Hillary Clinton’s Campaign – A Foreshadow of her Presidency?

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Tuesday January 22, 2008 · 7:03 PM PST

2008/01/22 · 19:03

First it was Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire Co-Chair Billy Shaheen, then Clinton pollster and top strategist Mark Penn, and finally BET Television Founder and prominent Clinton supporter Bob Johnson, who raised the question of drug use by Barack Obama WHILE HE WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL. Clinton surrogates have continued to fan the flames. Could this be an attempt by that campaign to scare voters into changing their support from Obama to Clinton? The "drug use" attack against Obama has worked: his momentum has slowed and Mrs. Clinton is now ahead in key states. Interestingly, the Clinton supporters raising the issue of Obama’s drug use did not question Bill Clinton’s use of drugs post-high school or his excuse that he did not inhale. If it were just the "drug use" attack, perhaps it could be forgiven. However, other tactics employed by Clinton allies and Mrs. Clinton herself raise troubling questions as to whether her possible presidency would employ similar strategies.

The recent Martin Luther King/Lyndon Johnson controversy in which the Clintons themselves injected racial politics into the Democratic race by downplaying Barack Obama’s achievements; the mysterious robocalls to primary voters falsely claiming that Barack Obama is a Muslim who was educated in a radical madrassa; or the lawsuit filed by the Nevada Teacher’s Union, a key Clinton ally, to try to overturn decisions made regarding polling locations that had been supported by the Clinton campaign when they were 25% ahead in Nevada -- these kinds of political tactics are emblematic of what is wrong with politics and why so many Americans are apathetic.

These efforts are also divisive and reminiscent of the kind of politics that has been practiced as an art form by Karl Rove and the Bush Administration during the past seven years. For Hillary Clinton, or any other candidate, to speak about changing and reforming politics in this country while engaging in such schemes is hypocritical. Furthermore, should the Clinton or any other campaign continue to practice such tactics, they risk polarizing the Democratic Party as well as the country over race, age, and gender. What both the Democratic Party and the country do not need right now is more divisiveness and gutter politics. It is time for the public and the media to ask, "if the Clinton campaign is engaging in these kinds of tactics in a Democratic Primary, is this how a Hillary Clinton presidency will function?"

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