The "Nixonian" Thesis
Much like Paul Krugman, Greenberg celebrates the value of partisan confrontation, the"rediscovery of this liberal tradition" that has occurred during the Bush years. I'd argue that the Clintons' use of partisan confrontation differs from the activities of people like, in Greenberg's words,"John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Robert Kennedy--than whom no one was called 'ruthless' more often—[who] grasped the importance of confidently using power for progressive ends." Few people, I suspect, would compare the approach to politics of Mark Penn or Harold Wolfson to that of Robert Kennedy.
Greenberg is correct, of course, that the Obama campaign has drawn on a different ideological heritage than most previous Democratic frontrunners. It would be hard to imagine the Obama candidacy absent the contemporary unease with the confrontational politics of"spin," an approach to politics oriented around meaningless or even deceptive (but poll-tested) political rhetoric, and a novel use of new media that originated with Newt Gingrich, was expanded by Bill Clinton and Dick Morris, and has been mastered by Bush and Karl Rove.
Neither the Obama nor the Clinton campaigns, it seems to me, provide direct parallels to the efforts of 1960s liberals—though, it should be noted, Caroline Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, and Ted Kennedy all have endorsed Obama, and in glowing terms, not Clinton.
Greenberg also describes the Clintons' campaign as"not categorically different from any other hard-driving presidential bid, including Obama's own." He continues,"Nor should Clinton's tactics be faulted for giving ammunition to the Republicans for the fall campaign. Harping on a rival's weaknesses is part and parcel of any campaign. Al Gore denounced Michael Dukakis's prison furlough program in 1988. Bill Bradley branded Gore a serial exaggerator in 2000. Whether these attacks serve to toughen or soften up the eventual nominee can't be proved either way. But historically Republicans have needed no help in finding ways to bash Democrats."
Of course, Hillary Clinton went well beyond"harping on a rival's weaknesses"—she repeatedly stated that while the Republican candidate was qualified to be commander-in-chief, she couldn't make such a statement about the likely Democratic nominee. In 1988, Al Gore never affirmed that George H.W. Bush was more qualified to be president than Mike Dukakis. And in 2000, Bill Bradley never claimed that George W. Bush was more truthful than Al Gore. As Gary Hart pointed out,
"It will come as a surprise to many people that there are rules in politics. Most of those rules are unwritten and are based on common understandings, acceptable practices, and the best interest of the political party a candidate seeks to lead. One of those rules is this: Do not provide ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party's nominee. This is a hyper-truth where the presidential contest is concerned.
"By saying that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the country, particularly in times of crisis, Hillary Clinton has broken that rule, severely damaged the Democratic candidate who may well be the party's nominee, and, perhaps most ominously, revealed the unlimited lengths to which she will go to achieve power. She has essentially said that the Democratic party deserves to lose unless it nominates her."
In the last forty years, the only serious candidate who came close to Clinton's behavior was Hubert Humphrey, during the California primary, against George McGovern in 1972.
Even so, is labeling the Clintons"Nixonian" as scurrilous as the demonstrably false smears of Obama as a Muslim or McCain as having fathered a black child?
It's worth thinking back to the week before the Texas and Ohio primaries, when Senator Clinton focused on two primary lines of attack against Obama: (1) that while his advisors were telling the Canadians not to worry about his anti-NAFTA rhetoric, she meant what she said, and she had always opposed NAFTA; and (2) she was qualified to be commander-in-chief, thanks in large part to her experience as First Lady helping to bring piece to Northern Ireland, negotiating open borders for refugees in Manchuria, and surviving a harrowing trip to Bosnia that was too dangerous for the President to undertake.
We know now that both of these claims were not merely exaggerations—there were simply untrue. ABC's Jake Tapper used the recently released Clinton White House schedules to masterful effect, obtaining on-the-record reminisces from participants in a 1993 briefing recalling the First Lady aggressively lobbying for NAFTA. And the Bosnian episode appears to be a figment of the First Lady's imagination—her recollection obtained the maximum"four Pinocchio's" from the Washington Post fact-checker, and was the subject of this devastating youtube.
Perhaps basing a campaign on such factually flimsy pretenses isn't Nixonian. But, to paraphrase the former President, that would depend on what the definition of Nixonian is.