must do it one better in 2008, laying out a vision for the country under his leadership that is specific enough (his top aides seem to agree) to put an end to the Clinton-McCain refrain that he’s all about oratory. He — and others, including Joe Biden tonight — will be addressing the supposed commander-in-chief gap and the “3 a.m.” assertions that he’s not ready to lead. Look for a passel of generals to be on-stage with Obama in the stadium tomorrow night. ——– Obama beat the toughest Democratic machine of modern times, and a candidate considered by the media, the pollsters and most of the political class to be the Democrats’ inevitable nominee. He did it by staying on message; out-organizing the Clinton campaign in state after state; harnessing the power of a new generation of voters; and utilizing a set of tools (particularly the Internet) that his opponents vastly underestimated. The most consistent aspect of the Obama campaign from the beginning has been its discipline, and the nominee’s control of his own message and apparat. Thus far, the Denver convention seems to be on that same track. tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.11 2008-08-25T22:46:12Z 2008-10-10T23:18:49Z

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on August 25, 2008 By Carl Bernstein A few observations as the convention is about to convene: This is Barack Obama’s convention. It will have his stamp on it, including ushering the Clintons off center-stage and into supporting roles-however reluctantly. It is also a Democratic Party convention, with threads of history and some immutable principles since the 1960s-especially regarding civil rights, women’s rights, and a certain perspective on economic issues. The Clintons are (whatever their shortcomings) a big part of that story, especially the successful parts: Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to be elected twice to the presidency since FDR.

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on August 25, 2008 By Carl Bernstein A few observations as the convention is about to convene: This is Barack Obama’s convention. It will have his stamp on it, including ushering the Clintons off center-stage and into supporting roles-however reluctantly. It is also a Democratic Party convention, with threads of history and some immutable principles since the 1960s-especially regarding civil rights, women’s rights, and a certain perspective on economic issues. The Clintons are (whatever their shortcomings) a big part of that story, especially the successful parts: Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to be elected twice to the presidency since FDR. The Clintons-like Ted Kennedy, who will be powerfully present tonight-do not want to see the presidency turned over to John McCain or four more years of Republican policies: remember, they have spent their adult lives fighting against the Republican Right….even to the extent of Hillary Clinton labeling it “the vast right-wing conspiracy.” We journalists, especially on television in the past few days, have placed far too much emphasis on recent polls, a notable example being trying to divine the effect of Joe Biden’s addition to the ticket within hours of his being named. This is silly. The presidency will be won in the electoral college, something very different than national polls about the popular vote. Polls can be good snapshots, useful tools-but, as Mark Penn and Hillary Clinton learned, they can be far off-course. Barack Obama confounded almost every poll to defeat Hillary Clinton-and concentrated on superior organization, the consistency of his message (sometimes perhaps vague in terms of what he would specifically do as president), and remarkable discipline. Most Republican professionals I have talked to believe he has a large organizational advantage in the states he must win to become president. Bill Clinton-not Hillary-has been the big loser in this election thus far; his legacy was tarnished by his conduct during the campaign, and he knows he must give a great speech for Barack Obama at this convention to regain much of the respect he lost even among Democrats who had all but worshipped him. Hillary Clinton’s acolytes—with a certain percentage excepted—are unlikely to move in droves to a McCain-Republican, pro-life conservative message, no matter how disaffected they might feel as a result of the bruising primaries and caucuses. Barack Obama’s principal campaign aides are, in private, forthright in their recognition that their candidate—and Michelle Obama—must raise their “comfort level” with many American voters. The convention, they say, from beginning to end, is intended to do just that, culminating in Obama’s last-evening acceptance speech, in which he will (they say) be more specific than in the past about his plans for the presidency. Race is a big part of this story, and perhaps the biggest unknown factor. We who are covering the campaign shouldn’t shy away from the subject, even if the two candidates (at least in their words) stay away from it. Perhaps we reporters need to let this convention happen in real time, with a little less speculation on our part, and more reporting. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be analyzing and challenging and interpreting even doing some informed speculation. But there is going to be a hell of a story unfolding before our eyes this week, and we oughtn’t divert our eyes and ears too much from it, and in the process focus on a heap of ephemera. tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.12 2008-06-04T22:53:21Z 2008-10-10T23:19:23Z

This commentary appeared on AC360/CNN.COM published June 4, 2008 By Carl Bernstein Senator Hillary Clinton personally assured Barack Obama today that she recognizes he has won the Democratic nomination for president, and that “I’m prepared to help in any way I can,” according to a person familiar with their conversation. Though she would prefer to be on his ticket as the vice presidential nominee, said this person, Senator Clinton has said her only requirement as the campaign goes forward is that “she be a player in the whole process. She doesn’t necessarily want to leave the Senate, but she does want to be sure that key people from her campaign will have a role in Obama’s presidential campaign and—if he wins the presidency—his administration.”

