WaPo's Richard Cohen Devotes Whole Column To Attacking Hillary Over MoveOn
September 18, 2007 -- 12:09 PM EST // //
Glenn Greenwald and Atrios have already taken solid whacks today at the media idiocy surrounding the GOP attack on Dems for not condemning MoveOn's Petraeus ad. But the worst media offender by far has to be The Washington Post's Richard Cohen.
Incredibly, Cohen today devotes an entire column to Hillary Clinton's failure to blast MoveOn. Cohen's fury over this unwillingness to follow the GOP's command for criticism of the group is directed only at her, even though multiple other Dems also didn't see fit to follow the GOP's marching orders on this.
Sensing this weakness in his argument, Cohen comes up with several creative justifications for singling her out, the best one being...the scandals in the Clinton White House. He actually makes the argument that her failure to do the GOP's bidding over the MoveOn ad should remind us of all the questions the 1990s scandals raised about her character. Cohen writes:
Clinton is the front-runner, quite possibly the next president of the United States, so it is reasonable to focus on her and wonder if, as some allege, she does indeed have a spine. In this instance, it was nowhere to be found...Of course, if Hillary is "always wearing a question mark" because of those long-ago "scandals," it's because Richard Cohen and others keep bringing them up again -- even though he himself concedes that she was a party to the scandals "only through marriage." And we need to remind ourselves just how troubled we are by this past...because nearly a decade later she failed to heed the GOP's orders and condemn a single newspaper ad?The issue with Hillary Clinton is not whether she's smart or experienced but whether she has -- how do we say this? -- the character to be president. Behind her, after all, trails the lingering vapor of all those gates: Travel, File, Whitewater and other scandals to which she was a party only through marriage. In a hatless society, she is always wearing a question mark...it is not silly to wonder -- yet again -- about what makes Hillary run.
Woah. I mean, this blog has pointed all too frequently to the punditry's bizarre desire for the public -- against its own wishes -- to perceive Hillary's candidacy as a negative in light of the Clinton Presidency. But to suggest that bad memories of the Clinton scandals should be triggered by, of all things, Hillary's unwillingness to condemn the MoveOn ad is just deeply strange. It's borderline padded-cell material, really.