The Trouble With Opportunism

Some of the people supporting Hillary Clinton's campaign seem to me to be doing it because they agree with her relatively hawkish approach to foreign policy issues. Others are supporting her for careerist reasons. Others are supporting her because they think she has other virtues that outweigh problems with her relatively hawkish approach. And some people are just poorly informed. But there's a curious fifth faction in town whispering in peoples' ears in a manner that (intentionally) makes it difficult to do proper journalism on the subject. This group has an approach to foreign policy that's very similar to my own and insists that Hillary secretly agrees with us but needs to play the hawk in order to be politically viable as a woman.

I don't really believe she's only acting, nor do I really believe that such an act would be necessary, but either way James Fallows who's obviously heard this line as well makes the important rejoinder that this is basically irrelevant. If Clinton believes she needs to act like a hawk on the campaign trail, she'll believe the same thing while in office so either way it's trouble.

Comments

My impression is that this is true of Mitt Romney on a host of issues as well.

Posted by right | December 5, 2007 10:26 AM

I notice you didn't mention the possibility that some people are supporting Hillary because they believe she can deliver on domestic issues. I suspect this, rightly or wrongly, is easily the number one reason people support HRC. I realize, of course, that you're no doubt mainly talking about people inside the beltway, and that your own principal area of interest is foreign policy. But still.

Posted by Jasper | December 5, 2007 10:35 AM

I don't agree that Clinton will necessarily feel the need to act like a Hawk in office. As a Senator or Presidential candidate, Clinton basically is free to espouse whatever she wants. Bush sets the foreign policy and pays no attention to her. As President though, what Clinton says and does will become reality. While taking a hawkish posture, Clinton is still a member of the reality based community. She will if she becomes President have to confront the reality of Iraq and will not want to be still occupying it when she runs for re-election in 2012.

Posted by Ron | December 5, 2007 10:35 AM

"If Clinton believes she needs to act like a hawk on the campaign trail, she'll believe the same thing while in office so either way it's trouble."

Yup.

Posted by Petey | December 5, 2007 10:39 AM

Indeed. And Hillary's hawkishness is my biggest beef with her. Obama supporters need to lay off the conspiracy theories and continue to hit Hillary on this issue. She's out of step with the rank and file of her party and this should be seen as a problem for her.

As a voter, though, (and a lot of people here will think I'm crazy for this) foreign policy is far from my biggest concern. If, four years from now, we have a good national health care system in place, we have really begun to address global warming, and the Bush regime's destruction of the federal bureaucracy has been largely rolled back, BUT we're still in Iraq, I will be a happy man.

I'm not saying that Hillary is necessarily the best candidate to accomplish the first three items on my list. Actually, I think Edwards is. I'm just saying that Iraq is not the universe. Sometimes people lose sight of this.

Posted by Rob Mac | December 5, 2007 10:57 AM

All the evidence suggests that the Clintons are essentially non-ideological politicians who stake out their policy positions based on their core governing philosophy: triangulation. What Hillary "believes" is irrelevant. History strongly suggests that Hillary will continue to do what her and her husband have always done: stake out policy positions that split the difference between left and right positions. That is how Bill governed. It is almost certainly how Hillary would govern if she wins the presidency.

A lot has been made of the fact that Hillary seems to be more conservative than her husband on foreign policy issues. In my opinion, this simply reflects the reality that Republicans have moved far to the right on foreign policy, which in turn has pushed the "middle" to the right. Triangulation demands that Clinton shift her positions to the right in response to the overall shift. Ideology has nothing to with it.

I think it is very easy to imagine how a President Hillary would govern. One need look no further than the two political parties, then imagine a left-of-center Administration that continually cherry picks and incorporates the "best" of what the Republican Party has to offer in terms of polically popular policy initiatives. To the extent one believes the Republican Party is totally devoid of useful ideas, this is either a good or bad thing.

Posted by owenz | December 5, 2007 11:00 AM

Friend of mine, who I call 'The Disgusted Republican' likes Hillary because of her hawkishness. I disagree, but there's a lot of Disgusted Republicans out there. On the other hand, there's really no question that Hillary would be 'way better than any Republican on domestic issues.

Posted by MattF | December 5, 2007 11:00 AM

Others are supporting her for careerist reasons.

I can't tell if this is the straightfoward point that people hoping for jobs in the HRC administration have to support her now, or the broader point that the Clintons have been the most important faction in the Dem Party for sixteen years now, and a lot of people owe them their jobs and can expect--for both ideological and social network reasons--to advance more under a Clinton Administration.