This commentary appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on June 4, 2008 By Carl Bernstein Senator Hillary Clinton personally assured Barack Obama today that she recognizes he has won the Democratic nomination for president, and that “I’m prepared to help in any way I can,” according to a person familiar with their conversation. Though she would prefer to be on his ticket as the vice presidential nominee, said this person, Senator Clinton has said her only requirement as the campaign goes forward is that “she be a player in the whole process. She doesn’t necessarily want to leave the Senate, but she does want to be sure that key people from her campaign will have a role in Obama’s presidential campaign and—if he wins the presidency—his administration.” “Yes, it is somewhat a power play for vice president,” said this person, a Clinton supporter in Washington with whom she sometimes counsels on important matters. “But being on the ticket is not a requirement” for her unqualified help, especially in convincing her supporters to embrace Obama’s candidacy. “Her speech [Tuesday night] was about being a player and making sure she was a player.” However, as late as three this morning, said a source in touch with the highest levels of her campaign, Senator Clinton still believed it remained remotely possible she might become the eventual nomineee of the party, and was determined not to concede to Obama imminently. Her thinking, said this source, remained focused on the idea that some piece of negative information about Obama might surface, or that some of the superdelegates might be somehow swayed after reconsidering that she was the more electable candidate, after some days of reflection and polling. “It’s crazy. Her head is not there yet, to the point where she is willing to accept that she’s not going to be the nominee,” said one of her major supporters this morning, based on knowledge of conversations Tuesday night between Senator Clinton and her seniormost advisors. Apparently one of the things that changed her mind was the obviously negative reaction of some of her most important backers—-including members of Congress–to her failure to acknowledge Obama as the nominee in her speech to supporters, after Obama had definitively secured the number of delegates necessary to be the nominee. As the critical response, especially from supporters who had never before wavered, threatened to reach a crescendo-—and it became evident that her chances of becoming the vice presiential nominee were being adversely affected by the reaction—-she went out of her way to assure Obama personally that she recognized his victory, would give him her complete support, and try to bring along her own acolytes skeptical of his candidacy, and would do so rapidly. Her effusive praise of Obama before the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee today was partly intended to assure him of the kind of support she intends to put forward—and demonstrate credibility with certain constitutencies she hopes will lead Obama to choose her as his running mate. “I think she’ll be a total activist. Within a very short period of time you’ll see a very united deal,” said a member of her senior-support network. Apparently, that will occur Saturday, according to a statement from the Clinton campaign. Meanwhile, her representatives have begun talking with senior Obama advisors about ways that he can help her pay off more than $10 million in campaign debt, through his partcipation in fund-raising efforts on her behalf between now and September, according to a knowledgeable source. September is the legal deadline for retiring certain forms of campaign debt under Federal law. In terms of her vice-presidential aspirations, which Bill Clinton has been pushing privatey as an alternative if she failed in her bid for the presidency, Senator Clinton is said by her closest supporters to be genuinely convinced that Obama will have a very difficult time winning the presidency without her on the ticket, and that she is intent on demonsrating over the coming weeks her indispensibility to his cause. “He (Obama) has a real problem with the Jewish vote, with white women over fifty, and a Catholic problem,” said one of Senator Clinton’s backers. “She can do a lot for him with those groups.” It will be a very difficult sell, according to Obama’s senior advisors, many of whom have come to despise—the word is not too strong–the Clintons with the same degree of contempt that the Clintons have, in private and not-so-private, exhibited toward Obama. However, Senator Obama is said by some of these same senior advisors not to be nearly so disdainful of Senator Clinton as some on his staff, but he has been deeply angered at the conduct of aspects of her campaign and the words of both Bill and Hillary Clinton. tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.13 2008-05-11T22:58:18Z 2008-10-10T23:20:02Z

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on May 11, 2008. By Carl Bernstein Friends and close associates of both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are now convinced that, assuming she loses the race for the presidential nomination, she is probably going to fight to be the vice presidential nominee on an Obama-for-president ticket. Clinton "is trying to figure out how to land the plane without looking like surrender," a prominent figure in the Obama camp said Friday. This means, in all likelihood, bringing her campaign to a close in the next few weeks and trying to leverage her way onto an Obama ticket from a position of maximum strength, said several knowledgeable sources.

