All Alone in the Night

One of the primary complaints I've seen raised against Hillary Rodham Clinton as she pursues the Democratic nomination for president is that she appears to have no center of beliefs. Similar to complaints made against her husband, she is said to be strictly poll-driven, and therefore is not a good choice for president. Yet her interview in the New York Times this morning seems to thoroughly dispel that notion.

In the interview Clinton says that as president she would maintain a smaller garrison of U.S. troops in Iraq to deter Iran, protect the Kurds, and go after al Qaeda. That hardly seems like a response calculated to pull in votes. The Democrats are looking for a candidate who will get the troops out of Iraq the day after they're inaugurated, if not sooner. If Clinton were simply looking to maximize her chances for getting the nomination, she'd steer far clear of any hint she'd keep troops in Iraq any longer than absolutely necessary. Nor does saying she'd keep troops in Iraq necessarily help her in the general election, as most Americans either want the U.S. to do what's necessary to win in Iraq or get out, not steer some middle course that leaves U.S. troops still coming home in boxes without fixing the problem.

In point of fact, Clinton's response is one of the most realistic I've read from a presidential candidate in some time. Most candidates offer weasel words and lies; consider how many candidates have promised to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, for example. Then when they get into office, reality intrudes and U.S. foreign policy goes on generally unchanged. (This, btw, is why I chuckle when people claim we wouldn't be Iraq right now if Al Gore had won in 2000. History shows us that predicting what a person will do as President by their actions as a private citizen is a fool's game. How many Confederates assumed that Abe Lincoln wouldn't go to war over secession based on his virulently antiwar credentials until 1860?) The standard answer I'd expect from most candidates would have been either some variation of 'we'll have to weigh the situation as it stands when I take office' or some red meat to the base. Clinton deserves a great deal of credit for offering an answer that, while it certainly wouldn't be precisely what she'd do if she won, would probably at least be a beginning point for a realistic policy.

On a related note, one of the quotes in the Obsidian Wings thread I noted yesterday argued:

Your thoughts on Clinton echo mine. The attacks on her in the left blogosphere for being Republican, a warmongerer, evil triangulator, etc. are patently silly. At the same time she obviously lacks political guts. There's a time to compromise and evade in politics, and there's a time to take a bold stand. She's taken no bold stances whatsover since getting burnt in 1994. She'd be a good caretaker president and do the political equivalent of making the trains run on time. But she wouldn't do anything important or historical, and after the Bush years we have both need and opportunity to get some big stuff done. Obama and Edwards both have strategies to make a difference - Obama attacks the divisiveness the Bushites need to prevent real reform and Edwards is working for a mandate for a lot of specific policies.

From where I sit, if true, that's a feature, not a bug. Presidents who want to do things that are 'important or historical' tend to make shoddy leaders, because they're too busy trying to make history to worry about the effects their policies may actually have. Need I point any further than the current occupant of the Oval Office to note what can happen with Presidents worried about making their mark? Personally, I could go for a nice run of caretaker presidents who didn't do anything big and who preside over several decades of peace and prosperity. I don't know if HRC is really in that mold, but if so, she'd make a better President than either Obama or Edwards.