Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Column

Curried favor leaves bitter aftertaste

By ROBERT FRIEDMAN
Published May 21, 2006

As part of her steadfast but futile efforts to curry favor with conservative voters, Hillary Clinton thought she had found the perfect subject for connecting with her wary audience at this month's annual U.S. Chamber of Commerce convention: those sorry, good-for-nothing kids today.

"A lot of kids don't know what work is," the front-runner for the 2008 presidential Democratic nomination told the predominantly Republican crowd. "They think 'work' is a four-letter word."

She went on: "Kids, for whatever reason, think they're entitled to go right to the top with $50,000 or $75,000 jobs when they have not done anything to earn their way up," Clinton said.

Clinton couldn't have won over many of the plutocrats in the crowd with her unconvincing imitation of everybody's crotchety grandfather. But her pandering did annoy some of her core supporters - starting with her own daughter.

Hillary couldn't have been referring to Chelsea when she complained about all those kids who think they're entitled to $50,000-to-$75,000 jobs. After all, the "consulting" job Chelsea landed straight out of college reportedly started with a six-figure salary.

Yet Chelsea apparently took offense anyway. "She called and she said, 'Mom, I do work hard and my friends work hard,' " Mrs. Clinton said during last Sunday's commencement address at Long Island University, where she had a different message for a different crowd.

She didn't say whether her husband called to complain about the section of her Chamber speech in which she decried a "culture that has a premium on instant gratification."

In any case, Hillary Clinton's overtures to red-state voters are getting embarrassing. She has formed strategic alliances with conservative power brokers such as Rupert Murdoch and Newt Gingrich. She remains stubbornly hawkish on Iraq, even as many Republicans in Congress scurry for safer ground. Her rhetoric about sex and violence in the media has become increasingly censorious. And now she's even test-marketing Reaganesque anecdotes about how she "grew up in a home with one TV set ... and you had to argue about what channel you were going to watch, even though there were only three."

And she had to walk uphill through the snow to change channels, because her family didn't have remote control.

These clumsy lurches to the right haven't gained much traction, and they may eventually cause Clinton to lose some of the millions of Democrats who have long seen her as their best hope for regaining the White House, apparently on the theory that she will appeal to voters who didn't find Al Gore and John Kerry quite stiff and programmed enough.

Of course, Clinton isn't the only presidential aspirant repositioning for 2008.

Six years ago, in the midst of a bitter battle with George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain called out Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson by name as "agents of intolerance" who were "pandering to the outer reaches of American politics." But those agents of intolerance - with the help of Karl Rove's dirty tricks in South Carolina - derailed the Straight Talk Express soon thereafter.

So there was McCain, delivering the 2006 commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University - the same day Hillary Clinton used her Long Island University commencement address to backpedal from her complaints about today's spoiled youth.

McCain didn't say anything during his Liberty speech that directly contradicted his past views, but his very presence represented a capitulation of sorts. McCain is a man of almost incomprehensible physical courage, but his courtship of former adversaries within the Republican Party (including the president) could cause his reputation for (relative) political courage and candor to become a victim of his presidential ambitions.

The few dozen other politicians who seriously believe they might win the presidency in 2008 are busily pandering, too, but none of them have comparable reputations to self-immolate.

According to Michael Kinsley's definition, which is widely accepted in Washington, "a 'gaffe' is when a politician tells the truth." That's why President Bush, who has long held admirably pragmatic and humane views on immigration, suddenly discovered a crisis that requires the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops along the Mexican border. And it's why the president was forced to backtrack two years ago after he said "I don't think we can win" the war on terror but can hope only to "create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

Kerry and other Democrats pounced on the president's rare acknowledgement of reality, which probably helps to explain why the president seldom acknowledges reality today. As Hillary Clinton might say, today's politicians think "real" is a four-letter word.

[Last modified May 21, 2006, 08:07:35]