Clinton’s Problem Isn’t Flip-Flopping. It’s Pride.

It looks like Senator Clinton’s in a bit of hot water over her flip-flop-flop-flip on granting drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. Her current position is one of a guarded “I’m agin’ it”, which is a radical departure from the more affirmative “Sure. Sounds okay to me…wait, what?” answer she gave during the last debate.

I know some folks around the blogosphere and the TV talking heads are kind of excited about this, as if they’ve managed to tack down the Senator on some Grand Kerryesque Reversal. They tend to forget that tacking down a Clinton on anything is like nailing Jello to a wall and, as Hillary has shown this week, she can reverse tack in a way that’d make Dennis Conner jealous. Ed Morrissey has a particularly good summary of the story.

That said, I don’t think that the Senator deserves all the shots she’s taken. I don’t think she’s being duplicitous, or even particularly Clintonian on this issue. I think she’s managed to back herself into a corner and she too darned proud to say the one thing that would be honest and give her a bit of breathing room.

That one thing is, “I really don’t know”.

Quick…tell me exactly what yuo think about whether illegal immigrants shuold get drivers licences or not. You have thirty seconds to explain what you believe and why you believe it. There are at least four other people on the stage with you just ready to tear you a new one for your answer. Oh, and you answer will be scrutinized for days, if not weeks to come by political friends and foes as well as a rapacious blogosphere. It’ll show up on YouTube so that a long time from now, a robotic anchor controlled by the disembodied brain of Wolf Blitzer will be able to show it on the retrospective “The 2008 Campaign: 100 Years Later”. Your entire campaign could well ride on the answer. You didn’t exactly know that question was coming and it’s a question about what a state governor should do in their state, which is kind of out of your hands as a would-be President.

So, how’d you do? I didn’t do it particularly well either. To be honest, I’m not sure exactly where I stand on the issue. I can see where society would derive a benefit from making sure that everyone on the roads was properly licensed so that in case of an accident we can do our best to make sure they make good on the damages for which they’re reponsible. There’s also the whole “making sure they know the rules of the road” thing, too. That’s always handy.

On the other hand, I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea to give official government approval to folks who are here blatantly breaking our laws. Now, it may be that illegal immigrants are criminals we want to handle a little differently because of the complexity of the situation. Nevertheless, it’s not productive for a person to walk into a state government building, openly admit to the government representative that they are a criminal, and then walk out again with an official government ID provided happily to them without question.

Somewhere in the middle there is the answer and I honestly don’t know what it is. I’m willing to bet that Senator Clinton doesn’t really have a firm answer either. I can forgive her for that. I don’t expect someone running for President to be able to answer about what a Governor might do on a state level. Presidents don’t run states, much as some folks would like to think otherwise. In fact, they don’t have very much juice at all on state issues. That’s how the Constitution works. What’s less forgivable to me is her inability to simply confess that she doesn’t really know what the right answer should be. I don’t think any candidate should have a ready answer for every question. I definitely don’t think that they should act as if they do. There are big things on which a candidate should have a ready and educated answer: national defense, taxes, national energy policy, beating down the Islamists, the size and scope of the federal government. On other things, I think we can handle a little bit of honest ignorance.

I don’t ding a candidate for not being able to give me the most firm and decisive answer in the heat of a debate with more people on the stage than a P-Funk / Graham Central Station concert tour. I do ding them for being a bit too proud to admit that there are things they don’t know. The Senator can fix her problem right now by swallowing some of her pride and simply admitting that she was talking out of her posterior and that’s something she won’t do again. Unfortunately, I think she’s way too wrapped up in the Iron Hillary persona to ever consider looking even the slightest bit frail and human.

In the end, that overweening pride will be her undoing. It’s going to cost her the White House, which is a shame. If we could ever cure her of her deep and abiding love for socialism, I think she could make a pretty fair President.

Then again, if she can swallow her pride on one thing, she may be able to swallow it enough to realize that she’s not going to be the one to fix socialism and make it work where it’s failed everywhere else. That’s a hopeful thought.

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Category: The 2008 Horse Race