If Clinton believes she needs to act like a hawk on the campaign trail, she'll believe the same thing while in office so either way it's trouble.

Right. Relatedly, the coalition she puts together to win matters.

All that said, I feel substantially more favorable towards her as of late. I'm suddenly about two ticks from wanting her to get the nomination.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | December 5, 2007 11:02 AM

If Clinton believes she needs to act like a hawk on the campaign trail, she'll believe the same thing while in office

I don't see how that necessarily follows. Once in office, a President has all sorts of levers of power unavailable to a candidate/Senator. It could be true, of course, but the premise that the way a candidate acts on the campaign trail is necessarily the way they will act once in office goes against, oh, probably millenia of human experience.

Posted by Glenn | December 5, 2007 11:02 AM

but needs to play the hawk in order to be politically viable as a woman.

Also, I think this is garbage, and the belief that it's not is a function of the aging of the punditocracy.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | December 5, 2007 11:04 AM

I thought the same thing this morning while hearing debate excerpts on NPR. When she rebutted Edward's cogent summary of her Iran foreign policy voting record as "playing politics" as if debating that point were an ad hominem attack on her person, puleeze, she lost all remaining credibility with me. That was a turning point. Having said that, she did try to defend her position by stating that, since the vote, Iran had changed its behavior (a dark age Cheneyism if there ever was one), but she presented no evidence, and Biden refuted the proposition wholesale in his turn. I had waited a long time in this campaign to choose a favorite, and I'm still thinking, but HRC just receded way into the background.

Posted by MMMM | December 5, 2007 11:07 AM

Would Hillary have invaded Iraq if she were President after 9/11? Of course not-no Democrat but Lieberman would have done that. Will a President Hillary attack Iran? If there was the slightest chance of that happening (which I doubt) it was removed by the NIE.

Hillary's "hawkishness" amounts to what then? She did what every Senator who saw themselves in the White House did in 2002 and supported giving Bush power to go to war while claiming she believed Bush that it was the best way to avoid war, and she won't for obvious (if possibly mistaken)political reasons say she's sorry.

Posted by tdraicer | December 5, 2007 11:10 AM

If Clinton believes she needs to act like a hawk on the campaign trail, she'll believe the same thing while in office so either way it's trouble.

I have the same concerns about Obama's resort to hitching a ride on rightwing narratives in order to be heard.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | December 5, 2007 11:13 AM

Would Hillary have invaded Iraq if she were President after 9/11? Of course not-no Democrat but Lieberman would have done that.

For those of us without access to her secret heart, why, again? There seemed to be a lot of Dem advisors who were pro-invasion. They weren't running for President in 2002. They do, however, seem to keep turning up around her.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | December 5, 2007 11:17 AM

Matt - unrelated to this post, but on the topic you have raised many times of urbanism and whether our lack of it in the States is due to our dislike of it or (at least in part) to our government's actual discouragement of it:

Check out in the Houston Chronicle the trouble Houston is having getting federal approval for its light-rail plan. (One link at the bottom here). It is stunning considering that Houston has such a bad national reputation for being the epitome of anti-urbanism, and yet the situation is that the city government is pushing hard to build a decent light-rail system, and the federal government is stopping them. The source of the Fed's resistance is technical - specifically, it deals with estimates of ridership numbers, with the Fed's position being the ridiculous one that Houston should only use current #'s of bus riders on the current routes as the estimates for the # of people who will use light-rail, thus assuming, ex ante, that there is no benefit in a light-rail system in getting more people to ride, and ignoring the considerable evidence that people will take rail where they won't take buses.

These particular disputes - and indeed, Houston's particular rail system - do not matter in the grand scheme of things. However, they are compelling evidence that 1) our federal government has different standards - and different in the Entirely Wrong Direction - for evaluating urban-friendly projects versus evaluating the building of more highways, and 2) local governments and citizens will support urban projects, even with their tax dollars, and even in such non-traditionally yuppie locations as Houston, Texas.

The link to the latest development in the fiasco, with the rest available in the Chronicle's archives:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5350930.html

Posted by Vermando | December 5, 2007 11:18 AM

Would Hillary have invaded Iraq if she were President after 9/11? Of course not-no Democrat but Lieberman would have done that.

That is totally fantasyland. Before Iraq turned into a massive disaster, find me one bit of daylight between Hillary Clinton (or for that matter all the "serious" democrats) and Joe Lieberman on Middle East policy. They went along with this fantasy about how dangerous a middling, little country crushed by sanctions was right up until the covers got yanked out and they looked stupid. Clinton is still rather insistent that they had good reasons for peddling this nonsense.

