It's Painful but Necessary to Keep Going

Maureen Dowd, who has no love lost for the Clintons, has been like a journalistic mentor to Barack Obama. I can imagine her following him around on his campaign stops, sitting in back of his plane listening to him talking with the media and then going back to her laptop and writing her columns explaining the political universe to him. She writes in a rather literary style, sometimes referring to classical opera or even Harry Potter for her good vs. evil view of Obama vs. Clinton.

She has been gently prodding him over the last several months to administer the knockout blow to his rival not just to make sure that she stays down, but to prove to everyone that he could actually do it. We Americans like our presidents to be tough and resolute and the campaign is the forum to show one's mettle. Ms. Clinton gambled from the beginning that being on the Armed Services Committee, voting in favor of the Iraq War Resolution and refusing to repudiate her vote would make her look tough. Instead, she reminds me of another decider who's just as intractable. Much as I favor Obama, he just hasn't shown me such toughness. He's a smart, scrappy fighter, but after seeing him bowl a 37 in Altoona (while wearing a tie no less!), he just doesn't look so tough to me. And at the South Carolina debate where she brought up Rezko, Clinton was--at that point anyway--looking like someone who was ready to do what it takes to win, in stark contrast to her opponent.

Dowd has written that Obama needs to slay the dragon, that the Clintons lie like nobody's business, and that they'll do anything to win the presidency despite Obama's upstart campaign. One might suspect that as a woman, Dowd would have some empathy for Ms. Clinton, the smart girl getting upstaged by the star athlete (bowling excluded) once again! But only another woman could get away with writing some of the most patroninizing (matronizing?) things about Ms. Clinton, some of which I've read with dropped jaw: "Just as in the White House, when her cascading images and hairstyles became dizzying and unsettling, suggesting that the first lady woke up every day struggling to create a persona, now she seems to think there is a political solution to her problem." Dowd really exemplifies what Peggy Noonan wrote recently of how many in the press are so dismayed by the Clintons' lack of scruples that they can't bear the idea of covering for four more years someone for whom they have such little respect. (Was Peggy reading my mind or what?)

This morning's column took a different tack as Dowd advised her political charge that this long drawn out primary has been good for him. After reminding us that the point of a presidential campaign is to WIN and not just fight the good fight, she tells Obama that he has been toughened up by battling Team Clinton and made into a better candidate for it. This idea has been much repeated, but Dowd of course revels in taking potshots at Ms. Clinton's "helpfulness" before concluding that "Hillary’s work is done only when she is done, because the best way for Obama to prove he’s ready to stare down Ahmadinejad is by putting away someone even tougher."