The Day the Campaign Began to End

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Cassius, in speaking with Brutus about the role of fate (among other things), tells him:

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

Such could be said about Senator Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Effectively giving up the ghost on Saturday at a big rally in Washington, Senator Clinton suspended her quest for the presidency. By suspending her campaign, she left herself some wiggle room to raise money and retain her delegates for another such farewell at the Democratic Convention in August.

Countless trees died as print analysts tried to explain why Senator Clinton—who only last year was seen as the “inevitable” candidate—lost the nomination to Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. Her advocates claimed it was sexism, it was unfair treatment by the press, it was the burden of being the sole woman candidate, and several other mêmes of a similar nature.

Yet nowhere did they ever come close to admitting that the fault may not have been in her stars but in herself. In the end, it always comes back to the candidate and something he or she did or didn’t do. And that’s what happened here.

Let me take you back to October 30, 2007, the night of the Democratic Party’s fourteenth presidential debate of the primary season (there would be 12 more). Held on the campus of Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, seven Democratic Party candidates faced questioning from MSNBC anchors Brian Williams and Tim Russert. Going into the debate, Senator Clinton was leading in all the major polls for the Democratic nomination—in both states that were holding early primary elections and caucuses, and nationwide.

Towards the latter half of the wide-ranging debate,Tim Russert posed a question to Senator Clinton about a statement she made concerning then-New York Governor Elliot Spitzer’s plan to give drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants. Senator Clinton had told a newspaper editorial board that the idea “made a lot of sense.” Russert wanted to know why.

At first, Senator Clinton danced around the issue concluding that: “…what Governor Spitzer is trying to do is fill the vacuum left by the failure of this administration to bring about comprehensive immigration reform…There needs to be federal action on immigration reform.”

She was immediately challenged by then-candidate Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut who criticized the plan saying that a driver’s license was a “privilege, not a right.” Senator Clinton countered by pointing out that she didn’t say that it “made a lot of sense,” and that Governor Spitzer’s plan contained three levels of driver’s licenses, so illegal immigrants wouldn’t necessarily have the rights and privileges of a full driver’s license.

But she was sharply challenged by Tim Russert who bluntly asked: “Do you, the New York Senator, Hillary Clinton, support the New York governor's plan to give illegal immigrants a driver's license? You told the Nashua, New Hampshire, paper it made a lot of sense…Do you support his plan?”

Her reply: “You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays gotcha. It makes a lot of sense. What is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem. We have failed, and George Bush has failed. Do I think this is the best thing for any governor to do? No. But do I understand the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this? Remember, in New York we want to know who's in New York. We want people to come out of the shadows. He's making an honest effort to do it. We should have passed immigration reform.”

When she said it “made a lot of sense,” that, a) contradicted the claim she made thirty seconds earlier that she didn’t say it, and b) she never gave a yes-or-no answer.

This small part of a larger debate on foreign and domestic policy stood out and political analysts leaped on it as an example of Senator Clinton’s inability to give a direct answer, a trait which, along with her other negatives, dogged her throughout the early going of the campaign. She prevaricated on the question for another couple of days, before finally getting to the point where she said that she did not support giving drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants.

But it proved the first major dent in her armor. Immediately, polls showed her dropping in popularity. By the end of the year, when she would be heading into the primary elections, she would even lose her lead.

We all know what happened next—she lost the Iowa caucuses in early January to Senator Obama and the tone was set. With a bounce-back win in New Hampshire the next week, she still was ready to make it a contest—but then Senator Obama reeled off 11 straight wins often by large margins.

Did the October 30 remarks have anything to do with this? It would be a stretch to think that the debate remark was the sole reason, but I believe it opened the door to what voters recalled they didn’t like about Senator Clinton—you couldn’t believe what she said, she would say anything to win, etc.

Remarkably, after a gutsy comeback win in Ohio on March 4, Senator Clinton again armed her critics with another drivers’ license-type episode. Throughout her campaign, she talked about her international experience as First Lady, and illustrated it with an anecdote.

She described what she said was a scene fraught with danger in 1996 when she and her daughter, Chelsea, visited Tuzla in Bosnia. She recalled that she and Chelsea faced considerable risks upon landing and had to run for cover from sniper fire. But video footage of the day, which popped up on YouTube, showed it was a peaceful landing. The First Lady was even greeted by a young girl on the tarmac.

This time, there was no waiting and Senator Clinton had to explain that she “misspoke and was sleep deprived,” and that she made a mistake.

But once again it was like taking out a billboard advertising one of the things that people said they did not like about Senator Clinton and her campaign—the exaggerations and the misstatements. Maybe she did remember it as a dangerous landing, perhaps she really thought that it happened as the way she portrayed it.

But it solidified in the public mind a trait that was not appealing about the candidate.

Even after all this, Senator Clinton ran an incredible campaign, winning most of the primaries down the stretch but it was too little, too late. Voters in the Democratic Party were looking elsewhere at a fresher face, a newer face, someone without the “baggage” and history that Senator Clinton brought with her into the 2008 presidential campaign.

To be sure, this is not the only reason that Senator Clinton won't be accepting the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination on August 28 in Denver. And there was likely a good deal of press bias against her and in favor of Senator Obama. This was particularly true among television network correspondents, one of whom said that hearing Senator Obama speak “sent a tingle” up his leg.

But she didn’t need to help her critics by supplying reasons to remind them what they did not like about her.

What would have happened if on October 30, 2007, she told Tim Russert flat out that she did not support drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants? Would her polling have stayed the same? Would she have gone into 2008 with a political head of steam and would it be Barack Obama now be under consideration for her vice presidential slot?

Maybe, maybe not. But IMHO, the beginning of the end of her campaign came on October 30, 2007, when she opened the door every so slightly to Senator Obama, who as we all know, came roaring through it to capture the nomination.

Whose fault was it? Was it the “stars,” or to paraphrase the immortal bard, “herself”?