Breaking the final rule

By
Gary Hart                                                                            Read Spanish Version

This
first appeared in The Huffington Post on Friday, March 7.

It
will come as a surprise to many people that there are rules in
politics. Most of those rules are unwritten and are based on common
understandings, acceptable practices, and the best interest of the
political party a candidate seeks to lead. One of those rules is
this: Do not provide ammunition to the opposition party that can be
used to destroy your party’s nominee. This is a hyper-truth where the
presidential contest is concerned.

By
saying that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the
country, particularly in times of crisis, Hillary Clinton has broken
that rule, severely damaged the Democratic candidate who may well be
the party’s nominee, and, perhaps most ominously, revealed the
unlimited lengths to which she will go to achieve power. She has
essentially said that the Democratic party deserves to lose unless it
nominates her.

As
a veteran of red telephone ads and "where’s the beef"
cleverness, I am keenly aware that sharp elbows get thrown by those
trailing in the fourth quarter (and sometimes even earlier).
"Politics ain’t beanbag," is the old slogan. But that does
not mean that it must also be rule-or-ruin, me-first-and-only-me, my
way or the highway. That is not politics. That is raw, unrestrained
ambition for power that cannot accept the will of the voters.

Senator
Obama is right to say the issue is judgment not years in Washington.
If Mrs. Clinton loses the nomination, her failure will be traced to
the date she voted to empower George W. Bush to invade Iraq. That is
not the kind of judgment, or wisdom, required by the leader answering
the phone in the night. For her now to claim that Senator Obama is
not qualified to answer the crisis phone is the height of irony if
not chutzpah, and calls into question whether her primary loyalty is
to the Democratic Party and the nation or to her own ambition.

Gary
Hart was a U.S. senator from the state of Colorado. He ran for
president in 1984 and 1988.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/breaking-the-final-rule_b_90420.html