Hillary can’t hide

BILL CLINTON searches for redemption. Hillary Clinton searches for cover.

Is this any way to run a presidential campaign?

The senator from New York, who is an expected presidential candidate in 2008, treated the Democratic Leadership Council in Denver this week to a recycled campaign slogan: ”It’s the American dream, stupid,” Hillary Clinton told the DLC - a twist on ”It’s the economy, stupid,” the famed, but now overexposed theme of Bill Clinton’s first national campaign.

While Hillary Clinton channeled 1992, Bill Clinton was in Connecticut, trying to rescue Senator Joseph I. Lieberman from his channeling of George W. Bush. Lieberman is in a tough primary fight for his seat, mostly over his embrace of Bush’s Iraq war policy. Clinton stumped for him, even though last November he told an Arab student audience that the US invasion of Iraq had been a ”big mistake.” Granted, part of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 strategy is to cultivate nostalgia for the years when White House scandal meant a president making love, not war. But war is what this country faces - the war begun with the US invasion of Iraq, and its outgrowth, the war that is now raging between Israel and Hezbollah, via Lebanon. A presidential candidate ignores reality at her peril, and that is what Clinton is trying to do.

Her take on the Lieberman race is another example of the robotic ”centrist” calculation that is the hallmark of her current political identity. She supports the war, but questions the way it has been waged.

She backs Lieberman, but says she will support whichever Democrat wins the primary. Then, to help Lieberman gain momentum against challenger Ned Lamont, Bill Clinton hits the Connecticut campaign trail. Hillary keeps a safe distance away, talking domestic policy in Denver.

Enough with the triangulating. What worked in the last century doesn’t necessarily work in this one.

In the past, Clinton ”triangulation” meant positioning oneself between the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Now, triangulation means positioning between the two wings of the Democratic Party - the antiwar left and the centrists who don’t want Democrats to look ”too angry” about dead soldiers in Iraq or a foreign policy in meltdown.

In a practical sense, triangulation for Hillary Clinton now means: hug the center. Then, if the center gets bumpy, speed-dial husband Bill to smooth things over.

This was too good to pass up…
Does she know who she is? She is constantly sticking her wet finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing… Polls, it’s all about polls. That is what Bill was all about and she is the same. Funny how her poll numbers are falling and people are turning their backs on her.