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 5, 2007 11:24 AM

Odds & ends:

insists that Hillary secretly agrees with us but needs to play the hawk in order to be politically viable as a woman

Actually, I've been pretty consistently amused by this assumption on the part of her supporters, because it is completely in line with the absolute certainty among her enemies that she is the biggest stealth lefty in history, just waiting to secure enough power to turn the US into some sort of socialist experiment, etc. It's pretty laughable; even if it were an accurate read of her feelings (and I absolutely don't think that it is), the truth is that people who wait and wait to be in a strong or secure enough position to do what they really want never actually do feel strong & secure enough to actually do it. Risk-aversion doesn't naturally fade-- although pain & frustration can override it-- and increasing stakes don't usually allow increased power to temper the habit.

or the broader point that the Clintons have been the most important faction in the Dem Party for sixteen years now, and a lot of people owe them their jobs and can expect--for both ideological and social network reasons--to advance more under a Clinton Administration.

And the less-positive flip side to this is that the Clintons are apparently more vindictive than the average Dem pol (dunno how they compare to the GOP's disciplinary operation), being perfectly willing to freeze out or otherwise punish the disloyal.

When she rebutted Edward's cogent summary of her Iran foreign policy voting record as "playing politics" as if debating that point were an ad hominem attack on her person

I'd love to see someone point out that her claim to 'experience' is pretty much exclusively in the realm of "playing politics"-- it is not in actual executive governance, after all-- and so she shouldn't be dissing the one area in which she really is excelling.

Before Iraq turned into a massive disaster, find me one bit of daylight between Hillary Clinton (or for that matter all the "serious" democrats) and Joe Lieberman on Middle East policy.

Well, I don't think HRC is anywhere near the delusional fanatic that Lieberman is, absent external events that force her to take positions; I'd be surprised if the ME was even that huge a priority for her personally, beyond getting some more Israel/Palestine handshake photo ops & a few positive paragraphs in history books.

Posted by latts | December 5, 2007 11:49 AM

I like the clintons and though I am to the left of them I support them vehemently because they are realistically willing to govern all the people from leftish middle. That is a rational place to govern a pluralistic nation from. Swinging left to right every 4 or 8 years to the extremes of bush or kucinich and now edwards is nuts and disfunctional. The Clintons are not a-historic: they model thier way after the Rooseveldts who while disappointing the left and making the right crazy with envy and hatred also managed to enact real left-center programs at a time when we need them. After Bush the center is far to the left and the way left is too far now.That is why some of us support bill and now Hillary: we believe they are better and more able and more fair than we even feel ourselves to be. They can work with orin hatch even if I never would let myself.

Posted by Michael | December 5, 2007 11:53 AM

This is another good opportunity to remind everyone of Molly Ivins' three ways to tell what a politician will be like in higher office: look at the record, look at the record and, lastly, look at the record.

Posted by Doug | December 5, 2007 11:55 AM

What a lame criticism of Hillary Clinton.

Look Matt, when GHW Bush ran for office he was labled a wimp. He took the nation to war with a healthy mandate and high popularity but lost his reelection to Bill Clinton. When GW Bush ran for office he too was labled a wimp. He took the nation to war with a healthy mandate, won reelection because Kerry was a proven wimp, and has demonstrated what it takes to be the worst president and least liked in the modern era.

Hillary Clinton is not John Kerry. She is not a wimp so she doesn't have to prove anything to herself or to anyone else. The conservatives have been attacking her ruthlessly for years and yet she remains focused, charming, and continues to win over supporters as people get to know her.

Hillary's foreign policy options are strengthened by her reputation for strength and charm, ie diplomacy. There are no personal psychological problems that would drive her to war just to prove something. Like her husband she has a pragmatic outlook and reminds me more of John Kennedy than of Lyndon Johnson.

Posted by ken | December 5, 2007 11:55 AM

Hillary's foreign policy options are strengthened by her reputation for...charm

Is it cocktail hour already?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | December 5, 2007 11:58 AM

As a voter, though, (and a lot of people here will think I'm crazy for this) foreign policy is far from my biggest concern. If, four years from now, we have a good national health care system in place, we have really begun to address global warming, and the Bush regime's destruction of the federal bureaucracy has been largely rolled back, BUT we're still in Iraq, I will be a happy man.

This attitude, shared by most voters, is why the United States deserves 1,000 9/11s.

