By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN
MCGANN
Published on FOXNews.com on February 15,
2008.
Who was it that defined neurosis as repeating the
same mistake again and again, and expecting a better outcome each time? That's
really what the Clinton campaign is doing in its post-Chesapeake primary
strategy. Now Hillary defines Obama as the candidate who makes speeches, while
she is the one who provides "answers" and "solutions."
Why is Hillary embracing this new line? It's not
that she has any great record of solutions or answers of which to boast, but
rather that she wants to highlight Obama's lack of a legislative record. Once
again, she and her campaign geniuses are making the same mistake they made when
they decided to use the experience as their defining difference with Obama. It's
not that she had much, but they sensed an opportunity to highlight that he had
even less.
Of course experience not only didn't work. It
backfired massively. By co-opting the experience tag, Hillary bought into the
status quo and left Obama to be the agent of change. A candidacy that could have
excited tens of millions of women, the first serious prospect of a female
president, became merely a boring part of the status quo, shorn of its
novelty.
Hillary's claim to be the solution-person won't
work either for the same simple reason: She hasn't passed any. If she were
McCain, she could tout a long history of legislative success on key issues and
herald her ability to pass bills and engineer progress. But she hasn't done
that. She hasn't walked the walk so now she cannot talk the talk.
As a first lady, Hillary's sole important
legislative involvement came during the first two years of her husband's
presidency when she sought to pass her ill-conceived health care reform, an
effort that failed so miserably that it cost her party control of the House of
Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Between 1995 to 1997, she was
largely absent from the White House, traveling the world, promoting her best
selling book and helping to raise funds. She never attended strategy meetings
and her only intervention in the singular legislative achievements of Bill's
administration -- welfare reform and the balanced budget deal -- was privately to
urge a veto of the former and to oppose the latter because it provided for a cut
in the capital gains tax. Hillary returned to the White House in 1998 to oversee
the defense to the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment attempt, but the Clinton
administration essentially folded its legislative efforts during those years and
hung on for dear life. No portfolio of accomplishments there.
In the Senate, she has largely spent her time
raising funds for herself and other Democrats (in hopes of attracting the votes
of super delegates) and promoting her best selling memoir Living History. In
part because of a lack of attention and also because of the Democrats' minority
status during much of her Senate tenure, she has passed very, very little of
note.
Her legislative accomplishments in her first term
in the Senate were almost entirely symbolic. She renamed a courthouse after
Justice Thurgood Marshall. She passed a resolution honoring Alexander Hamilton
and another celebrating the win of a Syracuse University lacrosse team. She
renamed post offices, founded a national park in Puerto Rico and expressed the
sense of the Senate that Harriet Tubman should have gotten a federal pension 150
years ago.
Her only actual legislation included one bill to
increase nurse recruitment, another to aid respite time for Alzheimer's care
givers and another to expand veterans' health benefits, a paltry output for six
years' service.
In her second term, she has spent full-time
campaigning for president and has the worst attendance record of the three
senators now still in the presidential race.
So who is she kidding? If she wants to hit Obama
with a negative based on his inexperience and limited legislative record, she
should go right ahead. But to pretend that she is the "solutions" and "answers"
person while he gives speeches is absurd.
EVEN IN TEXAS: ADVANTAGE OBAMA
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on
February 15, 2008.
While polls still show Hillary leading Obama in Texas and also
in Ohio, her lead will likely fade and likely disappear by the time their
primaries are held two weeks hence.
If Obama wins in Wisconsin, he'll probably also carry Ohio, a
state with very similar demographics. Neither state has much in the way of
Hispanic voters (Only 2% of Ohio is Latino) or recent immigrants, the two key
groups that gave Hillary the edge in California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Go to DickMorris.com to read the rest
of this blog!
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***COPYRIGHT EILEEN MCGANN AND DICK MORRIS
2008. REPRINTS WITH PERMISSION ONLY***