Hillary: The Endgame

As the primaries in WI/HI/OH/TX and VT grow closer Team Clinton has rolled out their strategy: Go negative,redefine the debate, and continue to leverage the Supers and lobby for MI & FL delegates to be seated.

The first salvo in the latest skirmish was fired by former Ambassador Joe Wilson. His Baltimore Sun article excerpted into a Huffpo broadside-applauded in Hillaryland and blasted in Obamadom-- essentially painted a picture of Obama as too weak to stand up to the VRWC in general and John McCain in particular.

Wilson singles out Obama's "vapid rhetoric" and dismisses him as "inexperienced", holding up Sen. Clinton as "a fighter" who "never flinches".

The Ambassador has been taken to task at length in in great detail for being a shill for Team Clinton. I have no idea what his motives are, but suggest instead that to select our candidate based on fear of what the Big Bad GOP attack machine might do is the REAL capitulation.
I think Wilson gives the Rove style politics of personal destruction more power than it deserves: Magnifying the ability of the right to smear into mythic proportions. To combat this dread foe we need a "gladiator" who is "battle tested".

Well...Wilson does have first-hand experience: He and his wife were targets of Team Rove for taking a public stand against the Bush con-job that is the Iraq war. It would also be unwise to underestimate the GOP and their surrogates in the dirty tricks department.

But, when we let fear dominate OUR selection process, it seems to me that the Right has already won. Must we tremble in the face of those would lie, malign, distort, and cheat to win? To do so permits THEM to make our selection for us.

Moreover, Wilson gives far too little credit to Barack Obama. I think the man is made of sterner stuff than many of his critics realize. The underlying evidence Wilson cites as Obama's weakness--an exchange of letters over ethics reform--makes Obama look calm and statesmanlike. McCain looks like a hothead who is throwing something of a temper-tantrum.

Compared side-by-side, I think Obama matches up quite favorably with John "100 years of war" McCain. As for a national security c.v., he observes quite correctly that the current Administration had a resume' heavy team in place: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell. How'd that work out?

Experience is no substitute for judgement.

During the Overland Campaign in 1864 General Ulysses S. Grant overheard some of his officers talking about how R.E. Lee would counter their move and wind up--as he so often did-- coming down on their flank. Fed up, Grant thundered "You need to stop thinking aboout what HE is going to do to YOU and start thinking about what YOU are going to do to HIM."

We need to emulate General Grant