Peggy Noonan, writing about the S.S. Hillary Rodham Clinton listing and headed towards some rocks…

She has also taken to raising boxing gloves and waving them triumphantly from the podium. Is this a fruitful way to go? It’s her way, bluster and combat. People do what they know how to do. A better way might be honesty. I say this in the sense that an old Richard Nixon hand used it when he said, “Nixon doesn’t always think honesty is the best policy, but he does think it’s a policy.” He saw it as a strategic gambit, to be used like any other.But imagine if she tried honesty and humility. When everyone in America knows you’re in a dreadful position, admit you’re in a dreadful position. Don’t lie about it and make them roll their eyes, tell the truth and make them blink.

When honesty and humility are the last cards Hillary has to play, she’s doomed.

I actually think we haven’t seen the last of the Clintons going negative (and both Ed Rendell and Susan Estrich thinking out loud that Obama’s race makes him unelectable in a general election on the same day strikes me as a remarkable coincidence). If Shaheen was going to raise the issue of Obama’s drug use, why do it once and as an aside? If Team Hillary really thinks his cocaine use as a young man disqualifies him from the presidency, come out and say it. If she really thinks he’s the flunky of a “slumlord,” she ought to come out and go into detail why that ethical lapse outweighs hers (and her husband’s).

And she’s almost coming out and calling him an empty suit: “Over the years, you’ve heard plenty of promises from plenty of people in plenty of speeches,” Clinton told a group of factory workers. “Speeches don’t put food on the table. Speeches don’t fill up your tank. Speeches don’t fill your prescriptions.”

And one last thought… if people argue that by going negative on Obama, she’s hurting his chances in the general election… Well, Hillary could challenge President McCain or his vice president in 2012. But I think she would have a tough time running a primary challenge against President Obama, the country’s first black president, and denying him a second term.

She would never admit it, but a President McCain is better for Hillary’s long-term interest than President Obama.