Centerfield: Two Heavyweights

December 09, 2003

Two Heavyweights

Rick and I were apparently reading the same William Safire column this morning. He was wondering whether Hillary is a centrist, and I was thinking about the odd divergence of policy between perhaps the two biggest heavyweights in the Democratic party today.

Howard Dean is a self-made heavyweight. As of a year ago, he was among the longest of longshots for the Democratic nomination. And now, with Gore's pending endorsement leaked yesterday, he's coming close to wrapping it up before the first vote is cast. That's an astonishing trajectory.

Hillary is a heavyweight by name. In the same way that Bush became a Republican heavyweight by being the son of a president, Hillary became one by being first lady.

Her "weightiness" is taking on a life of its own, now, as she brings an evident seriousness and hard work to her job in the Senate.

Hillary's weight might be comparable, or even overshadow, that of Howard Dean. Polls continue to show she would be the favorite in the Democratic field if she were to run in 2004. Here's the latest AP poll:

Hillary Rodham Clinton	41%
Howard Dean	9%
Wesley Clark	9%
Richard Gephardt	8%
John Kerry	8%
Joe Lieberman	5%
John Edwards	2%

It's curious. Here we have two liberal icons -- both dominant figures in the party. But their fundamental approach to foreign policy, and to the security of this nation, is quite different.

Hillary places herself firmly and consistently in the New Democrat camp. She voted in favor of the Iraq war, and, more recently, for the $87 billion reconstruction package. She refuses to criticize the administration's use of intelligence in the lead-up to the war, pointing out that Iraq was viewed as likely to possess WMD during her husband's administration and earlier.

She emphasizes two important factors with regards to both Iraq and Afghanistan. First, the need to work with the international community and to bring in NATO and UN support. And second, the need to stay the course and bear the sacrifices necessary to succeed in both conflicts. She is, in effect, criticizing the president from both the left and right -- the left, for his diplomatic failures, and the right for his unsteadiness and increasing willingness to quickly draw down forces and transfer authority. She favors providing the necessary resources and staying until we can bring stability to both countries.

Meanwhile, we have Howard Dean -- the party's presumptive nominee -- running ads in Iowa touting not only his opposition to the war, but the decision to vote against the reconstruction package:

"I opposed the war in Iraq, and I'm against spending another $87 billion there."

Dean is, by way of this ad, against sending money to support our forces during wartime. I say "by way of this ad" because that wasn't his position previously. He explained before that he thought we should send the money, but that we have to find budget offsets in order to afford it.

These two heavyweights have two different approaches to national security. The New Democrat approach -- the one Hillary adopts -- contains the critical core of an effective policy, which is a steadiness and determination to succeed in our current commitments overseas.

Posted by William Swann at December 9, 2003 12:11 PM

Comments

Hillary and Al seems to be going in opposite directions. She clearly used to be very liberal, but she is moving toward the center, for reasons not entirely clear to me. With Gore, it's the exact opposite. He used to be a centrist Democrat from the South, but he seems to have cut himself loose from those moorings.

Posted by: rickheller at December 9, 2003 01:00 PM

Like I said below, I think HC is biding her time until 2008 when she doesn't have to run against an incumbent.

I'm not convinced that Dean is as anti-war as he's being painted. He's very effectively made a strategy of making simple statements (I'm against spending 87 million)that have been challenged , and then using the challenges as opportunities to explain a more nuanced position in detail once he gets everyone's attention. See that Rauch article at Reason (http://www.reason.com/rauch/120803.shtml) that i mentioned below. Dean has expressed the necessity of staying the course on multiple occasions and I don't think he's going to advocate a pullout like the cowardly John Kerry did. More likely, he's going to turn the discussion around to how very much Bush is spending overall, and say that he wants to support the troops, but not to the tune of 87 billion and not at the expense of a responsible budget.

Dean is acting very opportunistically and not taking especial care to explain the details of his policies when its to his current benefit (now, in the democratic primaries) that the reflexively anti-war left wing think he agrees with them. This is very slick, and i can virtually guarantee that if and when he wins the nomination, he's going to stress staying the course now, how he would have handled differently then, and how important a united allied effort is going forward, and how this last is something Bush can't achieve because of the antipathy he created. I'm telling you, this is going to be the path unless things start going really well in Iraq, in which case it probably won't matter, because Dean will probably get smoked.

Posted by: bk at December 9, 2003 01:04 PM

I think the obvious thing with Hillary is her family influence. Bill has made a few statements about Iraq in the last few months, and they echo what we've seen from Hillary -- for example, he pointed out that the intelligence he saw as president indicated Saddam was a threat.

Bill Clinton knows how to be a New Democrat -- knows it better than anyone. He knows when it's time to triangulate and adopt some aspects of your opponents policies.

And Hillary's Iraq policy is pure triangulation -- take the good parts of your opponents policy (overthrowing Saddam), and marry them to some good things your opponent didn't do (internationalization, commitment to victory). Concede certain points, then whallop them with the rest.

It's a political style that invites you to be reasonable -- because, in most cases, some of what your opponent thinks is right and some way off course.

Posted by: William Swann at December 9, 2003 01:17 PM

Fact: To win the Presidency, you have to run to the middle and capture independents/centrists. BUT, to win the party nomination in the first place, you have to play to the special interest groups within the party. No avoiding it. The most visible result of this is almost always in Cabinet jobs (e.g., Ashcroft for AG, or Shalala for HHS.)

Hillary was always the electoral brains of the Clinton family, directing Bill's strategy. It's no surprise she's running to the middle right now. She's NOT a centrist, save as convenience and strategy dictates, she's definitely a leftist. (She could be fairly described as a "moderate socialist," but she is certainly a socialist.) But she's also got to position herself for that '08 run, which means building a centrist image. And the very best time for her to do so is NOW, while there's a presidential election going on that she's not in, but is still associated with in everyone's minds. So when '08 rolls around, the memory impression from '04 will be that of Hillary as a moderate, not a leftist. It's a very astute strategy, the only problem being that if Dean wins the nomination, the New Democrats will lose administrative control of the party. Which is why you see Wesley Clark being backed by the old Clinton campaign crew. In '08 Hillary can make the justifiable claim that it was the Deanies who left them out in the wilderness for four years.

Dean has to keep his base happy until he locks the nomination, which means being leftist right now. But the smell of McGovern (and Goldwater!) is getting pretty overwhelming, IMHO.

Posted by: Tully at December 9, 2003 07:04 PM

Centerfield

A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics

December 09, 2003

Two Heavyweights