Frank Rich on Hillary

(crossposted at Green Mountain Daily.)

The NYT's Frank Rich, one of their better columnists, really tackles one of the biggest problems facing Hillary Clinton. In his 'Bring Back the Politics of Personal Destruction', he asks the question that Hillary should be asked every single day until the race is over:

The issue is not that Mrs. Clinton voted for the war authorization in 2002 or that she refuses to call it a mistake in 2007. Those are footnotes. The larger issue is judgment, then and now. Take her most persistent current formulation on Iraq: "Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote and I certainly wouldn't have voted that way." It's fair to ask: Knew what then? Not everyone was so easily misled by the White House's manipulated intelligence and propaganda campaign. Some of her fellow leaders in Washington - not just Mr. Obama out in Illinois, not just Al Gore out of power - knew plenty in the fall of 2002. Why didn't she?

Why didn't she indeed? The one frustrating thing about this is, isn't a little too late to be asking this question? I was asking it of John Kerry back in '04. That's why John Edward's mea culpa doesn't hold water with me.So many of us knew how bogus this war was from the get go. All it took was a bit of time to seek out the facts. And almost all of what we were saying back then has turned out to be true. How did so many in the Senate and Congress, with all of the resources they have that we don't, manage to miss something that was so obvious to many Americans? That is a question that they all need to answer, not just Hillary. Considering that the truthful answer probably has to do with fear of the right-wing noise machine and being branded 'unpatriotic', I'm not holding my breath waiting for that answer. It seems to be more motivated by a lack of courage, conviction and principle than being taken in by misinformation. And that, folks, should seriously raise a red flag on any of those candidates' ability to lead.