Hillary's Iraq Shuffle

Twice before in Hillary Clinton's adult lifetime, a Northeastern Senator has been the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Both times, the nation was at war. In both cases, the war, presided over by a Republican President, was unpopular--especially with Democratic activists.

In 1971, Richard Nixon was managing a fighting retreat from Vietnam. Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine was favored to be his 1972 opponent. Centrist enough to be a favorite of the Democratic establishment, liberal enough to be respected by many on the left, Muskie had impressive credentials: first Governor, then Senator for a dozen years, as well as having been the 1968 Democratic vice-presidential nominee. Muskie delivered the well-received Democratic response to Nixon on election eve 1970, and, as TIME noted, "Some politicians thought his congressional election eve TV speech last November gave him a virtual lock on the nomination." The magazine also wrote that some Democrats worried about Muskie's political caution and lack of emotional connection with voters. But the nomination was his to lose.

And lose it he did. Even though Muskie wiggled belatedly left to try to accommodate the ever rising antiwar sentiment among Democrats, it was too little, and he remained basically a centrist to them. The more unequivocal antiwar candidate, George McGovern, won the nomination and got clobbered in the general election.

At the beginning of 2003, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts led the Democratic field. But the story of that year was the rise of Howard Dean, riding a wave of anti--Iraq war sentiment to lead in the polls. By October, the establishment candidates had to react. Kerry and Senator John Edwards tried to make up for their votes in favor of the war by joining nine other Democrats in opposing one version of an $87 billion supplemental war appropriation. Senator Joe Lieberman and Representative Richard Gephardt stayed the course and voted yes. Gephardt didn't survive Iowa, and Lieberman didn't survive New Hampshire. Kerry and Edwards were able to blunt Dean's charge, and emerged as the ticket. But Kerry's flip-flop on the $87 billion hurt him in the general election.

The examples of Muskie and Kerry are Clinton's Scylla and Charybdis. She will spend the next year trying to navigate between the twin dangers of being too moderate on the war for an antiwar primary electorate and going so far in mollifying that electorate as to weaken her chances in the general election. Like Muskie, a Humphrey backer in 1968, and Kerry, an Iraq-war authorizer in 2002, she's saddled with the original sin of being an original war supporter. Like Muskie, she's been moving gradually away from that position. Like Kerry, she'll soon have to cast votes on various legislative proposals related to the war.