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on May 11, 2008. By Carl Bernstein Friends and close associates of both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are now convinced that, assuming she loses the race for the presidential nomination, she is probably going to fight to be the vice presidential nominee on an Obama-for-president ticket. Clinton "is trying to figure out how to land the plane without looking like surrender," a prominent figure in the Obama camp said Friday. This means, in all likelihood, bringing her campaign to a close in the next few weeks and trying to leverage her way onto an Obama ticket from a position of maximum strength, said several knowledgeable sources. A person close to her, with whom her campaign staff has counseled at various points, said this week, "I think the following will happen: Obama will be in a position where the party declares him the nominee by the first week in June. She'll still be fighting with everybody -- the Rules Committee, the party leaders -- and arguing, 'I'm winning these key states; I've got almost half the delegates. I have a whole constituency he hasn't reached. I've got real differences on approach to how we win this election, and I'm going to press the hell out of this guy. ... Relief for the middle class, universal health care, etc.; I'm Ms. Blue Collar, and I'm going to press my fight, because he can't win without my being on the ticket.' " Another major Democratic Party figure, who supports her for president, agreed: "It's not going to be a quiet exit. ... Obama has got a terrible situation. He marches to a different drummer. He won't want to take her on the ticket. But he might have to, even though the idea of Vice President Hillary with Bill in the background at the White House is not something -- especially after what [the Clintons] have thrown at him that he relishes. I believe she'll go for it." However, several important Democrats aligned with Obama predicted that he -- and Michelle Obama -- will vigorously resist any Clinton effort to get on the ticket. Rather, Obama is more likely to try to convince Clinton to either stay in the Senate or accept another position in an Obama administration, should he win the presidency. Several Clinton associates say there is still a ray of hope among some in her campaign: that a "catastrophic" revelation about Obama might make it possible for her to win the presidential nomination. But barring that, Hillary and Bill Clinton recognize that her candidacy is being abandoned and rejected by superdelegates whom she once expected to win over and that, even if she were to win the popular vote in combined primary states, she will almost certainly be denied the nomination. In theory, the landing of Campaign Clinton by the end of the primaries -- in early June at the latest, without the prospect of a convention struggle -- would be good news from Obama's point of view and even from the perspective of close Clinton friends and associates who revere their candidate and worry about the legacy of Hillary and Bill Clinton. However, from the perspective of both campaign camps, there is serious concern about the kind of landing she's aiming for and the precarious task of bringing her plane down, especially if she decides to seek the vice presidential nomination. There could be a number of different landings: • Smooth and skillful, doing the Obama candidacy no further damage and perhaps restoring to relative health the legacy of and regard for Bill and Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party. • Explosive, setting down after the enemy has been carpet-bombed (an "October surprise in May"), something the Obama campaign believes may be less and less likely to come from his Democratic opponent because of the dangers to the party and the Clintons' reputation. Yet the Clinton campaign's search for damaging information and its hope that such information exists continues, according to knowledgeable sources. Strategist Harold Ickes, her premier tactical counselor, warned on the eve of the North Carolina and Indiana that Obama could be vulnerable to an "October surprise" by the McCain campaign. • Missing the runway and destroying the Democratic village, as even her advocates outside her immediate campaign apparat fear could happen if the Clinton campaign continues to pursue a harshly negative course. • Just bumpy and scary enough to shake the Obama campaign one last time and get her into the hangar as the vice presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket. Increasingly, this is what people in Obama's corner and those who know her well are becoming convinced she will try to do. Part of this assumption is based on her determination to roll up the biggest numbers possible in West Virginia and Kentucky, and Bill Clinton's argument that she may still win a majority of popular votes in non-caucus states. Meanwhile, some of the Clintons' longtime friends and political counselors are intent on trying to talk her down calmly -- something almost like a family intervention -- to get her to concede the Democratic presidential race when the appropriate time comes, in such a way as to heal some of the wounds to the party and to both candidates but allow her to make her best case for the vice presidency. Almost no one I have spoken to who knows her well doubts that, as she reconciles to the likelihood that her presidential campaign will fall short, she will probably seek the vice presidential spot. One reason: Contrary to common belief, she doesn't look forward to going back to the Senate, they say. Many Democratic senators believe that she would not have an easy time winning an election for majority leader; the tenor and tactics of her presidential campaign have alienated some of her Democratic colleagues in the Senate. Far more than as one of 100 senators, she could accomplish much of her lifelong social and political agenda as vice president and, if Obama is not elected, could make a better argument that she should be the party's next nominee for president. One other factor now plays a bigger role in the vice presidential question than on the night of her defeat in North Carolina and her narrow win in the Indiana primary: her unequivocal assertion the following day that she has more support among white working-class voters than Obama has. In an interview with USA Today, she cited an Associated Press report that, she said, "found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." It is difficult to overstate the negative effect this remark has had on superdelegates, party leaders and her Democratic colleagues in both houses of Congress. "That's not a way to land the plane," one of her key supporters said. "If you were a superdelegate, you'd say, 'We have to shut this down right away.' " But others worried that her words were calculated, that by venturing into such risky, rhetorical territory about race, she might put Obama under increased pressure to take her on the ticket before more damage and loss of support from her working-class base is felt. Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, an old Clinton friend, said Friday that she had made a major mistake in suggesting "that hardworking Americans are white people." "This statement has got to be dealt with by Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton alone," he said on MSNBC's "Hardball." "The sooner she does that," he said, "the sooner her ship is going to start sailing in a better direction." tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.17 2008-05-02T23:30:28Z 2008-10-10T23:40:08Z

This commentary first appeared on the Huffington Post on May 2, 2008 For several weeks, the Clinton campaign has been distributing literature and disseminating incendiary notions -- which figured significantly in Pennsylvania, and are now central to the candidate's message in Indiana and North Carolina -- assailing Barack Obama for his association with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, the radical, violent organization responsible for bombing several government buildings in the early 1970s.

