Hillary's purgatory

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So Hillary Clinton now says she "wouldn't have voted that way" -- authorizing Bush to use force against Iraq in 2002 -- if "we knew then what we know now".

Satisfied? Me neither.

Pam Spaulding calls this Hillary's "sorry-ass strategy". And Will Bunch finds that what Hillary won't "do is what some of her Democratic White House rivals have done: Admit that her vote was a mistake, and admit it in the clearest language possible."

The obvious contrast here, as Will rightly notes, is John Edwards, who admitted in a prominent Washington Post op-ed in November 2005 that he had been "wrong" to vote for war: "The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth." Bush and the warmongers weren't telling the truth, but 27 Democratic senators, including Edwards, Kerry, and Clinton voted for what has become a mistake of horrific proportions. While Edwards and Kerry have taken responsibility for their mistake, Clinton remains stuck in a typically Clintonian state of purgatorial triangulation where she wants to have it all ways but where nothing really means anything and where what appears to be political calculation is really nothing but a mask for cowardice.

Clinton may change her ways and come clean, but would that matter?

We have Edwards.