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In Politics, Fortune Favors The Bold

In perhaps her sharpest debate of the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton offered primary rival Barack Obama harsh words on a number of issues and finally landed a few solid punches. But her distinctions, made on health care, the war in Iraq, NAFTA and even on a recent endorsement from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, may have come too late in the game to stop Obama's surging momentum.

A week before voters head to the polls in crucial primaries in Texas and Ohio, Clinton finally learned a lesson her campaign should have been following all along: Candidates who don't gamble, at least a little, will not win. Clinton, by not taking a risk in any number of facets of the campaign, has likely backed herself into a corner from which she has neither the time nor the ability to emerge. In both parties' primaries, the words of the Roman poet Terence ring true: Fortune favors the bold.

For the past week, Clinton has auditioned a number of attack lines against Obama. She has experimented recently with outrage, over an Obama mailer describing Clinton's position on NAFTA; suggestion that secrets hidden in Obama's past might be unearthed while Clinton has been tested; naivete, for Obama's promising meetings with dictators; and hypocrisy, for failing to condemn outside spending on his behalf after hitting John Edwards for similar spending before Iowa.

But none of those attacks have shown evidence of seriously damaging, or even marginally sticking to, Obama. And in tonight's debate, Clinton's strong words came across more appropriately than they have in previous, albeit half-hearted, attempts. An enduring failure of the Clinton campaign was their unwillingness to recognize Obama as a threat early in the process, compounded by their horror and inaction at his sudden rise. As Obama's standing in the polls went higher, Clinton continued to play prevent defense, a good way to slow, but not stop, the bleeding.

Clinton's sense of inevitability, too, has hurt her throughout the campaign, bringing with it a fear of failure. After losing in Iowa and staging dramatic comebacks in New Hampshire and Nevada, Clinton had the chance to score big wins on Super Tuesday. Instead, she abandoned many states completely, handing Obama the opportunity to win many by wide margins.

Obama, on the other hand, competed in virtually every state, and indeed he lost some, sometimes by embarrassingly large margins, as in California and Massachusetts. But he played everywhere, meaning his losses still earned him delegates. In the subsequent ten contests, Obama, who had invested early, took easy wins while Clinton made little more than cursory attempts to infiltrate the market.

Clinton lost many states because her campaign has been afraid to lose. Obama's losses are offset by his effort, however long the odds, to reach into what should have been Clinton's base. Clinton, unwilling to compete and lose on Obama's territory, has instead only competed in states she absolutely must win. Next Tuesday, Obama can lose and continue his bid, and probably even maintain his front-runner status, because he has taken a risk. Clinton, throughout the last year, has not, until tonight.

The phenomenon is hardly unique to Clinton's campaign, or even to the Democratic primary. A year ago, most assumed that either Mitt Romney, with a vast personal fortune and a skilled political team, or Rudy Giuliani, with a national profile akin to a hero, would have been the GOP's presidential nominee. But both passed up opportunities to take the risks necessary to win, and in the end, John McCain beat them out.

Romney failed to risk irritating conservatives by appealing to business Republicans, with whom he might have had more in common than Iowa conservatives. Giuliani, benefiting from the same front-runner mantle Clinton had, passed up chances to compete in Iowa, New Hampshire and other early primaries, instead content to hunker down and wait for the race to come to him.

McCain, on the other hand, spent most of last year taking risks. He gambled most of his bid on a $100 million fundraising plan; by midsummer, he had lost that bet, and with it almost lost his campaign. Later, he pushed his chips in on a surge strategy in Iraq that, at the time, looked like a much longer shot. His assertion that he would rather lose a campaign than a war was one shared by a majority of the Republican base, and, as it turned out, it paid off. So did his continuing a long and free-flowing relationship with the media.

Obama, beginning as the underdog, had to take a risk or two in order to cut Clinton down to size. He offered sharp critiques of Clinton in debates, some that worked (Most notably an assertion that Clinton had offered several versions of an answer to one question on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, in Philadelphia) and some that didn't (Including a claim that Clinton was "likable enough" that came off as flip in a debate in Manchester). Clinton decided to wait it out and bank on high name recognition and a traditional campaign to coast to what she thought would be a big and easy win. She did not take the risk, as one top aide suggested, of pulling out of Iowa, which might have made Obama's win there meaningless. She did not heavily target key Super Tuesday states that might still have handed her a loss but robbed Obama of a few delegates. And she did not, until last night, offer consistent and repeated attacks on Obama in an effective way.

Tuesday night may be seen as one of Clinton's most effective on the campaign trail. Taking a risk can be damaging, but it can also pay off big. With just a week to go before must-win contests for her campaign, and with Obama soaring in polls and momentum, Clinton finally took a risk. At the moment, this risk looks like it came too late. Fortune may favor the bold, but in a fourteen-month campaign, it pays to be bold for more than a week or two.

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Related Topics: clinton | election 2008 | obama |

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