This commentary first appeared on the Huffington Post on May 2, 2008 For several weeks, the Clinton campaign has been distributing literature and disseminating incendiary notions -- which figured significantly in Pennsylvania, and are now central to the candidate's message in Indiana and North Carolina -- assailing Barack Obama for his association with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, the radical, violent organization responsible for bombing several government buildings in the early 1970s. In their debate in Philadelphia, after moderator George Stephanoplous had raised the question of Obama's relationship with Ayers, Hillary Clinton elaborated on the subject, seeking to add to its significance: SEN. CLINTON: ...I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position. And if I'm not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died. So it is -- you know, I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about. Whether this is 21st century McCarthyism--as argued by several important commentators not publicly allied with Obama -- among them Stanley Fish in the New York Times (who has written several admiring columns about her candidacy) and Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker -- is a matter readers will have to decide. Whatever name it is called, Hillary Clinton, perhaps better than any contemporary political figure of our time, knows the insidious nature of this kind of guilt by association, for she (like Bill Clinton) has been a victim of it herself over a political lifetime. Precisely because she knows the destructive power of such assertions and how unfair they can be, she has sought for a quarter-century to hide and minimize her own activities, associations, student fascination, and personal history with the radical Left. Those associations -- logical, explicable, and (her acolytes have always maintained) even character-building in the context of the times -- are far more extensive than any radical past that has come to be known about Barack Obama. Which raises the question: Is the Clinton campaign's emphasis on the Ayers-Obama connection significantly different or less spurious than the familiar (McCarthyite?) smears against Hillary, particularly those promulgated and disseminated by the forces she labeled "the vast right-wing conspiracy" in the 1990s? Like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has (at least so far as this reporter and biographer has been able to determine) consistently rejected the ideological rigidity of the radical Left and -- especially -- the notion of revolutionary violence as a means of political change in contemporary America, despite claims to the contrary by the VRWC. Like Obama -- and John McCain for that matter -- she has valued her friendships with individuals who figured in the Left-wing and anti-war movements of the 60s and Vietnam era. And like Obama and McCain, she has never wavered from her belief and faith in establishment politics, within the two-party system. But her past associations -- and her evasions about them -- may tell us much about the formation of Hillary Clinton, both as a product of her youthful time -- the sixties and seventies, when radical student movements and the anti-war movement were a hugely potent force on campus and in American politics generally -- and as a presidential candidate. The facts are fairly simple: In the 60s, as an undergraduate at Wellesley, she exhibited an academic fascination with the Left and radicalism; rejected more extreme forms of political protest and violence as a student leader (there is no evidence I know that Obama has ever done anything but the same); wrote her senior thesis on the radical Chicago community-organizer Saul Alinsky (whose best-known philosophical mantra was, "Whatever works to get power to the people, use it."); and then, during the 1992 presidential campaign and White House years, insured that the thesis was locked up in the Wellesley archives and unavailable to reporters. At Yale law school she embraced some leftist causes she perhaps wishes she hadn't today (the Black Panthers' claim that they couldn't get a fair trial, more about which later); worked in the most important radical law firm of the day -- Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, in Oakland, which represented the Communist Party and defended the Panthers in their murder trials; and became associate editor of an alternative law review at Yale which ran stories and pictures depicting policemen as pigs and murderers. In her 2003 "memoir," Living History, Hillary mentions not a word about her role in the Panther trial in New Haven--during which she directed Yale law students monitoring the proceedings for evidence of government misconduct in its prosecution of the Panthers accused of murder. "It meant going in and out of the Black Panther headquarters to obtain documentation and other information," a classmate told Donnie Radcliff of the Washington Post, quoted in Hillary Rodham Clinton: A First Lady For Our Time. "Hillary's job was to organize shifts for her classmates and make certain no proceeding went unmonitored...[for] civil rights abuses..." As for her summer at the law firm, Hillary's one-sentence mention of it in Living History gives the impression that Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein might as well been handling postal rate increases, rather than defending the Panthers, members of the communist party, and accepting cases that mainstream lawfirms were afraid to take -- particularly civil liberties cases -- in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. "I told Bill about my summer plans to clerk at Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, a small law firm in Oakland California, and he soon said he would like to go to California with me." That is the total verbiage expended on so formative an experience, and the lasting -- but distant friendship -- she maintained for the next twenty-some years with Bob Treuhaft and his wife, the muckraking journalist (and, like her husband) former communist party member Jessica Mitford. "The reason she came to us," Treuhaft told me [the quotation is in my biography of Hillary Clinton, A Woman In Charge] "the only reason I could think of, because none of us knew her, was because we were a so-called "Movement law firm at the time. There was no reason except politics for a girl from Yale" to intern at the firm. "She certainly... was in sympathy with all the Left causes, and there was a sharp dividing line at the time. We still weren't very far out of the McCarthy era." And might not still be, to judge from the 2008 presidential campaign. In the 1980s, Jessica Mitford visited the Clintons at the governor's mansion in Little Rock. She and Treuhaft had left the communist party in 1958, years after the revelation of Stalin's murderous crimes, but -- Jessica Mitford wrote in her memoir, A Fine Old Conflict, she quit "not primarily over some issue of high principle, but because it had become dull....boring. Rather like London's debutante circuit." When Jessica Mitford died in 1996, Hillary Clinton wrote Bob Treuhaft a lovely condolence letter from the White House, characteristically filled with the kind of heart-felt personal touches that the senator's friends have always remarked upon. Which, of course, no more raises the question "Is Hillary Clinton a Stalinist?," or a communist sympathizer, than "Is Barack Obama a Weatherman?" or a weatherman sympathizer, because of his association with Bill Ayers. Aside from the candidate herself, her prime-most abettor in pushing the Bill Ayers-Weatherman-Obama line is, inevitably, Sidney Blumenthal, who has also been distributing many other questionable allegations about Obama he has plucked from and disseminated to, at times, of all places--organs of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. As in the Clinton White House, where he was the archivist of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy's plots, Blumenthal is no independent operator. He maintains an ongoing personal and strategic dialogue with his patrons, Hillary and Bill Clinton. - - One of Hillary Clinton's most winning attributes -- and Bill Clinton's too -- has always been their understanding of the complexity of American politics, and the danger of ideological demagoguery (witness their fight against the "vast right-wing conspiracy" and excesses). The resort by Hillary and her campaign to guilt-by-association--of which the Bill Ayers allegations are but one example: see Louis Farrakhan, or a comparatively-obscure African-American writer and perhaps -- communist party member named Frank Marshal Dixon, whom Obama knew in high school in Hawaii -- is, even for some of her most steadfast advocates, particularly dismaying. Like Gov. Bill Richardson and Senator Christopher Dodd, among others who have abandoned the Clintons, many old Clinton hands had hoped, judging from Hillary's triumphant and collegial senate years, that she -- and Bill -- had left behind such tactics when the Clinton Presidency ended in 2001 and the Right-wing threat to the Clintons' tenure in the White House had abated. "The sad irony," noted Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, "is that these are the same [guilt-by-association] attacks used against her husband in the elections of the 1990s. The GOP tried to destroy Bill Clinton for his relationships (much closer than Obama's tangential connections) with Arkansas crooks, sleazy fund-raisers and unsavory women. But 'The Man From Hope,' while seen as less honest than Bush or Bob Dole, bet that issues and uplift were more important to voters than his character. He won...." - - "Shame on you, Barack Obama," said Hillary Clinton in Ohio, asserting that the Obama campaign had misrepresented her health-care plan. Shame indeed. tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.16 2008-04-12T23:28:05Z 2008-10-10T23:29:27Z

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on April 12, 2008. By Carl Bernstein What will a Hillary Clinton presidency look like? The answer by now seems obvious: It will look like her presidential campaign, which in turn looks increasingly like the first Clinton presidency. Which is to say, high-minded ideals, lowered execution, half truths, outright lies (and imaginary flights), take-no prisoners politics, some very good policy ideas, a presidential spouse given to wallowing in anger and self-pity, and a succession of aides and surrogates pushed under the bus when things don’t go right. Which is to say, often.

