assuming she decided to take the plunge into that pool.
But now the controversy over Hillary’s war vote threatened to eclipse everything she had accomplished. The King David letter, despite Bill’s best efforts, did nothing to subdue her critics. If anything, the attacks only grew more vitriolic in the first half of 2006, as Clinton refused to endorse the demand of some liberal Democrats for a firm timetable for troop withdrawal. To Hillaryland, the assault on her from the left was a test—and the results were not encouraging. The internal deliberations over how to handle the situation consumed dozens upon dozens of meetings and conference calls; her people debated the matter endlessly but never reached a conclusion. What should she do? Introduce legislation? Give a speech? Sit for an interview? And if so, what should she say? Stand her ground? Apologize? What?
Hillary had no intention of saying she was sorry. I don’t have anything to apologize for , she thought. You want me to apologize for the fact that the president is an idiot?
Hillary liked to say that she was blessed (or cursed) with a “responsibility gene.” It was no small part of why, as a senator from New York in the wake of 9/11, she had voted to authorize the war in the first place—and why she was resistant to pushing for a date certain for withdrawal now. If she did run for president and wound up in the Oval Office, the decisions regarding Iraq would fall into her lap, and having lived in the White House, she understood the presidential premium on flexibility. Then there were the politics of the matter. “I’m not going to let myself be dragged too far left during the primary season,” she explained to one of her most generous donors. If she reversed herself now, she would be buying a one-way ticket to Kerryville: the GOP would tattoo her forehead with the lethal “flip-flopper” label.
And so would the press—of that she was certain. The standards to which she was held by the media, she believed, and not without reason, were so much more strict (and latently hostile) than those applied to any other politician in the country. “Everything I do carries political risk because nobody gets the scrutiny that I get,” she told a reporter. “It’s not like I have any margin for error whatsoever. I don’t. Everybody else does, and I don’t. And that’s fine. That’s just who I am, and that’s what I live with.”
The Iraq dilemma was vexing, a pure Hobson’s choice. She was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t—and so she adopted her husband’s method and split the difference. In the King David letter, Hillary had claimed that she wasn’t voting for war in 2002 but instead for more diplomacy. Now she decided to add her name to legislation that urged the president to begin a “phased redeployment” of the troops by the end of 2006.
How the Democratic base would react to these maneuvers was an open question. In mid-June, brave in a hot-pink pantsuit before a rancorous crowd of several thousand progressive activists at the Take Back America conference at the Washington Hilton, Clinton excoriated the Bush administration’s domestic agenda and its handling of Iraq—for having “rushed to war,” “refused to let the U.N. inspectors conduct and complete their mission,” “committed strategic blunder after blunder,” and “undermined America’s leadership in the world.”
But then Clinton raised her hands defensively and added, with a mild quaver in her voice, “I just have to say it: I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government, nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain. I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country.”
The crowd erupted. “Why not?” people yelled amid a cacophony of boos and hisses so raucous that Clinton could barely be
But now the controversy over Hillary’s war vote threatened to eclipse everything she had accomplished. The King David letter, despite Bill’s best efforts, did nothing to subdue her critics. If anything, the attacks only grew more vitriolic in the first half of 2006, as Clinton refused to endorse the demand of some liberal Democrats for a firm timetable for troop withdrawal. To Hillaryland, the assault on her from the left was a test—and the results were not encouraging. The internal deliberations over how to handle the situation consumed dozens upon dozens of meetings and conference calls; her people debated the matter endlessly but never reached a conclusion. What should she do? Introduce legislation? Give a speech? Sit for an interview? And if so, what should she say? Stand her ground? Apologize? What?
Hillary had no intention of saying she was sorry. I don’t have anything to apologize for , she thought. You want me to apologize for the fact that the president is an idiot?
Hillary liked to say that she was blessed (or cursed) with a “responsibility gene.” It was no small part of why, as a senator from New York in the wake of 9/11, she had voted to authorize the war in the first place—and why she was resistant to pushing for a date certain for withdrawal now. If she did run for president and wound up in the Oval Office, the decisions regarding Iraq would fall into her lap, and having lived in the White House, she understood the presidential premium on flexibility. Then there were the politics of the matter. “I’m not going to let myself be dragged too far left during the primary season,” she explained to one of her most generous donors. If she reversed herself now, she would be buying a one-way ticket to Kerryville: the GOP would tattoo her forehead with the lethal “flip-flopper” label.
And so would the press—of that she was certain. The standards to which she was held by the media, she believed, and not without reason, were so much more strict (and latently hostile) than those applied to any other politician in the country. “Everything I do carries political risk because nobody gets the scrutiny that I get,” she told a reporter. “It’s not like I have any margin for error whatsoever. I don’t. Everybody else does, and I don’t. And that’s fine. That’s just who I am, and that’s what I live with.”
The Iraq dilemma was vexing, a pure Hobson’s choice. She was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t—and so she adopted her husband’s method and split the difference. In the King David letter, Hillary had claimed that she wasn’t voting for war in 2002 but instead for more diplomacy. Now she decided to add her name to legislation that urged the president to begin a “phased redeployment” of the troops by the end of 2006.
How the Democratic base would react to these maneuvers was an open question. In mid-June, brave in a hot-pink pantsuit before a rancorous crowd of several thousand progressive activists at the Take Back America conference at the Washington Hilton, Clinton excoriated the Bush administration’s domestic agenda and its handling of Iraq—for having “rushed to war,” “refused to let the U.N. inspectors conduct and complete their mission,” “committed strategic blunder after blunder,” and “undermined America’s leadership in the world.”
But then Clinton raised her hands defensively and added, with a mild quaver in her voice, “I just have to say it: I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government, nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain. I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country.”
The crowd erupted. “Why not?” people yelled amid a cacophony of boos and hisses so raucous that Clinton could barely be
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