Unsurprisingly, Hillary Clinton's advisers are trying to determine where they went wrong and how they can right things literally overnight in New Hampshire. Consequently the New York Times has invested in a 1,300-word examination of her predicament. It is here that one finds the surprise.
I and millions of others can tell you in one word where Hillary went wrong, but, astonishingly, you won't find that word anywhere among the NYT's numerous quotations or expansive analysis.
Forget "change." The word is Iraq.
And the lesson she's learning is that for all the campaign talk about change, she can't change history, and it is history -- specifically, that of Oct. 2002 -- that haunts her. Yet, again, nowhere in any of the analysis of Clinton's problems is Iraq referenced even once -- not by the outside experts, not by her advisers, not even by the NYT's remarkably uninquisitive journalists.
Their coverage of the Clinton Panic does skim the broad, the shallow, the seemingly inclusive and, at first glance, every finger-pointing angle imaginable.
One campaign adviser attacked Mark Penn -- a senior, C- Machiavellian who continued dumping the cocaine charge on Obama even after that tactic self-immolated -- for failing to grasp in a timely manner that change was trumping experience. Another blamed Penn and hubby Bill for poring over polling data while Hillary's "personality deficit" was left dangling.
Others regretted having put Bill out there so visibly -- "that the campaign miscalculated in having Mr. Clinton play such a public role, that Mrs. Clinton could not effectively position herself as a change agent ... so long as he stood as a reminder that her presidency would be much like his."
Yet others have come to believe "that Mr. Obama now owns the 'change' mantra and that Mrs. Clinton needs a Plan B."
Delving further into abstractions, the NYT also reports that some advisers think "both Clintons had miscalculated the endurance and depth of what they called 'the Obama phenomenon.'" Both were convinced that "more voters would question whether Mr. Obama was ready to be president and more reporters would pick apart his political record and personal character."
But now, for the pièce de résistance: "Anger inside the campaign at the news media has hardened; Mr. Clinton, in particular, believes reporters will be complicit if Mr. Obama becomes the nominee and loses to a Republican."
Complicit? Well, maybe, but only in a way favorable to Hillary. For how the New York Times -- the paper of record -- could print a 1,300-word piece on what ails the Clinton campaign without even once mentioning her war-authorization vote is nothing less than stunning.
A little clarity is needed. And since the Times won't offer it, I will.
Clinton sold out 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, not to mention a couple trillion of your and your childrens' money, for political advantage in 2002 -- as a safe cushion, that is, for 2008. It was as simple as that: others' lives and the U.S. Treasury for her shot at the White House.
The Democratic base knows it and independents know it. Hers was a calculated exchange, as cold-blooded, impersonal and politically clinical as they come. And now the electorate is reciprocating. There would have been no "Obama phenomenon" for Hillary to suffer without it. The same goes for John Edwards.
There's not a soul alive who believes that any member of Congress honestly believed that Iraq was a grave threat to national security, one in need of a military intervention that virtually every Middle East expert said would blow up in our faces. I'm no expert and I knew better -- how could a United States senator not have known?
It was just pure politics: Republicans wanting to capitalize on hypernationalistic gung-hoism and a grotesquely large segment of gutless Democrats not wanting to be left behind.
Clinton is now paying for it, Edwards is paying for it, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd have already paid for it. Simple as that.
Had Obama been a presidentially ambitious U.S. senator in 2002, perhaps he'd be paying now as well. Who knows. But that's a hypothetical, not hardcore reality. He's been lucky enough to spout "change" because of his inexperience -- he wasn't around at the time to be tested, as were Clinton, Edwards, Biden and Dodd, all of whom failed.
In a way, "change" is indeed the problem for Mrs. Clinton. She can't change history.