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on April 12, 2008. By Carl Bernstein What will a Hillary Clinton presidency look like? The answer by now seems obvious: It will look like her presidential campaign, which in turn looks increasingly like the first Clinton presidency. Which is to say, high-minded ideals, lowered execution, half truths, outright lies (and imaginary flights), take-no prisoners politics, some very good policy ideas, a presidential spouse given to wallowing in anger and self-pity, and a succession of aides and surrogates pushed under the bus when things don’t go right. Which is to say, often. And endless psychodrama: the essential Clintonian experience that mesmerizes the press, confuses the citizenry, confounds members of both parties in Congress (not to mention the Clintons themselves, at times) and pretty much keeps the rest of the world constantly amused and fixated. Such a picture of Clinton Redux is, by definition, speculation. But it is speculation based on the best evidence at hand: the demonstrable and familiar record of Hillary and Bill Clinton coupled together in Permanent Campaign-mode for a generation, waging a continuous fight on the national political stage since 1992, an unceasing campaign for the White House, for redemption, for their ideas (sometimes) and for themselves (almost always), especially in 2008. The basic dynamics of the campaign, except for the Clintons’ vast new-found personal wealth and its challenges, have been near-constant since they arrived in Washington: through Whitewater, health care, the battle of the budget, the culture wars, the tax returns released only under duress, the travel office, Monica, impeachment, the pardons and through Hillary Clinton’s often repugnant presidential campaign. In many ways, the characteristic tone, secrecy, and resilience of the Clinton political march have been determined more by Hillary Clinton than by her husband, reflecting her deepest attributes and attitudes, fermented in recognition of the antipathy held against both of them, and often, the foul tactics of their enemies. As an aide put it (quoted in my book, A Woman In Charge: the Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton): “She doesn’t look at her life as a series of crises but rather a series of battles. I think of her viewing herself in more heroic terms, an epic character like in The Iliad, fighting battle after battle. Yes, she succumbs to victimization sometimes, in that when the truth becomes too painful, when she is faced with the repercussions of her own mistakes or flaws, she falls into victimhood. But that’s a last resort and when she does allow the wallowing it’s only in the warm glow of martyrdom—as a laudable victim—a martyr in the tradition of Joan of Arc, a martyr in the religious sense. She would much rather play the woman warrior—whether it’s against the bimbos, the press, the other party, the other candidate, the right-wing. She’s happiest when she’s fighting, when she has identified the enemy and goes into attack mode. . . . That’s what she thrives on more than anything—the battle.” The latest transmutation of leadership in the campaign of Hillary Clinton for president –- Mark Penn’s departure or non-departure, be it window dressing or window cleaning –- is perhaps the best index we have of the more absurd aspects of her candidacy and evidence of its increasing bankruptcy. The Clinton folks asserted to donors and reporters alike that this second “shake-up” in eight weeks at the very top of the campaign apparat represents some kind of great electoral moment, an opportunity for Hillary to state her case “more positively,” as if the negative approach had been forced on her; the beginning of yet another “turnaround” as if Penn, rather than Hillary (and Bill), has been the big problem. As if Penn were not an appendage of his two patrons, as if he were some kind of independent contractor twisting the candidate’s arm to do what comes unnaturally to her. The willingness of so much of the press, sensitized to the Clintons’ off-center complaints about one-sided coverage, to buy into this line is stunning. In fact, the demotion of Penn –- like the departure of Hillary’s acolyte Patty Solis Doyle as campaign manager –- is a confession that, for all her claims of “experience” and leadership abilities, Hillary Clinton has now presided over two disastrous national enterprises, the most important professional undertakings of her adult life, both of which she began with ample wind at her back: the healthcare reform of her husband’s presidency, and now her own campaign for the White House. These two failures -– and the demonizing of her opponents in both instances –- may be the best indication of the kind of President she would be, especially when confronted (inevitably) by unanticipated difficulty and/or entrenched opposition to her ideas and programs. It is exactly under such circumstances that she usually resorts to the worst excesses that mark her in full warrior-mode — and all its scorched-earth, truth-be-damned manifestations. Bosnia, anyone? Smearing the women involved (or even thought to be involved) sexually with her husband. Responding to Barack Obama with the same mindset, disdain, and arsenal as she did Karl Rove and Lee Atwater, as if Obama’s politics and methodologies were as mendacious and vicious as theirs–and her own. Tax information kept secret (in 1992 to hide her profits from trading in cattle futures; in 2008 to shield the identities of Bill’s foreign