Why Hillary Failed

Yes, it's over. Though there are many people out there who still give Hillary Clinton a chance at winning the Democratic nomination, since Iowa we have witnessed an utter collapse of all that was supposed to be presidential about her. Forget about gracious in defeat. She's showing none of the been-there-done-that coolness under fire that we were promised she'd show when under fire from Republicans.

The stress of a failing campaign surfaced in many unsettling ways this week. In a callous attempt to win back the female vote, Hillary misrepresented Obama's support for abortion rights. At the New Hampshire debate, she took sole credit for SCHIP. While her efforts certainly helped enact the program, I think Senator Kennedy, among others, would respectfully disagree. Yesterday, her emotions got the better of her at a rally, and she implied that the country was in trouble if it elected anybody but her.

"This is very personal for me, it's not just political, it's [that] I see what's happening, we have to reverse it."

And let's look at the following mediated exchange between Clinton and Obama.

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At Saturday's debate, Hillary decried Obama because his candidacy gives the nation "false hope." Obama responded that great leaders like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn't have accomplished all they did without aiming high, thinking big. Hillary then either doesn't get Obama's point, or tries to spin it into something else entirely, stating:

"I would, and I would point to the fact that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done."

Never mind that Clinton's message here is muddled at best (King didn't really accomplish that much without LBJ? Kennedy wanted to help, but he wasn't inspirational enough?), it seems to me that she labors under the notion that because she once resided in the White House she herself already is the president.

The crowning moment of self-importance, however, had to come when Bill announced that his wife was tougher, not as tough, mind you, but tougher than both Nelson Mandela and Yitzhak Rabin. Here's his Fox-News-like hypothetical as to who he would chose for a game of Saving the Fate of Human Civilization:

"But if you said to me today, 'I'm gonna give you one last job for your country--go and do this--but it's hazardous and you may not get out with life and limb intact and you have to do it alone except I'll let you take one other person,' and I had to pick one person whom I knew who would never blink, who would never turn back, who would make great decisions under pressure and would never forget what the purpose of being there was, I would pick Hillary of the people I've known and I would never even think about it. It would be an easy choice."

Sorry Mandela, Rabin, Einstein, Churchill, Gandhi, King, George Washington and all the rest. You just don't hold a candle to Hillary. Of course, these remarks came on the very day that his wife was deriding Obama for comparing himself to inspirational leaders. Why vote for a guy who merely aspires to be one? To hear Bill talk, Hillary already is a great world leader.

Is this what we want in a president? Boasting? In typical Clintonian fashion, the self-inflicted wounds are the ones that hurt the most. And there have been no shortage of those since Iowa. The reasons that Hillary will fail in her bid to become president can be found in the microcosm of this difficult week in her campaign. For all that she has been through in her life, and that is quite a lot, her story is just not inspiring enough voters.

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