Is This What You Want?

I've been doing a lot of thinking.

About Hillary and Obama.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had lunch with Obama--so maybe Bloomberg won't throw his hat in the ring of Obama gets the nomination.

Or maybe they were just discussing Big Ideas.

In the past, I had said I'd never vote for Hillary--because she has no soul, no real values, because she only figures out how to position herself strategically.

She's pure calculation, pure triangulation. 'If they are there and this other group is there, then split the difference and be here.' That's Hillary's whole internal monologue in a nutshell.

Hillary is one of those tragic people who says "I'll do what's necessary to get power, then I'll govern from my soul," only to find out she's long since sold it.

But listening to her in the debates a few months back and on the campaign trail, I had a realization: Hillary is the smartest person in the room--and not in that Enron kind of way. She knew policy inside out. She could explain exactly what we oughta do and why we oughta do it.

Screw it, I thought. I'll vote for Hillary. We need a woman President.

Obama's message of hope, I thought, was just that: hope.

What's Obama's health care plan? Does he have one?

He doesn't talk about policy. He's not a detail guy. He's all vision and moonbeams.

But now, this nastiness. I hate it.

Hillary has her guys accuse Obama of being a coke dealer. Hillary says MLK didn't do the heavy lifting, that was LBJ? Hillary accuses Obama of working for slumlords? Bill says any nasty thing that gets into his head--which is pretty nasty, as we all know.

Then later, they make with apologies and firings and backpedaling and denials. But the smear is out there. The work is done.

Obama praises Reagan for uniting, for having vision, for having new ideas. He wants to reach out to Reagan Democrats! They could be Obama Democrats.

Bill and Hillary--Billary!--distort it so Obama said Reagan had the 'good' or 'best' ideas. Not what the man said.

How, I ask, is Hillary going to talk to Republicans when she can't even listen to Obama?

Hillary is not just a divisive figure. She is brilliant at dividing.

It's not just that people hate her. It's that she herself is wickedly good at saying hateful things. Oh they're gussied up with self-righteousness. But they're hateful.

Hillary can sharpen the difference between an Oreo and a Hydrox cookie until you could bleed to death from cutting yourself on that difference.

Hillary could convince you Yale and Harvard are on different planets. (Well, maybe they are.)

Hillary would have us believe that Barack Obama is Ronald Reagan redux.

Who does this woman think she is? Who does she think we are? What does she take us for? We're the fools, and she's doing the fooling.

How, I ask, is this woman going to unite anybody--Republicans and Democrats, the country?

She's no good at it.

Obama needs to stop saying "what I said was...."

After every Hillary nasty, Obama needs to say: Is this what you want? Do you want a politics of attack, a politics of smear, a politics of distortion? Do you want a Democrat who attacks Democrats? Do you want 16 more years of partisan standoff? Fine, then vote for Hillary.

And everyone will say no, and Hillary can go back to being Senator.

Who knows? Maybe she and Bloomberg can even have lunch.

--E. R. O'Neill