Hillary: A Doppelganger or a Cuckoo?

Doppelganger: A ghostly counterpart of a living person. Cuckoo bird: Lays egg in another bird's nest, and when the cuckoo hatches it takes over the nest.

Thomas Friedman is pondering today in "Madam Secretary?" (NYTimes)

"My question: Is Obama considering Mrs. Clinton for this job in order to get her off his back or as a prelude to protecting her back?"

"That backing is the most important requirement for a secretary of state to be effective. Frankly, Obama could appoint his dear mother-in-law as secretary of state, and if he let the world know she was his envoy, she would be more effective than any ex-ambassador who had no relationship with the president.

"Our current president never cared about this, so neither of his secretaries of state were particularly effective. Rather than having Colin Powell’s back, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld delighted in stabbing Powell in the back, particularly when he was on the road.

"But being close to the president is not enough. Condoleezza Rice had a close relationship with Bush, but Bush had no coherent worldview to animate her diplomacy, so all her travels added up to less than the sum of their miles...

"Foreign leaders can spot daylight between a president and a secretary of state from 1,000 miles away. They know when they’re talking to the secretary of state alone and when they are talking through the secretary of state to the president.....

"My question is whether a President Obama and a Secretary of State Clinton, given all that has gone down between them and their staffs, can have that kind of relationship, particularly with Mrs. Clinton always thinking four to eight years ahead, and the possibility that she may run again for the presidency. I just don’t know."

And don't forget just vain Bill. Bill Clinton famously said during his 1992 presidential campaign that with him you get "two for the price of one." But it's 2008, and Maureen Dowd opines that getting Hillary for Secretary of State means getting "Two for the Price of Two." (NY Times)

Dowd thinks the grumpy hubby will come around if Hillary becomes the Mistress of Foggy Bottom. "At least Bill has the satisfaction of seeing that he has roiled the previously serene and joyous Obamaland. It may be Obama’s very willingness to take the albatross of Bill from around Hillary’s neck and sling it around his own that impresses Bill.

"Obama is overlooking all his cherished dictums against drama and leaking and his lofty vetting standards to try and create a situation where the country can benefit from the talent of the Clintons while curbing their cheesy excesses, like their endless cash flow from foreigners."

But, there is a deep unease with many counting on real change, unconvinced that regardless of their current public posture of support for the Obama White House, the Billary will do only what is best for Billary.

And shadowing about the world as Obama's Doppelganger may not fit into Billary's long-term ambitions.

As Chuck Todd points out today in "First Read".... "HillaryLand seems to be making a concerted effort to start tamping down speculation about the secretary of state job. Reports from the New York Times and Politico are sparking the debate about whether she's 100% ready to make the leap from the Senate and 100% ready to give up politics for a while (at least while at State)...

"Today's Wall Street Journal and the AP confirm that the Obama folks are letting it be known that Bill Clinton is fully cooperating with the vet. So while the Hillary folks use the Times/Politico to signal reluctance, others are using the WSJ/AP to suggest that the momentum is still building for the Clinton appointment to happen."

And that is pure chaotic Clinton conundrum-making style.... fogging the question of a closet-cuckoo Hillary in Obama's cabinet nest in Shakespearean "to be, or not to be" fashion.

Hopefully, not.

We Thought We Knew Him

Just who is Sen. John McCain?

As Maureen Down asks today in "Who's the Question Mark?" (NYTimes).... "In the final moments of the most gripping campaign in modern history, John McCain is still trying to costume Barack Obama as a dangerous enigma.

"But, in an odd and remarkable reversal, it is McCain who is the enigma, even though he entered the race with one of the best brands in American politics."

Dowd notes that "The McCain campaign specializes in erratica, while the Obama campaign continues to avoid any dramatica."

So just how was it that the man who was one of the most knowable politicians in America..... the Straight-Talking maverick Senator who made the press swoon.... morphed into a political alien? A crooked-talking Bushie insider spouting inanities such as "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."?

