Tuesday, October 30, 2007

A Woman Among Boys   [Rich Lowry]

Hillary won. She was authoritative, as usual, and fended off all the attacks from Edwards, Obama, and Williams/Russert. This was a full-on assault from all quarters and she handled herself ably. On Iran, she was persuasive, emphasizing the need for sanctions as part of the diplomacy. In general, she's far and away the most serious Democrat on national security. But she attacks Bush and Cheney just as harshly as any of the other Democrats, which makes it difficult for anyone to make the "not liberal enough" or "trying to act Republican" charge to stick.

Obama was tentative and long-winded; he's not comfortable with landing punches. Edwards was crisper and more effective, but doesn't have a lot of credibility. And to the extent he gains, it hurts Obama and helps Hillary who benefits from a divided opposition.

Hillary's weaknesses were on two fronts. One is likeability. She didn't bring any of her practiced charm tonight. But that needn't matter as long as she's confidence-inspiring, as she is—unflappable and well-informed. The other is flip-flopping/dodginess. She never really answered this charge even though it came up repeatedly, and in fact she fueled it. She had to come back a couple of times and say, "No, that's not what I meant" because she was delivering answers so finely crafted to avoid committing herself to anything controversial. Of course, with her driver's license answer, she ended on an extremely dodgy note.

All this means there will be enough anti-Hillary storylines out of the debate to please Edwards and Obama, but neither of them seemed to be in her league much of the night. A Republican strategist watching would have been heartened by the naive liberalism on display tonight—heartened, at least, as long as he didn't focus on the fact that the one adult on the stage is the one who's probably going to win.

10/30 11:40 PMShare