Posted by disgusted with this evil nation | December 5, 2007 11:59 AM

This attitude, shared by most voters, is why the United States deserves 1,000 9/11s

Please spare us, nutter.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | December 5, 2007 12:01 PM

Nothing personal, but I just can't fathom Hilary Clinton's appeal. She seems like a prototype politician who becomes what is most expedient at the time. And, if she were in the corporate world, she wouldn't get a second look due to her lack of experience.

Posted by Pistol Pete | December 5, 2007 12:06 PM

If Clinton believes she needs to act like a hawk on the campaign trail, she'll believe the same thing while in office

And yet in 2000 the USA elected a compassionate conservative whose inauguration seems to have turned him into a right-wing-nut-job overnight.

Posted by a dove | December 5, 2007 12:07 PM

Swinging left to right every 4 or 8 years to the extremes of bush or kucinich and now edwards is nuts and disfunctional.

Uh, dude, this country has never swung to Kucinich. You can't come up with an actual example of the country swinging to the extreme left because this country swings within an extremely narrow moderate-left-to-moderate-right range (the recent administration excepted). Edwards is extreme? You're the one who's disfunctional. More like delusional.

Posted by Ryan | December 5, 2007 12:23 PM

There are many people who believe the correct foreign policy is to sound like a hawk but rarely ever act like one. Keep a very tough stance but also keep lines of communications open and accept Yes as an answer.

I'm not sure this is Hillary's position, but it seems to fit her. It would also explain Clark's endorsement.

Posted by Mark | December 5, 2007 12:34 PM

Chalk me up for 1 and 3, plus the comment about her superiority on domestic policy. I've never believed that dovish candidates were good bets to stay dovish in power--there's nothing more ornery than a dove whose dovish overtures have been rebuffed. Wilson and Carter are my examples, and frankly we haven't had any other doves in power, with the qualified exception of FDR (who'd be another good example if he qualifies). I think Clinton and Obama would come out pretty close together in a Monte Carlo simulation of US-Iranian relations over the next several years.

Posted by Rich | December 5, 2007 12:44 PM

This seems both right and wrong to me.

Right in that those who believe they MUST campaign a certain way often DO believe they have to govern as they campaign. Frankly, I think this is MUCH MORE of a problem for Obama tan his "bipartisan consensus" nonsense than it is for Hillary the Hawk.

What does being a hawk actually mean?

Foreign policy RHETORIC is not some matrix where stances lead to postions and wars.

IT is mostly, UNTIL this lunatic Administration, just posturing.

Hillary Clinton as President could do practically anyhting she wants on foreing policy, just as Bill Clinton did and just as George Bush Jr. did.

You picked the wrong issue to forget when a President has firm control of the agenda.

In sum, this post is wrong in its conclusions and focus.

On THIS style issue, Obama is the one to worry about.

Posted by Armando | December 5, 2007 2:11 PM

I call this "The Magic Phonebooth" theory.

That is, once elected, Hillary is going to step into a phonebooth, lose whatever the HRC-equivalent of Clark Kent's horn rims might be, and step out, dressed as Progressive Superwoman, going forth to do battle against the powers of evil.

I don't believe it for a minute, and what can you say to people who do?

Posted by lambert strether | December 5, 2007 2:39 PM

>For those of us without access to her secret heart, why, again? There seemed to be a lot of Dem advisors who were pro-invasion.

Uh, no. It's the difference between an unwillingness to risk opposing a then-popular GOP President and sharing his worldview. For example Bill as President was willing to go along with Neocon talk about the threat of Saddam and the need to removce him without ever having the slightest intention of actually invading to remove him. The invasion of Iraq was a Republican obsession, not a Democratic one and Bill, Hillary, John Edwards or John Kerry would not have pursued a Bush foreign policy had they been in power in 2002, nor will Hillary pursue a Bush foreign policy if she is in power in 2009.

Personally I'm an Edwards supporter (because my real choices, Gore and Wes Clark-the latter now with Hillary-didn't run). But I admit that if Hillary is nominated I look forward to watching Matt backtrack to make the same argument I'm making now-that we should all support her because her foreign policy will be quite reasonable. Which unlike his constant attempts as an Obama supporter to lump Hillaty in with the neocons, will have the added virtue of being true.

Posted by tdraicer | December 5, 2007 2:40 PM

Next November I'm voting for either Hillary or Obama or Edwards--doesn't really matter much too me. Each has their flaws and assets and individually is head and shoulders above anyone on the other side. Too bad Dems spend so much time trashing each other, its probably why they haven't been able to win elections. I give the GOP credit for spending the majority of their time trashing the Dems and creating a perception of us vs them.

