Snow White Survives

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 28, 2007 7:32 AM

The post-game chatter is all about Hillary.

As it is after every Democratic debate.

She gets more press than any other Dem. She gets more press than any of the Republican candidates. She's almost in Britney Spears territory.

Have you seen any other presidential candidates do all five Sunday shows on the same morning? Didn't think so.

After each televised faceoff, the pundits come on and go through their paces: Did Obama and Edwards do anything to change the chemistry of the race? (The answer is always no.) Did Hillary make any mistakes? (The answer is always no, though her waffle on a Yankees-Cubs World Series might tick off some diehard fans.)

Then the commentators start dishing out advice on how the Hillary juggernaut can be slowed.

Someone's already dubbed the race Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Clinton is nothing if not prepared--she was closeted in debate prep Wednesday morning, even though this was, by my count, the 162nd Democratic debate. And she's even showing more humor than she has in the past, defusing a question at the Russert debate about differing with her husband's policy on torture by saying she'd have to talk to Bill later.

From the right, the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol says he's more optimistic that HRC can be beaten in the general:

"Hillary Clinton is the only possible president among the Democrats. She did occasionally (though only occasionally) try to interject elements of seriousness into the evening. To someone like me, she's the only plausible nomineee. But that makes me wonder whether she's likely to be the nominee.

"She's out of sync with her party. That means if she stumbles once, and the magic cloak of inevitability is torn, she could be finished. Obama and Edwards will pour everything they have into winning Iowa. The Iowa Democrats are dovish. What Obama and Edwards will say, over and over--when they go up with serious paid advertising--is that Hillary voted with Bush in October 2002 on Iraq (and has never apologized) and that on September 26, 2007, Hillary voted for the Lieberman-Kyl amendment that (allegedly) lays the predicate for military action against Iran. Hillary could well lose in Iowa. Then Hillary could well lose the nomination. And a Republican would then win the presidency. He probably will anyway."

Dick Polman says it's all about November (of '08):

"Hillary Clinton got cuffed around pretty badly . . . but that kind of thing is bound to happen when a candidate acts like she's already measuring the drapes in the Oval Office.And, in response, she didn't always perform well. At times, she seemed testy and defensive.

"None of this may matter in the end, of course, since relatively few Amercans are even watching these '07 debates, but clearly some of her rivals (and the press, as represented by Tim Russert) signaled that they have no intention of allowing Hillary to simply bask in her front-runner status. And the danger, for Hillary, is that any poor responses delivered under fire might well be used as video fodder by the GOP at some future date."

At the New Republic, Noam Scheiber gives props to the man from North Carolina:

"Edwards has a knack for coming off earnest and high-minded even when he's knee-capping an opponent. When Tim Russert mentioned his charge that Clinton's mismanagement of health-care reform in the '90s had left tens of millions of Americans uninsured, he seemed genuinely offended. "I didn't use the word 'mismanagement,'" he said. "I think Senator Clinton actually worked--as first lady at that time--very hard for health care." He then promptly explained why having a "bunch of Washington insiders who sit around tables together" to plot the fate of the health care system was a horrible idea.

"Obama, by contrast, seemed as reluctant as Edwards was eager to emphasize differences with Clinton."

Or maybe it was a non-event. That's what Steven Stark basically says at Real Clear Politics:

"Nothing memorable happened, which in the long run helps Hillary Clinton, who continues to put in competent, if passionless, mistake-free performances. The star performer of the evening was Tim Russert, whose probing 'Meet the Press' type questions elicited more information and disputes between the candidates than any of the previous efforts by other hosts. (Maybe he should be the candidate in 2012.)

"Though there were exchanges that drew distinctions between the various candidates and Hillary, no one really went after her (save Russert). Barack Obama was the same as he has been before, which is the identical pose that has gotten him into a position where he's now far closer to the pack than he is to the front-runner. He needs more passion and more vision if he's ever to make a move and distinguish himself from the field. He's calm and reasoned to a fault and it's no longer helping him."

At American Prospect, Dana Goldstein is less enamored of Russert:

"I can't help help but focus on Tim Russert's oddly confrontational and . . . rather inane moderating style. From his repeated, failed attempts to trip up Hillary with references to her husband's administration, to his harping on John Edwards about his hair and expensive house, to his wrong-headed question about bible verses, to his obvious personal obsession with making Social Security 'solvent,' I came away from this debate feeling like very little policy was addressed."

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff doesn't use the word stonewalling, but . . .

"Hillary Clinton is trying to run out the clock. She refused to answer a number of questions -- whether she would take certain measures to fix Social Security, whether she would commit to stopping Iran from becoming a nuclear power even if it required a preemptive attack to do so, whether she would be comfortable with young children in her family reading in school about a prince who marries a prince . . .

"This is the Clinton debate strategy in a nutshell -- give non-answers or cagey answers when necessary and use her new-found sense of humor and/or attacks on President Bush in the hope that people won't notice. It should get her through the primaries and it may get back to the White House."

Not much on Hillary doing a 180 on one issue:

"Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign yesterday belatedly explained that her flip-flop to oppose torture was an evolution inspired by talks with retired generals.

" 'Upon reflection and after meeting with former generals and others, Sen. Clinton does not believe that we should be making narrow exceptions to this policy based on hypothetical scenarios,' said campaign spokesman Phil Singer.

"Clinton (D-N.Y.) came out against all torture - 'period' - in Wednesday's Democratic debate after previously telling the Daily News last October it would be okay to torture a terrorist to foil 'something imminent.' "

She was for it before she was against it?