clients.) A campaign that openly boasts of throwing “the kitchen sink” at her opponent. What you see is what you get: Hillary’s cynical view of the larger interests of the Democratic Party, exhibited in her 3 a. m. red telephone ad. And her simultaneous, incongruous suggestion that Barack Obama –- notwithstanding his supposed lack of national security qualifications to be commander-in-chief -– would make a good vice president on her ticket. And, yes, a sense of entitlement that veritably shouts, “Look, because I believe in good things, and because of all I’ve been through, I deserve to win this.” And yet, there is no denying that, compared to the Bush years, the accomplishments of the Clinton presidency, in which she was an elemental force (and generalissimo in the often successful fight against the forces of “the vast right-wing conspiracy”) are prodigious, marked by peace and prosperity, whatever the price of the Clintons’ methodologies and personal failings. In projecting what a Hillary Clinton presidency would look like, there is the conundrum of her senatorial tenure and what had appeared to be a surcease in her Pavlovian resort to trench warfare: a period in which -– until the day drew near for her to announce her presidential candidacy –- she seemed (to her oldest friends, certainly) happier and more at ease, and straightforward in her public dealings, and less guarded, than at any point in her life since she followed Bill Clinton to Arkansas. Hillary Clinton’s unique star power, her performance as a senator and fundraiser on behalf of her party are what gave legitimacy to the idea that she might be a credible presidential candidate: all premised on her changed demeanor in the Senate years, compared to her embattled tenure as first lady. As a steward of her state’s interest, and a patient student of senatorial compromise and collegiality, she was widely commended by former skeptics in Congress and the press. True, her most revealing moment as a senator of national consequence was the vote she cast to authorize George W. Bush to go to war, which she’s been trying to explain since with dubious credibility. (“If I knew now what I knew then,” etc.) Twenty-one of her fellow Democratic senators had no doubts about what Bush intended, and voted against the authorization. The second most revealing moment was her endorsement of legislation to make flag-burning illegal, the kind of pandering she once attacked right-wing Republicans of practicing. Meanwhile, she and her husband have regularly misrepresented their own postures and statements in the run-up to the war, as well as Obama’s record, with Bill Clinton claiming to have been against the war from the start, and Hillary saying she has consistently been more adamant in her opposition than Obama -– except for the matter of his single “speech” against the war before it started. The assumption of many senatorial colleagues, former Clinton aides, and reporters (including this one) was that her presidential campaign would be much different from the one she and Bill Clinton waged through the White House years. In A Woman in Charge, I wrote about her ability to evolve, observable especially in the years before she met Bill Clinton and in the Senate: to learn from her mistakes. Events have proven me wrong on that count. The 2008 Clinton campaign, in fact, has been an exercise in devolution, back to the angry, demonizing, accusatory Hillary Clinton of the worst days of the Clinton presidency, flailing, and furtive, and disingenuous; and, as in the White House years, putting forth programs and ideas worthy of respect and deserving of the kind of substantive debate she claims she wants her race against Barrack Obama to be based upon. Bill, meanwhile, has taken up Hillary’s old role as defender and apologist, with disinformation and misinformation, but (far less effectively than she defended him). Also with near-apoplectic tirades that have left their friends worried and wondering. In the process of their search-and-destroy mission against Barack Obama, the Clintons have pursued a strategy that at times seems deliberately aimed at undermining Obama’s credibility if he becomes John McCain’s opponent — heresy in the view of an increasing number of the Clintons’ former suppporters and aides, a suprising number of whom now back Obama. The choice ahead -– in Pennsylvania, and the remaining primary states, and for the super delegates, and perhaps even the arbiters of a deadlocked convention -– is clear enough at this point, at least in terms of what the 2008 Clinton campaign is about: the Clintons — plural. Theirs is a campaign for Restoration to the White House, not simply the election of Hillary Clinton. Theirs is, has always been, a joint enterprise, a see-saw routine in which the psyches and actions of each balances the board according to the personal dynamics of the moment. A long-time associate of the Clintons, with whom Hillary has consulted in their quest to return to the White House, said early in her campaign: “She has a very plausible case for president. She had an eight-year super-graduate course in the presidency, a progressive platform…” He paused, and added: “[But] I’m not sure I want the circus back in town.” That is what the Hillary for President campaign has become: the whole Clinton three-ring circus, with little evidence that moving back to the White House will alter that most basic fact. tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.14 2008-03-26T23:09:19Z 2008-10-10T23:20:26Z