Posted by jenn | December 5, 2007 2:46 PM

Would Hillary have invaded Iraq if she were President after 9/11? Of course not-no Democrat but Lieberman would have done that.

Well, Bill signed the Iraq Liberation Act and sent Burger and Albright around the country to advocate for a war with Iraq in 1998.

And Hillary voted for the war. Obviously, she isn't the type of person who would vote to kill 3,800 brave American servicemembers in a war that she actually didn't support, is she?

The only way she escapes that vote is by arguing that she's even more evil than that vote already proves.

Posted by Dilan Esper | December 5, 2007 8:41 PM

Who is the Real Hillary? Republicans imagine the stealthy infiltration of someone who will move towards the collectivization of the economy. LeftDems imagine the stealthy infiltration of Zionazi world hegemony conspirators with a Trojan mare. Both theories are based on a view of her as operating totally without sincere convictions.

Why is it so hard to imagine that the Clintons and those who agreed with and support them, did what they did in foreign policy because they thought it was the right thing to do? This could be willful lack of objectivity masquerading as sophistication.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 6, 2007 3:47 AM

"Will a President Hillary attack Iran? If there was the slightest chance of that happening (which I doubt) it was removed by the NIE."

1) No, it was not removed by the NIE. In fact, the NIE provides COVER for those who wish to start an Iran war by merely requiring them to "prove" (using the usual poor standards of "proof") that Iran has RESTARTED its (actually non-existent) nuclear weapons program.

2) Go read Arthur Silber's recent blog post about how nations go to war REGARDLESS of the intelligence - which is invariably wrong.

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/12/played-for-fools-yet-again-about-that.html

3) Provide any evidence that Hillary Clinton is not beholden to the same people who paid campaign contributions to her husband, not to mention those who are paying them to HER. Bill Clinton was a corrupt politician who pardoned Marc Rich in exchange for a fairly large sum of money. Hillary is no different. If you have evidence to the contrary, lay it out.

4) Let's assume Hillary does NOT initiate a war with Iran (also assuming Bush doesn't.) What if Israel attacks Iran and the Iranians retaliate against the US? Will Hillary blame Israel and negotiate with the Iranians for a ceasefire, claiming that the US had nothing to do with the Israeli attack and does not support it?

Email me when this happens.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 6, 2007 3:53 AM

Put me in the category of those who do not think the worst of HRC but who agree that she will continue to act as a hawk when in office.

Remember, the reelection campaign pretty much starts the day you take office. By nature, politicians and their consultants run for the previous election until circumstances overwhelmingly shift, giving you the chance to run for the next one. If she wins, she wins as a hawk and therefore her politics will demand that she govern as a hawk until such time as evidence emerges that being a hawk is politically damaging. Absent that evidence, it's bombs away!!

Only you can judge if that's what you want.

Posted by jp | December 6, 2007 8:41 AM

"Well, Bill signed the Iraq Liberation Act and sent Burger and Albright around the country to advocate for a war with Iraq in 1998.

And Hillary voted for the war. Obviously, she isn't the type of person who would vote to kill 3,800 brave American servicemembers in a war that she actually didn't support, is she?

The only way she escapes that vote is by arguing that she's even more evil than that vote already proves.

Posted by Dilan Esper | December 5, 2007 8:41 PM"

Very true. The IIA was a very useful rhetorical tool for war supporting-Republicans in 2002-2003: "Even your boy Bill said we should have him overthrown when given the chance. We're just doing what he wants now." If anybody has the chance, check out the video of a college kid calling Albright on her bullshit on this when he pointed out that Iraq hadn't attacked us and posed no real threat, yet the Clinton people were talking about somehow overthrowing Hussein and potentially starting a destructive war. She looked pissed. Bill Clinton and his triangulation helped set the stage for DC's rightwing drift and the Iraq War. His actions made crazy talk on Iraq seem less crazy and contributed to the idea among the more apolitical out there that it was merely a matter of spine and willpower that we could turn Iraq into Daytona if we just marched in against Hussein. Similarly, LBJ didn't all of a sudden start the Vietnam War. Truman and Eisenhower had backed the French their to get their cooperation in the early days of the Cold War. JFK backed South Vietnam and provided some military support because of policy inertia and he feared the Republican backlash of stopping our military support for South Vietnam. Truman, Eisenhower and JFK loaded the gun and LBJ pulled the trigger. Clinton loaded Bush's gun.

Posted by Reality Man | December 6, 2007 10:49 AM

In Reality, Saddam Hussein loaded Bush's gun.

Posted by robert powell | December 6, 2007 12:35 PM