Psychologically flawed?

I have to say that my sympathies are somewhat divided in the matter of Obama v Clinton.

I’ve argued from the beginning that Obama is the better candidate and would make much the better president, though not without wavering now and then on both points. Obama’s campaign has been far from flawless. Hillary has impressed me—and who could not be impressed?—with her relentless drive. And some of her complaints about her treatment in the media have been quite justified, I think.

The commentariat’s prejudices have not run entirely Obama’s way, but he has plainly had the better of it. I still don’t buy the idea that the Clintons “played the race card”, for instance; there has been a lot of sexist sneering; the shock when she said that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated at about this point in the primary race (a crass, tone-deaf comment, but one of no large significance) was exaggerated and synthetic.

At best, let’s not forget, Obama has won by the narrowest of margins. The Clinton campaign was run with operatic incompetence from start to finish, and at a chronic financial disadvantage too—yet at the end her momentum was greater than his. On most of the different ways of counting Democratic votes (including the one I would advocate as a matter of best electoral practice: one registered Democrat, one vote) she would in fact have won this race. I prefer Obama, as I say, but I think she can feel with some justification that the will of the party’s supporters has been thwarted.

Having said all this, her performance last night was stunningly ill-judged, and speaks volumes about her fitness to lead—or lack of it. Under the circumstances, one can understand, maybe, a reluctance to concede. But to declare moral victory; to insist, knowing that she had lost, that she remains the stronger candidate; to start positioning herself to demand the VP slot as of right: all this was not just remarkably ungracious, it was also patently counter-productive from a strictly selfish point of view. Can’t she see that she has made it easier, not harder, for Obama to keep her off the ticket?

One of the CNN analysts debating Hillary’s non-concession speech mentioned emails coming in which said that Tuesday “needed to be her night.” At this one of the others spluttered, “It had to be her night? Obama just won!”… before, in a valuable moment of reckless honesty, referring to “the Clintons’ deranged narcissism”. Yes, I thought (recalling, incidentally, Alistair Campbell’s comment that Gordon Brown was “psychologically flawed”). Read her speech, and compare it with Obama’s. His extravagant (and tactically shrewd) praise of her; a speech addressed not just to the whole Democratic party but to the whole country; calculated, of course, calibrated—with nothing in it that was smug or self-regarding or sectarian. Contrast that with her perfunctory acknowledgement of him, followed by a recitation of her achievements and the obstacles that had been put in her way: Enough about our nominee, this is my night and I want to talk about me.

Something tells me that she is not cut out to be Obama’s deputy. If he puts her on the ticket, I think he will be making a big mistake.

Comments

Agree with most of this, but am a bit confused about the way we always talk of Hillary's "drive" and "tenacity." I agree she seems to have both in abundance, but why do we assume that Obama does not? He's been campaigning for just as long as she has. And he's been better at it, it would seem. Did his campaign not require drive and tenacity? Did he out-organize her in caucus states on his charm and oratorical style? Seems unlikely.

This reminds me a bit of the way white athletes (see Tyler Hansbrough) are often described in terms of their hard work and dedication, whereas black athletes are often spoken of in terms of their outstanding athletic ability. And I'm not suggesting there's anything racial afoot here. I just think it's interesting the way we develop these impressions of people and they become part of the accepted narrative.

Posted by Matt | June 4, 2008 11:55 AM

The reasons Barack won are pretty simple: he focuses on others,but Hillary focuses on herself. Its always "I've won this, I've done that." Whereas Barack is always giving credit to other people. Typical situation was yesterday. Barack dedicated the day to his grandmother, heaped effusive praise on Hillary and even said she had made him a better candidate. Hillary on the other hand reminded us that she had won more votes, she will be the better president (with no proof)and that more people has voted for her than any person in presidential primary history. This is what turns off people. To be enmeshed in some kind of deranged narcissism is a self serving journey that always ends in disaster. Nobody likes a self worshipping tin god. The 'its me or nobody' mentality belongs to the feudal era and not the modern times. I pity her and wish she will have a little sense of humility. God raises the humble, and humiliates the proud and arrogant.
"I will win." Guess what, she did not win.

Posted by Siam Erzuah | June 4, 2008 12:22 PM

"Relentless drive" -- are you referring to her neurotic compulsion? Her statement that she remains in the race because her opponent might be killed was "overplayed"? Her campaign of identity politics and later racist hatemongering, then crying sexism wa s"justified"? No wonder it takes you so long to undertand that she should not be vice president. Sentient people recognized that long ago.