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on March 26, 2008. By Carl Bernstein Hillary Clinton has many admirable qualities, but candor and openness and transparency and a commitment to well-established fact have not been notable among them. The indisputable elements of her Bosnian adventure affirm (again) the reluctant conclusion I reached in the final chapter of A Woman In Charge, my biography of her published last June: Hillary Clinton “Since her Arkansas years [I wrote], Hillary Rodham Clinton has always had a difficult relationship with the truth… [J]udged against the facts, she has often chosen to obfuscate, omit, and avoid. It is an understatement by now that she has been known to apprehend truths about herself and the events of her life that others do not exactly share. ” [italics added]

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on March 26, 2008. By Carl Bernstein Hillary Clinton has many admirable qualities, but candor and openness and transparency and a commitment to well-established fact have not been notable among them. The indisputable elements of her Bosnian adventure affirm (again) the reluctant conclusion I reached in the final chapter of A Woman In Charge, my biography of her published last June: Hillary Clinton “Since her Arkansas years [I wrote], Hillary Rodham Clinton has always had a difficult relationship with the truth… [J]udged against the facts, she has often chosen to obfuscate, omit, and avoid. It is an understatement by now that she has been known to apprehend truths about herself and the events of her life that others do not exactly share. ” [italics added] As I noted: “Almost always, something holds her back from telling the whole story, as if she doesn’t trust the reader, listener, friend, interviewer, constituent—or perhaps herself—to understand the true significance of events…” The Bosnian episode is a watershed event, because it indelibly brings to mind so many examples of this tendency– from the White House years and, worse, from Hillary Clinton’s take-no-prisoners presidential campaign. Her record as a public person is replete with “misstatements” and elisions and retracted and redacted and revoked assertions… When the facts surrounding such characteristic episodes finally get sorted out — usually long after they have been challenged — the mysteries and contradictions are often dealt with by Hillary Clinton and her apparat in a blizzard of footnotes, addenda, revision, and disingenuous re-explanation: as occurred in regard to the draconian secrecy she imposed on her health-care task force (and its failed efforts in 1993-94); explanations of what could have been dutifully acknowledged, and deserved to be dismissed as a minor conflict of interest — once and for all — in Whitewater; or her recent Michigan-Florida migration from acceptance of the DNC’s refusal to recognize those states’ convention delegations (when it looked like she had the nomination sewn up) to her re-evaluation of the matter as a grave denial of basic human rights, after she fell impossibly behind in the delegate count.The latest episode — the sniper fire she so vividly remembered and described in chilling detail to buttress her claims of foreign policy “experience” — like the peace she didn’t bring to Northern Ireland, recalls another famous instance of faulty recollection during a crucial period in her odyssey.On January 15, 1995, she had just published her book, It Takes a Village, intended to herald a redemptive “come back” after the ravages of health care; Whitewater; the Travel Office firings she had ordered (but denied ordering); the disastrous staffing of the White House by the First Lady, not the President — all among the egregious errors that had led to the election of the Newt Gingrich Congress in 1994.On her book tour, she was asked on National Public Radio about the re-emergence of dormant Whitewater questions that week, when the so-called “missing billing records” had been found. Hillary stated with unequivocal certainty that she had consistently made public all the relevant documents related to Whitewater, including “every document we had,” to the editors of the New York Times before the newspaper’s original Whitewater story ran during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Even her closest aides — as in the case of the Bosnian episode18 years later — could not imagine what possessed her to say such a thing. It was simply not true, as her lawyers and the editors of the Times (like CBS in the latest instance) recognized, leading to huge stories about her latest twisting of the facts. “Oh my God, we didn’t,” said Susan Thomasas, Hillary’s great friend, who was left to explain to the White House lawyers exactly how Hillary’s aides had carefully cherry-picked documents accessed for the Times in the presidential campaign. The White House was forced — once again — to acknowledge the first lady had been ‘mistaken;” her book tour was overwhelmed by the matter, and Times’ columnist Bill Safire that month coined the memorable characterization of Hillary Clinton as “a congenital liar.” “Hillary values context; she does see the big picture. Hers, in fact, is not the mind of a conventional politician,” I wrote in A Woman In Charge. “But when it comes to herself, she sees with something less than candor and lucidity. She sees, like so many others, what she wants to see.” The book concludes with this paragraph: “As Hillary has continued to speak from the protective shell of her own making, and packaged herself for the widest possible consumption, she has misrepresented not just facts but often her essential self. Great politicians have always been marked by the consistency of their core beliefs, their strength of character in advocacy, and the self-knowledge that informs bold leadership. Almost always, Hillary has stood for good things. Yet there is a disconnect between her convictions and her words and actions. This is where Hillary disappoints. But the jury remains out. She still has time to prove her case, to effectuate those things that make her special, not fear them or camouflage them. We would all be the better for it, because what lies within may have the potential to change the world, if only a little.” The jury — armed with definitive evidence like the CBS tape of Hillary Clinton’s Bosnian adventure — seems on the verge of returning a negative verdict on her candidacy. tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.15 2008-01-25T00:11:27Z 2008-10-10T23:17:09Z

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on January 24, 2008. By Carl Bernstein The calculated decision that Bill Clinton will lead his wife’s attack on Barack Obama — here and now, and increasingly leading up to the February 5 Super Tuesday primaries — represents a shift in the fundamental Democratic campaign dynamic, which is unnerving influential Democrats, both in her camp and Obama’s. They fear that the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has thus taken on an ugly aspect that is already spinning out of control, and could damage the party’s chances in November; strip the former President of his unique position as the Democrats’ most popular and influential figure; and — worst of all — focus attention not on electing Sen. Hillary Clinton as president, but rather, the less palatable question of the Clintons’ — plural — restoration to the White House.

This commentary first appeared on AC360/CNN.COM on January 24, 2008. By Carl Bernstein The calculated decision that Bill Clinton will lead his wife’s attack on Barack Obama — here and now, and increasingly leading up to the February 5 Super Tuesday primaries — represents a shift in the fundamental Democratic campaign dynamic, which is unnerving influential Democrats, both in her camp and Obama’s. They fear that the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has thus taken on an ugly aspect that is already spinning out of control, and could damage the party’s chances in November; strip the former President of his unique position as the Democrats’ most popular and influential figure; and — worst of all — focus attention not on electing Sen. Hillary Clinton as president, but rather, the less palatable question of the Clintons’ — plural — restoration to the White House. The whole question of Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and their difficult relationship to the truth is now front and center. Or, as one of the Clintons’ suppoters put it to me, “The circus is back. Many Democrats may love Bill Clinton — and they do — but not many relish the prospect of the circus back on center-stage” in American life. However, the Clintons believe this course — with Bill Clinton leading a careful but unrelenting attack on Obama’s credibility and credentials — may be the only way to reduce the chances that Hillary Clinton could get grievously injured in the February 5 Super Tuesday primaries and lose the nomination to Obama. tag:carlbernstein.com,2008:/notebook//1.6 2008-01-06T15:38:18Z 2008-10-10T23:21:49Z

Let's be frank: There are more than a few levels on which what has happened in Iowa -- and its carryover -- is the Clintons' worst nightmare. The shining aspect of the Clintons' politics has always been their understanding of the tragedy of race in America. Each has spoken eloquently -- publicly and privately -- of the day when a black candidate for president would capture the imagination of the country, and be elected. But never did the Clintons anticipate that it might occur on Hillary's watch as a candidate for president herself, in opposition to them.

