Chicago Tribune: Clinton made an elementary error on Obama

[TeamJordan23]

Clinton made an elementary error on Obama

Clinton’s lucky that the late-night TV comics are on hiatus due to the writers’ strike, otherwise this blunder would launch a thousand jokes, each one portraying Clinton as desperate and ruthless as she tries to regain momentum in Iowa from the surging Obama.

And a blunder it certainly was: The point of the news release was to discredit Obama’s “aw shucks” act—the notion he projects that the idea of running for president had hardly even occurred to him until an irresistible swell of encouragement all but ripped the stovepipe hat off his head and threw it into the ring.

Why? Because the reluctant hero who has greatness thrust upon him is more attractive, in political folklore, than the striving, conniving, ever-ambitious seeker of power.

Up until then, Clinton’s “I know you are, but what am I?” taunt was working, and would have played a minor role in the larger story in Iowa of Clinton going on the offensive to poke holes in Obama’s image.

But then came Team Clinton’s triumphant yet ill-advised and thoroughly absurd mention of Obama’s boyhood fantasies, and with it an “I’m rubber and you’re glue moment for Obama:

I may be ambitious, but at least I don’t dig for dirt in my opponents’ elementary school files.

The over-the-top display of aggression played into the image of Clinton as a divisive figure who doesn’t play well with others, drowned her message of the day, and made her advisers appear frantic about her slide in the polls. But worst of all for Clinton, it was funny.

There’s no serious issue behind this spat—anyone who makes a run for the presidency has to have dreamed of it for years and have an unseemly passion for power accompanied by gargantuan self-regard. We know that.

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2007/12/hillary-as-kind.html

[TwilightGardener]

1. I actually believe the recent statement that it was a joke. Something this silly

would be uncharacteristic for her campaign.

[emilyg]

2. Of course it's a joke.

[AtomicKitten]

3. The math on this doesn't add up.

I don't believe for a moment this was intended as a joke. The Clinton website posts attacks de jour which her soldiers bring to message boards to argue, and they argued this big time yesterday.

But it didn't turn out quite the way they hoped, and Penn is out there lying, um, I mean doing damage control today.

Here's what the Clinton camp apparently really thinks about Obama:

"It's his presumptuousness," this operative says. "That he thinks he can deny her the nomination. Who is he to try to do that?" You mean, he's, uh, uppity? "Yes." A senior House Democratic aide notes, "The Clinton people are going nuts in how much they hate him. But the problem is their narrative has gone beyond the plausible."

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/davidcorn/2007/12/hillary-on-obama-fear-and-hatr.html