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Friday, March 09, 2007

Nope...no right-wing tilt here...none whatsoever
Posted by Jill | 7:34 AM
As readers of this blog know, I am no great fan of Hillary Clinton. In fact, a Clinton nomination may just cause me to either write in someone in whom I do believe or else sit this one out. But right on the heels of the vapors over Barack Obama's parking tickets comes Dana Milbank, in full Aging Diva Bitch Maureen Dowd drag, meowing on Hillary Clinton's use of platitudes -- on page 2 of the Washington Post, no less:

Candidate Clinton, Embracing the Trite and the True

By Dana Milbank
Friday, March 9, 2007; Page A02

Are you in it to win? Would you regard civil rights as the gift that keeps on giving? Do you believe in the American Dream, stupid?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you might consider supporting Hillary Clinton, the person to send to the White House when you care enough to send the very best. More than any other candidate, Clinton has brought the sensibility of Hallmark greeting cards to the 2008 presidential race.

Yesterday, the Democratic front-runner took a number of provocative stands as she spoke about soldiers and veterans at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank:

"If you serve your country, your country should serve you."

"I'm here to say that the buck does stop with this president."

"Let us work . . . to take care of those who are taking care of us."

The controversy didn't end there. She also offered her view that American soldiers are simultaneously "giving their all," "holding their breath" and "stretched to the breaking point." Candidate Cliche continued: "Who's on their side? Who's standing up for them? . . . We owe these young men and women the very best."

We do not owe them the very best rhetoric, however. Abraham Lincoln gave the last full measure of devotion to support-the-troops language 142 years ago, when he called on the nation "to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan." Yesterday, Clinton had this to say of the troops: "They don't have the luxury of passing the buck to somebody else. They step forward and they step up."

In fairness, the current occupant of the White House has left future generations little to work with, should they ever decide to etch his words in marble. Bring 'em on? Smoke 'em out? With us or against us? But Clinton's platitudes are deliberate, not innate. As the Democrats' front-runner, she needs to be as anodyne as possible if she is to overcome her polarizing reputation.


So that's it, then -- Hillary Clinton isn't polarizing because she's a woman, or because she's shrill, or because she's Bill Clinton's wife, or any of the other reasons people give for her being polarizing. No, she's polarizing because she uses the same political clichés politicians have been using -- successfully -- for generations. Meanwhile, the snark-free zone in which the Republican candidates travel is inviolate. Howie Kurtz tiptoes daintily around the embarrassment of Rudy Giuliani's son dragging the family dirty linen in public, Chris Cilizza genuflects before the Altar of Saint Chuck Hagel, and John McCain isn't even on WaPo's radar anymore.

It's hardly surprising that the Heathers of the press are gunning for bear on the 2008 Democratic field. They've had a good run fellating the Bush Administration as the latter ignored warnings of a terrorist attack that then played out as planned, took us into war based on lies, eviscerated the Consitution and put us into debt for generations to come. I suppose now they're afraid they might be denied the kind of access to cocktail franks they've enjoyed with the Republicans.

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