Posted by Miande | June 4, 2008 12:44 PM

You are so correct, it is always all about Hilliary. Please remember where Obama started and how far he has come. At this point, people seem to forget the mountain he had to climb to get here. It would be a error to have her on the ticket and Obama has a rule "no drama queens or kings" and with the Clintons, he would have both.

Posted by Ann | June 4, 2008 1:02 PM

I agree with most of your comments, even those about Hillary's "drive"; while I think she exploited electoral divisions in a way that will make the Democrats' job in the fall harder, toward the end of the primary she also clearly won the confidence of a lot of voters, and Obama supporters should respect that (and emulate it, if possible).

My quibble is with this:

On most of the different ways of counting Democratic votes (including the one I would advocate as a matter of best electoral practice: one registered Democrat, one vote) she would in fact have won this race. I prefer Obama, as I say, but I think she can feel with some justification that the will of the party’s supporters has been thwarted.

Does this mean that if Obama could think of twenty new ways to count the popular vote that pegged him as the winner, he'd have a moral claim to it? The question is not how many of the various methods favor her (and the two candidates are actually even at three and three), but which are fair. If you believe in counting each vote, then presumably you would favor including estimates from the four caucus states that don't report totals. With them included, the only way that Clinton comes out ahead is if you count her totals from Michigan and count the votes of those who chose "uncommitted" not at all. If you need to exclude all of the voters from four states and 40% of those from Michigan to say you've won the popular vote, then I don't think you have any justification at all to say that "the will of the party's supporters has been thwarted."

I know it's a moot point now, but the media's refusal to debunk the idea of the significance of the "popular vote" and to challenge Clinton's claim to it has been one of the most disappointing things about their coverage of this primary. I mean, it's just arithmetic...is it too much to ask for accurate reporting on it?

Posted by professordarkheart | June 4, 2008 1:16 PM

Wholeheartedly agree with the professor above Clive. Michigan has to be left out of any popular vote count with any shred of fairness, which means Obama finished ahead there too (although admittedly, as with the delegate count, by a very slim margin).

Posted by Gordon | June 4, 2008 3:32 PM

Can’t she see that she has made it easier, not harder, for Obama to keep her off the ticket?

Are you certain of this, Mr. Crook? I think it's pretty obvious Obama would prefer not to have to choose her as running mate. And my guess is if he can avoid picking her he'll do. In Hillary's world view, things aren't just given to you, you have to take them. I happen to think her world view is correct. She wants to be Vice President and this is her preliminary shot across the bow saying she'll demand it. Maybe her power to prevent him from winning the general election will prove in the end to be limited. But that's a pretty big "maybe." Not one that I'd want to gamble the White House on were I in Obama's shoes. The reality is the party is pretty fractured, and what should be an easy waltz to the White House for any Democratic nominee now looks to be a real dogfight. That's what happens when you fail to close out your completion early, and prevent her from winning half the popular vote and 47% of the delegates. You leave a very strong political rival still standing. Hillary is saying to Obama: "Think you can win in November without me on the ticket? Great. Go for it."

Whereas Barack is always giving credit to other people. Typical situation was yesterday. Barack dedicated the day to his grandmother, heaped effusive praise on Hillary and even said she had made him a better candidate.

Oh yes, what a saint. His effusive praise of Hillary Clinton had nothing to do with naked self interest.

Posted by Jasper | June 4, 2008 4:25 PM

"He focuses on others????" "He focuses on others?!!!!" Obama's campaign has been about NOTHING BUT himself. HIS superior "judgment"; the fact that the Rev. Wright put HIM in a bad light, etc. It is HE who, by his own words, is the one bringing "Hope"
to this Nation. By both his and his wife's own words it is HE who will not let us continue our same bad old ways...ad nauseum.

Siam, quit drinkin' the kool-aide and take the blinders off before you're nominated to join the cast of "three blind mice."

Posted by virgil xenophon | June 4, 2008 4:26 PM

Virgil: it's "nauseam." I am so tired of people using words they can't spell.

As far as Hillary goes, I wish she would.

Posted by Mindy | June 4, 2008 4:56 PM

This is the first time I have ever heard anyone talk about total popular vote in the primaries.Primaries are about delegates on a state by state basis. Obama won that contest because he had a state by state strategy. It is true that HRC was a strong candidate, and she deserves respect but she lost, She was not robbed and even though there were those who behaved badly toward her, she still won the votes of lots and lots of men.

Hillary Clinton has been the "executive" in two instances that I can recall: she was in charge of Health care in 1994 and of her campaign for the presidency. Neither was successful.

The Clintons have been political winners and they appear to look on winning and having their way as an entitlement. If the ill grace that has manifested itself on occasion during the campaign is an indication of future behavior, I do not believe there will be many victories in their future.

