9/14/00 9:40 a.m.
Hillary’s Coming Out
Her loss.

By Jonah Goldberg, NRO editor----------------------------JonahEmail@aol.com

loria Steinem, one of the founding mothers of modern feminism, once declared that a woman needs a husband like a fish needs a bicycle. Alas, Ms. Steinem got married last week. But after watching Hillary Clinton debate New York Rep Rick Lazio tonight it seems Mrs. Clinton — probably the most famous feminist in America, if not the world — probably still believes in Ms. Steinem's adage.

Last night Tim Russert did something literally no major TV figure has been either willing or able to do since Hillary Clinton declared her candidacy: He asked her tough questions. He opened with a hard-headed question about Mrs. Clinton's failed attempt to nationalize America's health-care system, specifically how it would have hurt New York. Her answer, boiled down, was "I've learned a lot" from that big historic boo boo and I won't try it again. Lazio came prepared. The very first words out of Lazio's mouth were "You know a New Yorker would never have made that proposal. In New York we say you've got to tell it like it is. And the way it is, is that Mrs. Clinton has had two opportunities--two opportunities to make policy, one on health care and one on education. And on health care, it was an unmitigated disaster. Even the people in her own party ran away from it."

It only went down from there. The most dramatic moment came 20 minutes in when Russert showed a clip from Clinton's 1998 Today Show interview in which she dismissed the Lewinsky story and said of the accusations against her husband: "if all that were proven true, I think that would be a very serious offense. That is not going to be proven true." That "proven" always seemed a hedge to some people. Russert asked Mrs. Clinton if she would apologize for "misleading" the American people about the Monica Lewinsky affair and for accusing all of her critics of simply being members of a "vast right wing conspiracy." It was a moment that probably had most viewers on the edge of their seats — or squirming out of them. Mrs. Clinton was clearly stunned by the question and she denied misleading anyone, saying she too had been deceived. Lazio responded, "frankly, what's so troubling here with respect to what my opponent just said is somehow that it only matters what you say when you get caught. And character and trust is about well more than that." He concluded, "We can do well better."

Over the course of the night Lazio rebuffed efforts by Mrs. Clinton to link Lazio to Newt Gingrich, saying early on, "Mrs. Clinton, you, of all people, shouldn't try to make guilt by association. Newt Gingrich isn't running in this race, I'm running in this race. Let's talk about my record." And later on, "If you had a record, I suppose, you wouldn't need to use Newt Gingrich. I'm running and I have a strong New York record."

The cumulative effect of the night was to strip away the fictions and hype of Mrs. Clinton's bid for the Senate. Mr. Lazio reclaimed the mantles of New Yorker authenticity, concern for New York, and experience about New York. What was left for Mrs. Clinton? Ambition. This came out in her summation, where she reiterated what has become the accepted rationale for her bid, "I just hope that New Yorkers will decide it's more important what I'm for than where I'm from."

But where a candidate is from is a very relevant question for a democratic republic like ours. According to our system of government, we pick one of our best and send them to Washington to represent our interests and the interests of the country as we see them. Mrs. Clinton's campaign turns that notion on its head. As she sees it, we should assign the "best" of Washington to a state of that person's choosing. She's running as the consummate political aristocrat, swooping into New York, on the assumption that New York deserves someone like her. When asked last night what she would do for the economy of western New York, she promised to use "all of my contacts" to get the job done. Mrs. Clinton wants to represent New York, not because she's a New Yorker, but because she thinks she deserves a tiffany perch from which she can spread her wings.

Mrs. Clinton is a member of the national elite, not the New York elite. Membership in the national elite comes with celebrity, symbolism not with accomplishment, which may be why so much of her campaign money comes from Hollywood. In a sense it's tragic. Mrs. Clinton could have had a distinguished record of accomplishment, and in a sense she has one. She dedicated her life to electing Bill Clinton president. Now that she's done that she thinks it's her turn. The most symbolic moment of Mrs. Clinton's elitism and desire for independence came at the end of the night, when Tim Russert asked each candidate to name who they would choose as their lifeline if they were on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Hillary responded, "You, Tim." Lazio responded, "My wife."