Here we go again

Doesn't President-elect Obama have a problem on his hands if Sen. Hillary Clinton turns him down for the secretary of state's post? Wouldn't anyone else now be seen as second-best?

Obama got lucky with Rahm Emanuel. But the name-floating that's going on right now strikes me as a significant breakdown in discipline on the part of the Obama camp.

The speech of her life

Well, that was quite a performance by Hillary Clinton, was it not? Unlike the Mark Warners of the world, she managed to talk about herself and use that in a compelling way to transfer her personal message to Barack Obama. Also, for the first time this week the Democrats were drinking the blood of their enemies. And loving it.

I never would have imagined when Clinton first ran for the Senate eight years ago that the stilted public speaker of that campaign could grow into the accomplished, and even moving, figure that she is today.

Not to get carried away. She was not this good while she was running for president. Not even close. Like Ted Kennedy and Al Gore, to name two other examples, defeat seems to have brought out the best in her.

Tell us something we don't know

I just spent, oh, the last hour and a half reading Roger Simon's dauntingly well-reported piece for the Politico on how Barack Obama managed to beat the Clinton juggernaut. (Chuck Todd was praising it on Tom Ashbrook's show this morning. Do we really believe he had time to read it?)

Like Joshua Green's Atlantic article on what went wrong with Hillary Clinton's campaign, it is full of insight and nuance. And, like Green's piece, I ultimately found it unsatisfying. Here's the problem: No one other than a political junkie is going to read such a story. And we political junkies have been living all this in real time for many, many months.

Both Simon and Green remind us of details we might have forgotten, skillfully weave a mass of information into coherent narratives and come up with some previously unreported nuggets. (Green: Mark Penn is smarter and more awful than we thought. Simon: Obama's brain-trusters actually believed they could knock Clinton out in the opening weeks of the primary season.) In the end, though, they don't do much more than tell us what we already know.

If there's one thing of value I learned from the two accounts, it's that no one should believe the Democrats would be in better shape today if Clinton had won the nomination — especially if she had won it easily, and had not had to put her dysfunctional campaign staff to the test.

OK, two. I think it's a pretty good bet that Simon and Green are going to write books about this historic campaign. At nearly 16,000 words, Simon's article is already about a quarter of the way there.

Hillary Clinton's very bad campaign

Everybody's talking about the Atlantic's piece on how Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign fell apart, so I'll keep my comments to a minimum.

What mainly struck me was this: In the most important professional undertaking of her life, Clinton surrounded herself with a staff full of miserable, backbiting leeches. And even to the degree that they had any talent, she showed little inclination or ability to manage them.

Given that she ran as the candidate of experience, it's telling that she wasn't even close to being ready for prime time.

Photo (cc) by the World Economic Forum and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

The media and John Edwards

For the past few weeks, I'd been sort of half-paying attention as a few political observers — especially Mickey Kaus of Slate — ripped the mainstream media for not following up the National Enquirer's stories about John Edwards' affair. Frankly, I couldn't bring myself to care, and I felt pretty much the same way last October, when the Enquirer broke the story.

Did anyone seriously doubt that Edwards had been screwing around? Did it matter? (Bipartisan alert: I say that as someone who's perfectly happy that Larry Craig decided to stick around. His only mistakes were pleading guilty to toe-tapping and sounding like a schmuck in his public statements.)

In Edwards' case, it took a caller to Howie Carr's show on WRKO Radio (AM 680) yesterday to snap me back to reality. Her point: If the media had ripped the bark off Edwards last fall, when he was still a semi-viable presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee today.

Good grief. She was right. While Barack Obama was winning Iowa, Clinton was coming in third, behind Edwards. Though she came back and won the New Hampshire primary the following week, she never really recovered from that devastating opening round. And until Edwards dropped out, he and Clinton split the anti-Obama vote. (I will grant you that these things change quickly. Just a few months earlier, Obama and Edwards were seen as splitting the anti-Clinton vote.)

Now, I haven't gone back and re-examined the post-New Hampshire results, so my logic may not be impeccable. Edwards did fade very quickly, so there probably weren't too many Clinton votes that he soaked up. But to the extent that he delayed the emergence of the Obama-versus-Clinton steel-cage match, he helped Obama enormously. And it was in those early weeks that Obama won the nomination.

So, to return to my original question: Should the media have gone after the Edwards affair last fall? I guess I'd have to say yes, for a couple of reasons.

First, Edwards' campaign was a serious one, as these things go. He had very little chance of winning the nomination, but his chances weren't nearly as slight as those of, say, Chris Dodd. And whether we like it or not, sex still matters in American politics. It's not the media's job to decide for the rest of us that it doesn't matter. (Nor should the media overplay it, as they did, most memorably, in the Lewinsky story.)

But whether you like it or not, many Americans want to know if their would-be leaders have been faithful to their spouses, and in that respect the media failed to report important information at a time when it would have mattered.

