The Final Tango

The truth about the motives and true thinking of Hillary Clinton in uttering wildly inappropriate comments about assassination being a factor in long primary races lies somewhere in between what Lanny Davis and Dick Morris think it is.

Most of us can agree, however, that perception almost always trumps reality in politics. At the end of a bitter race that has stoked the tense issue of race, the perception of Clinton’s comments and subsequent apology are bordering on disastrous. Could there be something more important NOT to say for someone trying to convince the party to overturn the pledged-delegate lead and choose her, or someone angling for the job of trusted and loyal vice president?

If only the reference to such a dark tragedy, and the mentioning of an unmentionable topic in the same conversation defending an extended fight could be chalked up to a misunderstanding. For someone like Clinton, a keen and fiercely controlled politician who knows exactly what to avoid and what to omit, it is more than surprising.

But two things stand out even more than the topic of Robert Kennedy’s death. The first one is Clinton’s reference to her husband’s nomination. Bill Clinton, like Sen. John McCain, vanquished the opposition and sent them packing in March. The June primary in California was a perfunctory contest. A fitting example of why to keep fighting? Not remotely.

Then in Clinton’s response to the firestorm — likely having shocked her, since there was none when she made the same reference two months ago to Time magazine — she apologized to the Kennedy family but very clearly not to Barack Obama and his supporters who fear for his safety.

The Clinton campaign has since blamed the backlash on the Obama campaign, delightedly e-mailing publicity over the incident to the media throughout the weekend. But if the audience for this final tango of Clinton’s is indeed the superdelegates, then she has bombed. One might think she would bend over backwards to assure party leaders and black voters especially that she would never want anything to happen to Obama. But that is not what she said in the South Dakota supermarket on Friday, is it?

In her next job, whatever it may be, let’s get Hillary Clinton a better message guru.

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