More Opinions Columnists

• V.B. Price: Preserving our water is greatest challenge the city, state faces
• Jeffry Gardner: End of The Trib is part of the demise of serious journalism
• Katherine Augustine: Time with friends from Japan provides treasured memories

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation
• Albuquerque company participates in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

"All I know," Will Rogers said, "is what I read in the papers."

I learn from magazines, too, even the odd piece of mail. Take this recent letter from the rightist Judicial Watch: "As a conservative political activist, you have an enormous personal stake in holding Hillary Clinton accountable for her crimes."

Crimes?

After reading 10 pages of purple prose alternating Clinton's alleged felonies with appeals for dollars, I understood: Judicial Watch was trashing Clinton for cash.

Me: I sympathize with the senator. She's intelligent, takes punishment well and once really cared about poor kids.

Sympathy, yes. Support her for president? Noooo! Nor do I understand Democrats who do. What are they thinking?

A contender should have convictions and demonstrated leadership. Sen. Clinton apparently lacks both.

Reality is complex, but the senator's positions are so modulated I cannot discern what she believes. She voted to give the president power to attack Iraq but regrets his use of it. She opposes attacking Iran but votes to lubricate the White House war machine. She says she'd get us out of Iraq but won't begin to say how. Like Nixon on Vietnam, remember?

I understand her fundamental calculus: Because men have run the world so brilliantly, voters won't elect a woman to high office unless she's a he-man. So Clinton acts macho.

That would be forgivable if she took a principled stand elsewhere. Anywhere. Domestically, maybe, where we're witnessing a corporate takeover of democracy, market values substituting for decency and a lawless executive. Where insurance and pharmaceutical profit-and-loss statements, not doctors, dictate health care.

Global traders maximize profits by exporting American jobs. We tax the super-rich at lower rates, complains Warren Buffett, than we do their secretaries. And as conservative Jack Goldsmith writes in "The Torture Presidency," the White House expands its power at democracy's expense.

Clinton's response? Calibrated. She favors as much reform in health care, trade and taxation as her corporate sponsors will abide. She plays nicely with Newt Gingrich and takes campaign dollars from Rupert Murdoch's guests. On constitutional questions — surveillance, habeas corpus, executive authority — the senator prefers nuance to bold dissent.

No wonder the late Molly Ivins exploded in January 2006: "Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone."

Leadership involves risk, but Hillary Clinton, like husband, Bill, prefers the safety of consensus. Thus the Clintons governed as moderate Republicans, pushing corporate causes like NAFTA while Democrats lost their reason for being and, logically, the Congress.

Do some of Hillary Clinton's Democratic fans favor her just because she's female? Inane. For her electability? Insane.

For complex psychosexual reasons I dare not plumb, Clinton makes the GOP base foam at the mouth. Of course, the Rovian thugs who once slimed Sen. John McCain for "W" will Swift-Boat any Democratic candidate, but Clinton's an easier target than, say, Edwards or Obama. In the December issue of Atlantic magazine, conservative Andrew Sullivan even praises the latter.

Admittedly, she looks no worse than the GOP front-runners, but after 15 years of failed leadership, it's time for change.

Bill Clinton, hobbled by events and his narcissism, tinkered. George W. Bush, empowered by events and his ignorance, set a radical course for empire. To reorient America toward its democratic promise, our next chief executive ought to share Washington's distaste for messianic foreign policy, Teddy Roosevelt's fear of big money and Franklin Roosevelt's advocacy for social justice.

Surely, that's not Hillary Clinton.