Dowd says it was when McCain hired replacement campaign manager Steve Schmidt last summer. Schmidt shackled McCain, "turning the vibrant and respected McCain into a shell of his former self.

"Schmidt abruptly cut off the oxygen supply to McCain's brain" and he became the question mark of the campaign, Dowd opines. The social McCain become "whiny, angry, vengeful and bitter."

Campaign tactics became a see-what-sticks-to-the-wall game of murky constantly-shifting policies and Obama character assassination-by-association.

McCain, like W, likes to depend on his gut for decisions, the most rumbling of which was the selection of Palin the Unpalatable.

For Dowd the "ultimate riddle is this: Why doesn't McCain question why he has become a question mark?"

Like much of the press, Dowd may have a McCain blind spot. She may not want to see that McCain allowed himself to be shackled. That he bought into the Rovian spinmeisters schemes.

And that the relentless spotlight of a fiercely-contested long campaign season exposed the very empty character-vessel beneath McCain's well-crafted public facade.

Vote. It really matters!

Superdelegates.... Do Your Thing!

Today after Hillary Clinton's expected win over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primaries, the New York Times sums up this excruciating "demeaning political process" in "The Low Road to Victory."

The Times worriedly admonishes... "It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."

Their disappointment is clear... "Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad - torn right from Karl Rove's playbook - evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden...."

They warn that with these tactics, her reckless interview on ABC where she nuke-rattled against Iran with "obliterate them" language, and for not engaging Obama on the substance of issues, "she undercut the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Obama."

This Times loss of faith in Clinton is delivered by the mothership of endorsements.

But, perhaps Maureen Dowd said it best in her Times op-ed today "Wiltling Over Waffles."

Dowd laments, "Now that Hillary has won Pennsylvania, it will take a village to help Obama escape from the suffocating embrace of his rival.... as the Democrats grow ever more desperate about the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.....

"They also cringe as Bill continues his honey-crusted-nut-bar meltdown." Once fawning Clintonistas are dumbstruck with his lounge-lizard performance and conclude.... we never really knew you, Bill.

The Times advises, "It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box."

Negative-campaign-weary Democrats would thank you.... but John McCain wouldn't. Because then he would then have to defend his many preposterous policies starting with his corporate-welfare plans, explain his many flip-flops and his joined-at-the-hip continuance of The Decider's failed "with-us-or-against-us" presidency.

Superdelegates.... vote!

Obama: Go For Thrilla in Phila...

Yesterday's substantial win in Wyoming's caucuses by Barack Obama.... 61% to 38%.... over "Ma Barker" Clinton (as dubbed by WSJ) helps him regain his Big Mo, but it's still far from an eight count. So, before the next big bouts in Mississippi and Pennsylvania, take off the gloves....

Not the smearing, innuendo, conniving and misleading gloves that land Ma Barker's low blows, but, as Maureen Dowd pointed out in "The Monster Mash," it's time for Obama to start seriously rebutting Hillary's kneecapping remarks.

As, for instance, her loud refrain that she has far more national security experience than Obama has, when as Dowd points out.... "Having a first lady tea in Belfast is not equivalent to bringing peace to Northern Ireland."

After his losses in Texas and Ohio, Obama needs to be more fierce about winning. Being "Wimpy Man" won't be a winning strategy for Obama.... Just ask Bush "41" who drug that defeatist label to a second-term loss.

As Dowd points out, "Hillary successfully recast herself in Ohio as a beer-drinking former waitress. Only after last week's reversals did the Obama camp raise a louder ruckus about her tax returns. Obviously, Ms. Night Shift does not want to reveal the details of the fortune that Bill Clinton has made, sometimes through dubious associations."