Second, there was the peculiar nature of Edwards' appeal. It's only a slight exaggeration to observe that his entire public persona, other than fighting on behalf of the elderly union folks who lined up behind him at televised rallies, was based on the idea that he had a great family, and that his wife's battle with cancer had only brought them closer together.

It wasn't true — or, at least, it was more complicated than that — and, thus, Edwards was engaged at some basic level in consumer fraud.

I first saw Edwards while covering the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in 2000 for the Boston Phoenix. One morning, he spoke to the Massachusetts delegation. I was repelled by his smarmy unctuousness, and though I should probably let him speak for himself, I think it's fair to say that my then-fellow Phoenician Seth Gitell reacted the same way. (Update: Seth weighs in, and I was right.)

Last night I went to bed rather than watch Edwards' interview on "Nightline." I figured if anything noteworthy was revealed, I'd hear about it and could watch it online later. But I read the statement Edwards issued, and like many, was fascinated by its icky self-absorption. Watching CNN last night, I thought Paul Begala might actually throw up in discussing Edwards' self-pitying tone. Unfortunately, the transcript's not up yet.

And how about Edwards' wanting us to know that he never loved Rielle Hunter (turning "I never had sex with that woman" on its head), and that Elizabeth's cancer was in remission at the time, so it was, well, not OK, but not as not-OK as it would have been otherwise? But I've ranged far afield of my original point.

Every day the media put their thumbs on the scale not just in terms of what they choose to cover, but what they choose not to cover as well. No doubt editors and news directors came up with a lot of high-minded reasons for not going after Edwards in October. I might have even agreed with them then.

But their decision — totally contrary to the way they handed similar allegations about Gary Hart in 1987 and Bill Clinton in 1992 — may have changed the outcome of the 2008 presidential campaign. No, they couldn't have anticipated it. But that's just another reason why they should have covered the story instead of covering it up.

Photo (cc) by Alex de Carvalho and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

It's over

Hillary Clinton will drop out of the race on Friday and endorse Barack Obama, the New York Times reports. (ABC News had it first, but the Times version strikes me as a bit more definitive.)

Not surprisingly, Charlie Rangel has the best line: "We pledged to support her to the end. Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is."

It's all about the Clintons

In my latest for the redesigned Guardian, I write that by placing their own psychodrama above Obama's big night, the Clintons have managed once again to hurt their party and their own reputations.

Vote "da" for Clinton

Last night, Hillary Clinton urged supporters to visit her Web site and let her know whether she should fight on or get out. I thought I'd take a look. As with any good Soviet-style election, you're given two options:

• "I'm with you Hillary, and I am proud of everything we are fighting for."
• "Show Hillary you're standing with her by making a contribution to our campaign today."

Choices, choices ...

Clinton enters "Daily Show" territory

The funniest thing about today's lead Boston Globe headline is that it's completely accurate.

I just sent off a piece to the Guardian on where the race goes from here. Despite some technical difficulties, it should be up in a bit.

Update: Well, this is annoying. I'm told that my deathless prose won't go up until 5 p.m. or so due to computer issues. Since my stuff tends to have the shelf-life of day-old fish, I'm afraid it may be overtaken by events. So be it.

Clinton (sigh) for veep

I can think of all sorts of reasons why Barack Obama shouldn't make Hillary Clinton his running mate. She stands for what he was running against, she's the most divisive politician in America, her husband is reckless, etc., etc. But I think he ought to suck it up and do it.

By running consistently ahead of Obama since — what? early March? — she has succeeded in forcing her way onto the ticket. It's going to be very difficult to unite the party, and it's got to gall Obama that it's largely her fault. Tough. Putting her on the ticket creates some problems, but it solves more.

OK, time to hit the cable nets.

Making sense of Clinton's senseless remark

Trying to make sense of Hillary Clinton's truly bizarre reference to Robert Kennedy's assassination? Good luck. The New York Times' Katharine Seelye put up a comprehensive blog post last night that's full of insight — yet she can't seem to make sense of it, either.

Seelye seems to accept Clinton's explanation that she was referring merely to the fact that the Democratic primaries had extended into June in 1968, and that she was not trying to suggest that, well, gee, maybe Barack Obama will get shot just like Kennedy, so she ought to stick around.

Yet Seelye also opens her post by referring to Friday as possibly "one of the worst days of Senator Hillary Clinton's political career." And she closes by wondering whether Clinton's remarks were so toxic that she may have even alienated those who want to help her find "a graceful way out" of the presidential race.

Perhaps most telling, Seelye embeds a lengthy commentary by Keith Olbermann that is, as she says, "tough beyond measure." Suffice it to say that Olbermann does not give Clinton the benefit of the doubt as to whether she had deliberately evoked Kennedy's assassination.

Personally, I'm not sure what to think. Like Seelye, I believe Clinton was trying to make a point about the timing, not the assassination. But her remarks were tasteless and grotesque nevertheless. This may be one of those situations in which what Clinton was trying to say is being deliberately distorted, and she deserves it.

