Hillary Hillary Hillary, You Stain

The New York Times has an article today where Hillary states that rather than admit she was wrong to vote in favor of the war she has decided to stick by her vote and not make an apology that isn't from the heart. That is to say, she wants to avoid the flip-flopper smear that helped doom Kerry. Let's get something straight here though, there is such a thing as changing your mind for the better. If the war is wrong, which it is, then helping it to occur in the first place was wrong. Admit it and move on.

A lot of people think that since Bush's "you may not agree with me but at least I stand for something" approach worked in 2004 that they can no longer admit mistakes. There's two things wrong with that. First, it's insulting to the voter. Apparently we can't figure out the difference between flip-flopping and an admission of an honest mistake. Secondly, it alters the whole face of political discourse because all of a sudden politicians have to stand by their mistakes and twist themselves up into rhetorical pretzels. Bush's belief that admitting failure is a sign of weakness has got everyone running scared when they really just ought to point out how silly that is.

I think Hillary lost a lot of votes in the Democratic primary today, if only for her stubbornness. It should be clear that when 63% of the country is against a war (and the number among Democrats must be much higher) it's safe to say "yeah, sorry about that one." I haven't written her off yet, simply because it's too early and she could go huge in some way between now and the primaries, introducing a bill that successfully brings the troops home, for example. But the NYT article above makes me dubious about her as a leader, simply because she doesn't seem to have the strength it takes to say "I was wrong." We've had 6 or 7 years of that kind of leadership now, and look where it's gotten us. I hope Hillary gets it together, and if she doesn't then I hope she's eaten alive by the Democrats she meets and greets so that other candidates learn the lesson that we want smart leadership over stubborn leadership, even if that means you open yourself to accusations of being a flip-flopper.