Hillary Clinton says she’s moved on after losing a tightly contested race for the Democratic presidential nomination. I hope that’s not true and that she uses her speech tonight to say the one true thing that’s in her heart: "Vote for me! I would make a better president than Barack Obama and here’s why…"
Obama has taken the minimum public steps necessary to accommodate the Clintons, including giving them prime-time speaking spots.
But he has taken few of the extra steps that Clinton allies say would have gone miles toward fostering goodwill.
He did not work hard to help her retire her $24 million campaign debt.
He did not make a high-profile statement repudiating any suggestion that Bill Clinton played “the race card” in the nomination contest — an allegation that the former president considers grossly unfair and that continues to infuriate him.
The race issue is one of the great ironies as it applies to the Clintons. While there are many reasons to vote against Hillary Clinton, race is not one of them. Contrarily, there is no other reason to vote for Barack Obama unless one is enamored with the idea of following a rookie leader into an unspecified season of change.
Just as significant, Obama has maintained a certain cool diffidence toward the former president. They spoke by phone last week. But for weeks before that, associates said, Clinton had heard nothing and did not even know when he would be speaking at the convention. The Obama campaign’s only communication was a form letter sent to all delegates.
Clinton loves to offer advice to fellow Democrats. But even in their conversations, Clinton friends say, Obama shows little deference or signs that he thinks Clinton, the only Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win two terms, has any special wisdom to offer.
“There is a lot Obama could have done to unify the party, and basically he hasn’t lifted a finger,” said one Democratic operative who is close to the Clinton team.
Much as I can’t stand the thought of seeing Bill Clinton roaming the halls of the White House that he despoiled, his wife would in fact be a better president than Mr. Obama. She would probably be better than John McCain too, if not for her unfortunate party affiliation.
So here’s hoping that Mrs. Clinton will, for once – and perhaps for all – tell the truth tonight.
Update
"Suppose you’re a voter, and you’ve got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don’t think that candidate can deliver on anything at all. Candidate Y you agree with on about half the issues, but he can deliver. Which candidate are you going to vote for?"
Then, perhaps mindful of how his off-the-cuff remarks might be taken, Clinton added after a pause: "This has nothing to do with what’s going on now."