NECN appearance

I appeared on New England Cable News earlier today to talk about the presidential race.

A different kind of fight?

The quick pundit take seems to be that Hillary Clinton vowed to fight and fight and fight some more, all the way to Barack Obama's inauguration next January and perhaps into his second term as well. But I thought I heard something else. Check this out, from her victory speech in West Virginia tonight:

And our nominee will be stronger for having campaigned long and hard, building enthusiasm and excitement, hearing your stories, and answering your questions. And I will work my heart out for the nominee of the Democratic Party to make sure we have a Democratic president.

No, she's not giving up. Yes, she told her supporters that she still thinks she can win. But she's obviously not stupid. She can do the math, even if Mark Penn can't. This brief acknowledgment of reality means something.

The Clinton-Kennedy split

In my latest for the Guardian, I ponder Ted Kennedy's decision to throw Hillary Clinton over the side of the yacht last week — a far more significant move than his endorsement of Barack Obama earlier this year.

The end of the media road

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that Hillary Clinton has finally reached the end of the media road. The new narrative isn't that she's losing, but that she's lost, and that the only thing reporters want to know now is when she'll get out.

I made similar points this morning on New England Cable News.

The nothing primary II

Well, that's what I ended up going with when I wrote my Guardian column last night. Clinton did really well, so there's no reason for her to get out. But she didn't win by the huge margin she needed to change the dynamic of the race. And on (and on) we go.

The nothing primary

Good grief. I've got to write something up for the Guardian in a few hours, and, right now, it looks like Pennsylvania's going to count for nothing. Clinton is probably going to win by a blah margin — say, six or eight points. That's enough for her to keep going, but not enough for her to have a realistic chance of winning the nomination, or to refill her depleted campaign coffers.

Here's a theory. It strikes me that, over the last month, increasing numbers of Democrats have decided that Clinton has a better chance than Obama does of beating McCain in the fall. Yet it's almost certainly too late for Clinton, and no one knows what to do about it. Thus we go on and on and on, and no one can say how it will end.

Mostly I've been watching MSNBC. Now Tim Russert and Harold Ford are drawing a line in the sand in Indiana. If Obama wins Indiana, it's over. Unless it isn't, of course.

More about the flag-pin lady

Nash McCabe, the Latrobe, Pa., woman who's so disturbed about Barack Obama's decision not to make flag pins part of his everyday wardrobe, turns out to be a known Obama-hater whom ABC News tracked down with malice aforethought.

Josh Marshall: "[I]t does reinforce my sense that the disgraceful nature of the debate wasn't just something that came together wrong, some iffy ideas taken to[o] far, but was basically engineered to be crap from the ground up."

Stephanopoulos doesn't get it

George Stephanopoulos, fresh from his Stephen Colbert shtick (right), tells the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that Barack Obama deserved to get tougher questions than Hillary Clinton at Wednesday's debate because he's the front-runner. Kurtz writes:

"Senator Obama is the front-runner," said Stephanopoulos, the network's chief Washington correspondent and a former Clinton White House aide. "Our thinking was, electability was the number one issue," and questions about "relationships and character go to the heart of it."

Besides, he added, "you can't do a tougher question for Senator Clinton than 'six out of 10 Americans don't think you're honest.' "

But the problem wasn't that the questions were unfairly tilted against Obama; it's that they were stupid and demeaning. Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson debased the process by mouthing Colbert-like parodies of Republican talking points as though they were actual questions.

"Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?" is not a question. "I want to know if you believe in the American flag" (from a Pennsylvania woman) is not a question. For that matter, "Six out of 10 Americans don't think you're honest" is not a question.

Does Stephanopoulos not understand this? Perhaps he does. Perhaps he realizes that he, Gibson and the debate producers screwed up big-time Wednesday night, and he's just talking trash to Kurtz but will nevertheless learn from his mistakes.

If not — well, please, as Media Nation reader Peter Porcupine says, bring back the League of Women Voters.

More: Jim Romenesko rounds up the critics.

Illustration by Chris Arkwright, and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Shales nails it

Tom Shales gets it exactly right in today's Washington Post:

When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates' debate last night, it was more than a step forward in the 2008 presidential election. It was another step downward for network news — in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.

Indeed, it seemed like at least half the debate consisted of stupid hot-button questions that are of interest mainly to people who've already decided to vote Republican this fall. The bottom was reached when a voter named Nash McCabe, of Latrobe, Pa., asked by video: "Senator Obama, I have a question, and I want to know if you believe in the American flag."

That's a question? Who would choose to air such idiocy?

More: "This was a travesty," Michael Tomasky writes in the Guardian. But I'm puzzled by Tomasky's and Shales' both saying that Stephanopoulos was off his game. I try to watch as little of Stephanopoulos as possible, so I'm not a good judge. But his performance struck me as entirely in keeping with why I generally change the channel as soon as his smug face appears.