And, when it comes to Billary's campaigning methods, who would know them better than the former political adviser to President Bill, Dick Morris. While he thinks, "It's Over" for Hillary after her narrow wins in Texas and Ohio, he knows "Hillary won't withdraw".... and will bulldoze forward with "ever-escalating rhetoric."

Perhaps, as Morris suggests, in the next round Obama needs to unleash his own phone-rings-in-the-middle-of-the-night ad.... "have a woman's voice, with a flat Midwestern accent, answer it and say, 'Hold on' into the receiver. Then she should shout, 'Bill, it's for you!' "

That would land.... with Hillary's lack of any meaningful experience in foreign affairs.... a solid and telling blow!

Is Hillary Really Inevitable?

Throwing red meat to his GOP base, Rudy Giuliani unleashed a new battle cry.... "I'm not Hillary."

While dissing Hillary Clinton, Giuliani, as a member of the white-males-only GOP presidential candidate club, ironically told a national convention of Republican women devoted to getting women elected, "We have a record that's very, very proud and very long of making certain that women participate on a full and complete and equal basis with men."

Just not when aspiring to the highest office.

Today's New York Times also fired at Hillary.... Frank Rich aimed his powerful pen at the similarities between Hillary's perfectly oiled "inevitability" campaign and that of the losing Al Gore in 2000.... or even that of slick New York Republican Thomas Dewey running against the unslick but earnest incumbent Harry Truman in 1948. Dewey sloganeered... "It's time for a change." NOT!

Rich wonders if with a presidential candidate from New York known for her experience, competence and above-the-fray demeanor.... Hillary.... the Democrats could lose the White House in 2008.

In a effort to divert attention from this robotic campaign performance, Hillary has resorted to a loud giggle-laugh.... it's about as humanizing, and authentic, as Rudy Giuliani's smooching I'm-a-loving-husband cellphone calls from his third wife in the middle of campaign speeches.

The public senses authenticity.... and Hillary's make-no-mistakes defensive debate crouch punctuated with a laugh sure to be labeled a "Shrillary" is a campaign three dollar bill.

Next thing we know, Hillary will plant on her frisky Bill a full lip lock a' la Al and Tipper's convention stopper. But, what Hillary really needs to do is stop giving safe answers when voters are looking for Truman truthiness. Rich grumbled, "What I saw on television last Sunday was the incipient second coming of the can't-miss 2000 campaign of Al Gore."

Tying together both the Giuliani take on Hillary with the cautionary tale of Rich, Maureen Dowd today unleashed her piece "The Nepotism Tango" in defining the Democratic frontrunner.

Dowd muses that, "Without nepotism, Hillary would be running for the president of Vassar. But then, without nepotism, W. would be pumping gas in Midland -- and not out of the ground."

As Joe Biden pointed out at last Sunday's debate, all of the "old stuff" might get in the way of passing legislation. "The special interests, with regard to Hillary, they feed on this, you know, this Clinton-Bush thing." That "thing" is dynasty.

Perhaps this seeming dynastic inevitability is the reason for Hillary's un-Mona Lisa guffaw.... tickled pink by the thought of her entitled Democratic coronation.

Or, is it as Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of the very conservative The New Republic, sees Hillary (listen up "equal" GOP women), "She's like some hellish housewife who has seen something that she really, really wants and won't stop nagging you about it until finally you say, fine, take it, be the damn president, just leave me alone."

Hillary seems locked into her disciplined campaign march, daily becoming less, not more, likable.... just like the hapless wooden Gore, despite his wardrobe changes and wife wuzzies. As the saying goes, at this point it's still Hillary's to lose.

Which might not be a bad turn of events for the Democratic party and the country. We can do better than the dynastic choke-hold of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton.

Homeland Insecurity....

The quote of the day from Frank Rich of the New York Times.... "Though Mr. Chertoff may be the man standing between us and Armageddon, he is seen as a leader of stature only when standing next to his cabinet mate Gonzo."

And, don't miss Maureen Dowd's column in the NYT today either.... priceless.