It's 7am eastern and C-SPAN's Washington Journal is leading off it's program asking viewers to discuss the fact that Hillary Clinton says she intends to end the war.
Damn, those guys are good.
The most impressive thing about the HRC presidential operation is their efficient management of the media. There is very little wasted motion involved in HRC's public statements and events. Everything phrase, every gesture, every sign placement is designed to hit with full impact and to win that day's or week's media cycle. "I'm in it to win?" To shut up reporters questioning her dedication to the presidential race. Three nights of faux-intimate web chats? To kill the existing "Hillary is aloof and out-of-touch" meme in its infancy. Having as your only open press event during your opening campaign trip a rally with 3,000 Iowans? Prove to the Obama-infatuated press that she still has plenty of celebrity juice.
So, when I was listening to HRC's so-so speech at the DNC Winter Meeting yesterday and heard her say the following:
"You have to have 60 votes to cap troops, to limit funding to do anything. If we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will."
I knew that the HRC communications team had again earned its salary. Other candidates may have brought more rhetorical pyrotechnics, but HRC would still walk away with the headline:
What's great about the statement is that it is simple. It's declarative. It's macho. It's responsive to a public desire to feel that someone - anyone - in a position of authority is getting the message that Americans want this war...to...end...now.
There's a problem, though. We have been here before.
In early 1968, just prior to the New Hampshire GOP presidential primary, former Vice-President Richard M. Nixon began using a line in his stump speech to voters designed to fill the visceral desire for a resolution to stagnating war. That line would become known as his "secret plan" declaration. From the Friday, Mar. 15, 1968 issue of Time:
His aides have begun to call him "Richard the Relentless," and last week Dick Nixon showed why. Even with no candidate of stature against him, he stepped up his pace in the final days before this week's New Hampshire primary. And instead of talking in winner's generalities, he attacked the Johnson Administration and focused on the two most worrisome issues of the times: Viet Nam and urban violence.
"Of course I have no pushbutton solutions, no magic gimmicks," he said of Viet Nam. "But I pledge that if the war isn't over [this year], the new leadership will end the war and achieve peace in the Pacific." Exactly how? Nixon did not specify, but what he did say on the subject pointed toward military means rather than concessions to the Communists. Under Lyndon Johnson, he said, "we have wasted our military power by using it gradually instead of effectively." Further: "We can't withdraw. We've got to mobilize our effort. We can pull out, but that would lose the peace." For good measure, nonetheless, he accused Johnson of putting too much emphasis on the military aspects of Viet Nam.
We know now that Nixon's certainty that "new leadership" would bring peace in Vietnam was a flagrant misdirection. There had been no real intention behind the statement; only naked ambition and tactical purpose in his quest for the presidency. Only Vietnam separated Nixon from political restoration, so he removed it.
As with Nixon, HRC's statement was intended to remove Iraq from her path. She's facing competition for the Democratic nomination which sees Iraq as its most potent weapon against her. It only makes sense. And it will probably work. It certainly did for Nixon. However, even Nixon was dogged by a Gov. George Romney demanding to know from Nixon: "Where is your secret plan?
It's only a matter of time until someone asks HRC: where is your plan to end the war?