There was a seriously weird moment on par with Admiral Stockwell's immortal "Who am I? Why am I here?" Byron York has the play-by-play:

"It happened when moderator Tim Russert asked former senator Mike Gravel about Gravel's somewhat troubled financial history. A condominium business started by Gravel went bankrupt, and Gravel himself once declared personal bankruptcy. 'How can someone who did not take care of his business, could not manage his personal finances, say that he is capable of managing the country?' Russert asked.

" 'Well, first off, if you want to make a judgment of who can be the greediest people in the world when they get to public office, you can just look at the people up here,' Gravel said in a nod to his fellow candidates . . . 'So I went bankrupt once in business. And the other -- who did I bankrupt? I stuck the credit card companies with $90,000 worth of bills, and they deserved it'-- People in the audience began to laugh. 'They deserved it,' Gravel repeated, 'and I used the money to finance the empowerment of the American people with a national initiative.'

"Gravel's answer was unprecedented in the history of these debates, and, if nothing else, it seemed guaranteed to win him at least a share of the insolvent vote, even among those who have stuck credit card companies for debts far more prosaic than empowering the American people with national initiatives."

If you're familiar with the Clinton campaign pressuring GQ into killing a piece on Hillary, I've got the first on-the-record interviews on the controversy.

Remember when all candidates took public financing, which was part of the post-Watergate reform against corrupt politics? Now it's treated almost as a moral failing:

"John Edwards' decision to accept public matching funds to finance his campaign is a political blow but it's probably also the only lifeline he has to stay in the race," says Politico. "The simple fact is that Edwards was never going to keep pace with the Democratic front-runner, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, or the upstart campaign of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama."

It was inevitable, given all the snarking about the Thompson marriage, but now Jeri makes her move:

"Sources close to Fred Thompson's campaign tell The Brody File that Fred's wife, Jeri Thompson will be featured in People Magazine. The article is expected to run next week.

"Jeri Thompson has pretty much stayed behind the scenes and not granted interviews. Clearly, what the People Magazine article will show is a different side of her, a side that shows her to be a mom of two young children. A lot of stories have been written about her (many of them not very flattering) but let's remember here that while she's active in her husband's campaign, she's more active in raising two young children."

You know who else used People to soften the old image? Bill, pictured with Hillary and Chelsea, back in 1992.

I've linked a number of pieces critical of Dan Rather, so here's a different view in Salon by former Clintonite Sid Blumenthal:

"Dan Rather's complaint against CBS and Viacom, its parent company, filed in New York state court on Sept. 19 and seeking $70 million in damages for his wrongful dismissal as 'CBS Evening News' anchor, has aroused hoots of derision from a host of commentators. They've said that the former anchor is 'sad,' 'pathetic,' 'a loser,' on an 'ego' trip and engaged in a mad gesture 'no sane person' would do, and that 'no one in his right mind would keep insisting that those phony documents are real and that the Bush National Guard story is true.'

"If the court accepts his suit, however, launching the adjudication of legal issues such as breach of fiduciary duty and tortious interference with contract, it will set in motion an inexorable mechanism that will grind out answers to other questions as well. Then Rather's suit will become an extraordinary commission of inquiry into a major news organization's intimidation, complicity and corruption under the Bush administration. No congressional committee would be able to penetrate into the sanctum of any news organization to divulge its inner workings. But intent on vindicating his reputation, capable of financing an expensive legal challenge, and armed with the power of subpoena, Rather will charge his attorneys to interrogate news executives and perhaps administration officials under oath on a secret and sordid chapter of the Bush presidency.

"In making his case, Rather will certainly establish beyond reasonable doubt that George W. Bush never completed his required service in the Texas Air National Guard."

With that verdict, I guess we don't need to bother with the trial.

My advice to all companies: If you're going to adopt a policy -- say, banning abortion rights text messages from your cell phones -- that you will have to cave and reverse five minutes after it makes the front page of the New York Times, don't do it.

This here is the story of a White House coverup, foiled at the last minute:

"Childrens do learn. So do presidents. And White House press secretaries.

"That was the word (words?) Thursday from President Bush's spokeswoman, Dana Perino, after a Washington kerfuffle over a grammatical slip-up by the president in New York the previous morning.

"At an appearance with city officials, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Mr. Bush sought to spotlight his signature education bill, No Child Left Behind. The president pronounced himself pleased by a recent report that math test scores have improved, citing it as evidence that the law is working.

" 'Childrens do learn,' the president said, 'when standards are high and results are measured.'

"For a president who likes to joke that he can barely speak English -- and whose every malapropism is dutifully recorded by the White House press -- the mistake was hardly out of character. (As a candidate, he once asked, 'Is our children learning?') But when the official White House transcript of Wednesday's remarks appeared, the 's' in childrens was nowhere to be found.

"Ms. Perino, who took over as press secretary this month from Tony Snow, told reporters on Thursday that White House stenographers were responsible for the disappearance of the 's' and that she had instructed them to correct the correction by putting it back."

Nixon thought Jack Anderson was a "skunk" and Kay Graham a "terrible old bag." Shocking, that man's language.

Ever get the feeling that the blogging community is rather incestuous? If so, I give you this paragraph by Garance Franke-Ruta:

"Why the blogosphere is like being trapped at a cocktail party with the same 50 people forever:

"For anyone who ever thought the blogosphere was insular, I'd like to lay out all the relationships behind today's D.C. cafe society contretemps, because it's actually kind of funny. Brian is/was Ezra's roommate. Sommer is Matt's friend. Ezra is staying with Matt here in NYC while we are all up here for the Clinton Global Initiative. Alex and I are friends, as are Alex and Megan. Matt and Ezra and Megan went shooting together on Yom Kippur (bad Jews!), along with Dave, who is throwing a joint birthday party with Brian later this week. Also, Megan and Matt work together. And I used to work with Matt and still work with Ezra. And I think we are all Facebook friends."

Whatever.