This commentary first appeared on CNN, January 5, 2008. By Carl Bernstein Let's be frank: There are more than a few levels on which what has happened in Iowa -- and its carryover -- is the Clintons' worst nightmare. The shining aspect of the Clintons' politics has always been their understanding of the tragedy of race in America. Each has spoken eloquently -- publicly and privately -- of the day when a black candidate for president would capture the imagination of the country, and be elected. But never did the Clintons anticipate that it might occur on Hillary's watch as a candidate for president herself, in opposition to them. Twice, as a teenager, she went to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preach, and his effect on her was profound. When he was killed, Hillary was a student at Wellesley College. Her reaction on hearing of his death was almost a breakdown. "I can't stand it any more! I can't take it," she screamed, and threw her bookbag against the wall. She was shaking and shouting. (She subsequently led student protests at Wellesley demanding increased black admissions, and other compensatory responses.) Years later, when she moved into the White House, her chief of staff was Maggie Williams, a black woman. Her mentor, as a lawyer and children's advocate, was Marion Wright Edelman, a black woman. Bill Clinton has often identified his three heroes as Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, and Dr. King. * * * * On Thursday night, Barack Obama concluded a remarkable, stirring speech that, whatever the outcome of the 2008 election, it will be regarded as historic. CNN's Anderson Cooper and I discussed on-air what we were witnessing. Her "third place finish to Barack Obama" was "probably the worst outcome for her today," Cooper observed. But the circumstances were worse than merely finishing third, or Obama's stunning 40 percent of the vote, I responded. Seventy percent of Democratic voters in Iowa had voted against her. When she finally met in a ballroom with her supporters after the numbers were beyond redeem, she gave a tired variation of her stump speech - in stark contrast to Obama's sense of the history of the occasion. Obama's campaign was becoming a crusade. "This is a great night for Democrats," Hillary, no longer her party's frontrunner had announced. "Together, we have presented the case for change and have made it absolutely clear that America needs a new beginning." Cooper asked, "How does Hillary Clinton now go on tomorrow?" He added that Bill Clinton would continue to campaign with his wife in New Hampshire. Watching the former president on the screen, I responded: "You could see the devastation on Bill Clinton's face tonight. They are going to have to regroup. They are going to have to come up with a different rationale for this campaign, because what we heard Obama say tonight is: this is about Republicans. This is about independents. There's going to be a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, not just in New Hampshire, but through all those 20 Super Tuesday states. And that fight is going to be about who can best reach out and unite the country -- because Obama knows that the rap on Hillary Clinton is that she's polarizing, is that she's divisive. "And the Clintons now have to come up with a rationale that shows they are not [a divisive force] and they can unite the country, unite the party. It's a very difficult thing to pull off, after that inspirational speech, on top of which, you know, you looked at the people behind Hillary and Bill Clinton. They were old faces." Among them, Madeline Albright, the Clinton Secretary of State; Terry McAuliffe, the family fund-raiser. "Another thing that has been repudiated tonight is this idea of restoration of the Clintons plural, to the White House," I said. "That was an underlying issue here. And it figures with the age-group breakdown that we have seen in CNN's exit and entrance polls. So, there has to be a whole new rationale. Why is Hillary Clinton now qualified to be the president of the United States, and what does she do to unite this country?" * * * * Hillary Rodham Clinton is nothing if not resilient. Perseverance and resilience -- especially in response to humiliation (make no mistake: the rejection of her candidacy in Iowa was a real humiliation) -- are the strongest threads in the tapestry of her life, along with religion and family. On Friday, traveling to New Hampshire the day after the devastation of Iowa, Hillary and her apparat embraced the "change theme" that she had previously ridiculed Obama for asserting and mocked with her mantra of "experience." "[T]he message in New Hampshire has been working," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson insisted following the Iowa caucuses. "It's who she is as a person, her experience making change, the importance of picking a president that is ready. That won't change." It is difficult to imagine how she is going to steal the "change" issue from Obama. In the paperback edition of my biography of Hillary Clinton, "A Woman In Charge," there is this conclusion in a new afterword written in October: "Inside the Clinton machine, the Obama challenge and, in particular, its central claim of representing necessary change in what Democrats had to offer, made an impression. 'She realizes she can't match him in the change department,' said Deborah Sale [one of the Clintons' oldest and closest friends. ] 'He's of a different generation and she's been around for a long time. The Clinton administration is a very big plus for her, but it's also a minus. And she knows it. She can hardly deny it. She emphasizes the positive. No one expected this kind of opposition, and she knows he's strong and savvy.'" The afterword concludes: "So, in the end, Hillary for President had come down to Restoration, a co-presidency in which all the considerable talents and experiences of both Clintons and the hard lessons learned by each would be applied to reversing the catastrophes, ennui, and grievous misgovernance" of the Bush presidency. "[T]he task was to convince voters that the Restoration would not be a voyage back to the future but rather would entrust the nation's governance to the stewardship of a magical political pair whose priorities were indeed 'progressive' in the best sense, moving forward carefully from the perilous era just past, but with ideas culled from their vast experience and association with the brightest and best minds, with Bill's voracious intellectualism, and with her sturdy, can-do optimism and rigor.... "They were very much a team, and that is how they increasingly presented themselves.... 'I'm running because I think I can win and I can take the White House back for us, and, frankly, build on the positive of the nineties and avoid some of the mistakes,' she said. She did not define us."