Posted by John | June 4, 2008 8:27 PM

After a few months I believe that we will begin to know the full extent of the machinations of the Clintons' campaign. Ultimately, when the story and the facts of this campaign are known, we will be stunned at how close the Democratic Party came to nominating the most flawed candidate for president since Richard Nixon that was fueled and carried by the most corrupt campaign in recent memory. Look for the first indications of the nature of the campaign when Congressman Clyburn reveals the type of pressure he was subjected to by Bill Clinton. History will judge whether my assertion is accurate, but I ask you to recall it as the truth of the events that have occurred over the past year are exposed.

That is my assertion and opinion. Here is the fact: Hillary Clinton is a pathological liar. Time after time, speech after speech, "fact" after fact, she has knowingly deceived the American people. Her lies have often been described as being 'perceived' through the lens of the Clintons. But they were lies. Tuzla was a lie she finally got caught in because it caught someone's attention, and was easily exposed. The great majority of her lies have been over looked because of the speed of the campaign and the sheer number of words candidates say over the primary season. I close with one seemingly small example. Last night during her speech after Obama gained the nomination and after Clinton won South Dakota, but BEFORE the polls had closed in Montana. She stated:

"Thank you and thanks so much to South Dakota. You had the LAST WORD in this primary season, and it was worth the wait." >>She spoke those words 34 minutes after the polls closed in South Dakota and 26 minutes before the polls in Montana closed.

Posted by Marc B Adin | June 5, 2008 12:55 AM

What Ross is trying to say that, in the end, even those who did not harbor prejudicial views on Hillary (Ross volunteers for that role and uses anecdote to reinforce) ended up seeing her as unfit for POTUS, even for VP.
Actually, methinks the press went light on her on a lot of things. Let me count the ways:
The entire Bosnia issue should have been more dwelt on than whatever happened at Trinity UCC. She either lied (dishonest!), believed her own story (delusional!), or was too tired to speak right (which is not a good excuse if your campaign is predicated on your ability to pick up the phone at 3 AM to make life and death decisions).
(And who takes a teenage daughter into such a dangerous war zone? Is that any judgment?)
The fact that she remains married to a guy that acknowledged serial unfaithfulness, and her choosing to play an enabling role.
The tears after NH (does not gel with the entire cojones story; you are supposed to send thousands of Marines to risky missions and keep your cool).
The Livia Soprano-like half insinuations on Obama being a Muslim, on assassination scenarios.
The comments on Obama being unfit as CINC, that basically gave the GOP heavy ammo for the next months. That's utter recklessness at best, sheer sabotage of her own party IMHO.
The hard-working-white-people story arc.
And of course the non-admission. A president does not need 48 hours to come to grips with a devastating blow. That's for high-school kids. There was 9/11, there is a war going on, there are crime issues and other pressing issues. The introspection you are afforded is what Martin Sheen displayed in The West Wing.
And last but not least: she is innumerate. Otherwise, after assessing the extent of her Texas "victory", she would have quit and avoid having poor people keep donating their allowances, bikes, and dentures.

Posted by nuanced guy | June 5, 2008 9:53 AM

Of course it's Clive, not Ross.
Then again, I am not running for POTUS, and it is early in the morning...

Posted by nuanced guy | June 5, 2008 9:54 AM

I've supported a unity ticket from the beginning but now I have my doubts, though for far different reasons that most others. I don't think Obama has the confidence to share the ticket with such a strong personality as Clinton. It's his loss - and unfortunately our party's loss.
Obama outspent HRC almost two to one and yet his supporters - and the larger politcial press still insist on calling this a "huge upset". What a crock.
Obama had better not pick from the short list of losers I've heard mentioned - Webb, Sebolis, Strickland - and should instead take Wesley Clark. Clark can help buck up Obama's enormous deficit in credibility on foreign affairs and unlike the other turkeys I've heard mentioned, he might actually help Obama pick up a couple of states (Missouri and Arkansas?) that he might not have otherwise.

Posted by Nathan | June 5, 2008 4:30 PM

with nothing in it that was smug or self-regarding

You have got to be kidding me. How is trashing every good hearted American who came before not smug? How is not claiming jurisdiction over nature not self-regarding?

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth."

Posted by Béziers | June 5, 2008 7:53 PM

Béziers wrote:

"You have got to be kidding me. How is trashing every good hearted American who came before not smug? How is not claiming jurisdiction over nature not self-regarding?"

"...we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when [1] we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; [2] this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; [3] this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth."

