Femme Fatale

NYT columnist Gail Collins sounds as though she's defending the gal, but turns on a dime:

"She took it all and came out the other end in one piece. She's one tough woman. Kudos.

"Her fighting spirit was all the more impressive because so many of the positions she was defending were virtually indefensible. It's not easy to try to make a matter of principle out of a refusal to say anything specific about Social Security. And you really need a spine of steel to stand up on national television and explain why it was a good idea to vote for a bellicose Senate resolution on Iran that has given George W. Bush a chance to start making ominous remarks about weapons of mass destruction again . . .

"Hillary Clinton is relying on her Democratic audience to understand that all her peculiar positions and triple-waffles have to do with a fear of being demagogued by the Republicans in the general election. But you would have to be a very, very committed Hillaryite to be comfortable listening to two solid hours of dodging and weaving on everything from her vote on the Iran resolution to her husband's attempt to keep records of their White House communications secret until after 2012."

Andrew Sullivan sees a case study in dissembling:

"Senator Clinton said that release of White House papers detailing her past record -- especially her Cheney-like refusal to allow any public daylight into her healthcare task force -- was subject solely to bureaucratic delays. Her former co-president, Bill Clinton, also recently said that he wanted total transparency with respect to these papers. Mike Isikoff finds - surprise! - that these statements are only 'true' in the sense that anything the Clintons say is 'true.' Money quote:

"[W]hile publicly saying he wants to ease restrictions on his records, Clinton has given the Archives private instructions to tightly control the disclosure of chunks of his archive. Among the document categories Clinton asked the Archives to 'consider for withholding' in a November 2002 letter: 'confidential communications' involving foreign-policy issues, 'sensitive policy, personal or political' matters and 'legal issues and advice' including all matters involving investigations by Congress, the Justice Department and independent counsels (a category that would cover, among other matters, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky and the pardons of Marc Rich and others). Another restriction: 'communications directly between the President and First Lady, and their families, unless routine in nature.' "

Is her entire candidacy based on calculated vagueness (in a field where pols get elected by being sufficiently vague)? Fred Barnes suggests the answer is yes:

"Senator Hillary Clinton tried a new tactic at the Democratic presidential debate Tuesday evening. It amounted to this: a major event or policy breakthrough or something else must occur, she indicated, before she'd be ready to state her view on a number of touchy issues. In effect, she used this tactic to duck issues. And she ducked a lot of them.

"She was asked, for example, if she favored raising the cap on income subject to Social Security taxation. Moderator Tim Russert noted she had both said the cap should remain at $97,500 and, privately at least, said she might favor lifting it to $200,000. In her answer, the New York senator declined to state her position.

"Why not? 'I have said consistently that my plan for Social Security is fiscal responsibility first, then to deal with any long-term challenges which I agree are ones that we are going to have to address,' she responded. To put it mildly, this was a vague answer . . .

"Her tactic was transparent. The other candidates ganged up on her. But she gave them plenty to gang up about."