The Race Goes On

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Clinton's late arrival to the national-security argument seemed yet another example of an overcalculated, underthought campaign strategy. She had made the conscious decision not to talk about national security until the general election because, as one of the generals supporting her told me, "Military stuff just doesn't make it with Democratic voters." In other words, it seems ... militaristic. It doesn't poll as well as health care. But national-security expertise speaks directly to the question of strength and authority, which is central to the presidency. And this has been the fundamental mistake at the heart of the Clinton campaign: a stifling literalism, which leads to caution and an overweening sense of calculation; the absence of art and creativity.

It seemed, for a few days before the New Hampshire primary back in January, that Clinton had belatedly discovered the importance of openness and humanity. There was the press conference she ended by giving MSNBC's Chris Matthews, one of her longtime media tormentors, a pat on the cheek. There were the near-tears. I expected she would continue in that successful vein, but her campaign was immediately hijacked by her husband, who disastrously held center stage for weeks. She clenched up again after that: Bill was all anyone wanted to talk about and she couldn't. Her February nosedive ensued.

Finally, with nothing left to lose, the actual Hillary Clinton came back, in a dizzying array of moods and aspects that seemed to confuse the press. She was gracious toward Obama at the end of the Texas debate. She was furious — "Shame on you, Barack Obama!" — in Ohio. She was sarcastic, mocking Obama's high-flown rhetoric, in Rhode Island. And she was a tough-minded, gritty, independent woman throughout, a woman on her own, as so many working women find themselves these days, cleaning up the messes that their feckless men have made. I cannot emphasize enough how important it was that Bill Clinton was out of the frame. She appeared alone onstage in victory in Ohio — and alone is the only way she can win the nomination, on the slim chance that it is still possible.

Is it possible? The delegate count and the unfathomable rules of the Democratic Party say it probably isn't ... unless she resorts to tactics that will make her candidacy seem sleazy and conniving, a course of action that will surely be self-defeating in the end. One would hope that her saying Obama is not a Muslim "as far as I know" on 60 Minutes was more the product of exhaustion than intent, but she could continue on the slimy path of innuendo, raising questions about Obama's patriotism and provenance. More likely, she could choose to play technical games: attempting to seat the disputed Michigan and Florida delegations even though she agreed that they should not be seated. She could try to stampede the superdelegates, but that will happen only if she continues to win as convincingly as she did in Ohio and Texas — and that will happen only if she continues to play the role of hardworking, hard-fighting, essentially admirable candidate.

As for Barack Obama, it will not be sufficient to simply play out the math, continuing to take his share of delegates as he loses high-profile contests. He may win the nomination that way, but he will lose his rationale: that he represents a dramatic, tidal wave of a movement for change. In fairness, Obama did raise his game in recent weeks. His pitch was more down-to-earth, substantive and specific in Texas and Ohio. But his TV cool requires a certain distance, and distance easily slides into remoteness. Sitting on a tractor in Texas on March 4, he didn't look as out of place as Michael Dukakis in a tank — but he did seem like a tourist getting his picture taken with a longhorn cow, a visitor to the hinterland. He badly needs to get down, get gritty, sweat a little, show that he is willing to scuff his shoes in pursuit of the nomination. In most cases, you don't achieve the presidency without surviving a near-death moment — and, if nothing else, Clinton's victories have given Obama the opportunity to show us how he handles adversity. This is now his red-phone moment.

But the victories gave Clinton so much more. Even if she fails to win the nomination, as seems likely, she has finally defined herself as a public figure, and an attractive one at that, with a personality independent of her husband's. She isn't as clever as he is, but she's just as tenacious ... and, in an odd way, more vulnerable and more real. Her flashes of anger and sarcasm, her occasional emotional overflows, her willingness to just go on about health insurance — these are all recognizable human qualities that, in the strangest turnabout of this campaign, have made her seem more accessible than her opponent. For the first time, she doesn't seem élite and entitled. For the first time, she's almost one of us.