As Hillary Clinton faces her moment of truth in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont primaries today, her election-eve strategic shift from emphasizing economic ills to national security is baffling and quixotic.
With polls clearly indicating that job security now weighs most heavily on voters? minds, the Clinton campaign suddenly started running a television ad casting her as the candidate best qualified to be commander in chief in a crisis.
It shows small children in their beds as the narrator intones: “It?s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there?s a phone in the White House and it?s ringing. Something?s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call.”
The narrator asks whether the voter wants it to be answered by someone who already knows the world?s leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. Then Hillary Clinton is seen picking up the phone.
The ad obviously seeks to reinforce her central, oft-repeated argument that she is “ready from Day One” to assume the presidency. But neither as first lady nor senator from New York has she had any crisis experience in critical decisions bearing on national security.
If there is any candidate in the 2008 race who can most persuasively argue readiness to fill the role of commander in chief, it is neither Clinton nor Barack Obama, but John McCain, the longtime Navy officer who spent his whole adult life in the military before entering Congress, including commanding a large Navy unit. Indeed, on Sunday?s “Meet the Press,” Republican consultant Mary Matalin commented that when she first saw the Clinton commercial, she thought it was a McCain ad. Just what were the political geniuses in the Clinton camp thinking?
Jules Witcover is a Baltimore Examiner columnist. You can respond to this column at [email protected].