[1]. The United States has done an abysmal job of providing a health care system for our fellow citizens except for the wealthy and powerful. Any comparison to any Western industrialized nation should be a source of embarrassment to each of us.

Our structural poverty rate of 13.4% to 13.7% since the late 1950's has created an almost permanent underclass. The term "working poor" is an obscenity. We have created a servant class that barely keeps people fed. We have cold-heartedly sold our jobs to world markets beyond our borders. Those countries, in turn, compensate people as indentured servants and, subsequently, make the wealthiest Americans hyper-wealthy as they profit exponentially from reduced labor costs.

[2] I can distinctly recall Reagan mocking the notion that pollution was in any way harmful to anyone at anytime. He joked that trees were the main cause of pollution. "Global warming" was turned into an Orwellian talking point used to attack scientists who posited factual evidence that plowing millions of tons of carbon based pollutants into the atmosphere was killing us and the planet. It has only been in the last years of the Bush administration that 'climate change' was admitted to be an issue of limited national concern.

[3] If you believe that continuing the war in Iraq, securing the future of the United States, and our standing as a great country among the family of nations are not critical issues then you belong to the group Robert Kennedy referred to when he said: "One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time."

We are all responsible, to some degree, for the critical problems we now face. Politicians, the great universities, the short sighted corporate powers, and the many nodes of power throughout the United States bear the greatest responsibility, however. Perhaps the most egregious example of the the failure of "...good hearted Americans who came before [us]..." is the current fuel crises which is crushing us. We knew in the early 1970's that this time would come, but we ignored it, hoping it would go away. But, like death, you can't wish it, pray it, or ignore it away. In 1980 I had a car that that got 40 miles per gallon; those cars were plentiful in the early '80's. Today we are awash in SUV's that serve no purpose except perhaps to give us a false sense of security.

So Béziers, those who could have done something about our current predicament, didn't. Those most responsible should not merely be trashed, they should be tried, executed, buried, then dug up after a proper and deferential time, be hanged, and then drawn and quartered á la Cromwell.

In school we learn a lesson and then we are tested. In life we are tested and then learn a lesson. Americans have skated far too long without taking responsibility for our actions, both here and abroad.

The election of Barack Obama is the first small step in turning this country around. It will be a long, slow process.

We are the problems we have been looking for [apologies to the Obama campaign].

Posted by Marc B Adin | June 6, 2008 12:57 AM

I don't understand why all of the monday morning quarterbacking of the failed Clinton campaign. You HRC sympathizers only analyze this from one perspective; giving no credit to Obama other that to highlight the disadvantage of the Clinton camp.

She had never faced a chronic financial disadvantage. The total dollars throughout much of the campaign were even. Only after she lost in February did this start to become an issue - of course, completely unrelated to how her campaign used its resources - her supporters were tired of throwing good money after bad.

Calendar
Demographics
Pandering

I suggest that if the campaign schedule were different, she wouldn't have enjoyed the overall success she had. She pandered for every vote heading into the March primaries and never looked back. The candidate 'whose message reasonated with so many' in WV, KT and other appalachian areas could never had carried California, New York, New Jersey and likely not New Hampshire had the primary calendar been different with these states to hold late elections.

Mr. Obama remained who he said he was, his message never strayed. No apologies!

Posted by Troy R | June 6, 2008 1:48 PM

Hillary's psychological problems are obvious to those not caught up in the partisan fighting over the last year and a half. I suspect she is a true sociopath (or to be precise...she suffers from antisocial personality disorder) and, while we've had others in the White House, I am glad that she will not be given the chance to wield the powers of that position.

Posted by Psycho Hillary | June 6, 2008 2:10 PM

The reason nobody comments on Obama's tenacity is because he makes it look effortless, and he doesn't complain, and he doesn't create a huge drama around himself.

We notice Hillary's tenacity because she's so vocal about it ("look at me me me me!!!"). Meanwhile, we forget that she didn't have to start fighting until after Iowa. He has had to fight an uphill battle since he entered the race. And he's done it with a lot more class.

People underestimate Obama's strength, they really do. They confuse his calm and good manners with weakness. Meanwhile, who won?

I have a feeling McCain is going to be equally stupid. He's going to try to paint him as another lily-livered liberal. Only Obama isn't lily livered. He's steely calm. And I bet he doesn't take shit from anybody. I have a friend like this. He's understated, listens, has a gentle, soothing manner. But when push comes to shove, nobody messes with him or disrespects him. And although he's never had anything but kind words for his kids, they know better than to cross him.

People forget: HE WON AGAINST THE CLINTONS! THAT doesn't require fortitude? Gimme a break.

Posted by cnnr | June 6, 2008 11:04 PM