When Everything You Do is Wrong

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is now caught in the death spiral of media piling-on and internal finger-pointing that always plagues a losing campaign.  It is remarkable how quickly – and perhaps prematurely – it has come.  And it is startling how little grit, fight and gumption her supposedly hard-boiled campaign operatives are showing.

Bert Bennett, Jim Hunt’s political godfather, had a saying about this phenomenon: “When you win, you did everything right.  When you lose, you did it all wrong.”

So it is now.  It is so clear – through the rear-view mirror – to all the critics and to the disgruntled campaign insiders how inevitably flawed her strategy was from the beginning.  And they all marvel at the strategic brilliance and tactical flawlessness of the Obama campaign.

If it was so clear, why didn’t somebody point it out at the time?  Need I remind you that, mere weeks ago, Hillary was the inevitable, unstoppable nominee and Obama was a flailing, fledgling naïf?

She should have gone negative on Obama before he found his game and destroyed him then, the revisionists say now.  Well, yes, but it is also a truism of primary campaigns that when one candidate attacks another, both suffer, and a third – say a John Edwards – fills the vacuum.

The fact is that, after New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton was doing pretty well.  She had found her voice.  She had let us see a glimpse of a real, feeling person.  Her prospects were looking good, just weeks ago.

Then Bill Clinton walked onto the stage in South Carolina.  As he is wont to do, he took over the stage.  He proceeded to show us just how politically clumsy – and dangerous – an old politician can be when he is out of practice and puffed up with his own greatness.

Al Gore and his campaign never stopped blaming Bill Clinton for Gore’s loss in 2000.  Now Clinton may have done in a second Democratic presidential candidate.

In the final analysis, the fundamental flaw in this campaign may have been that the candidate was named Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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