The Day the World Changed

Sixty-three years ago, America won a war and lost its innocence. On August 6, 1945, the world's first nuclear weapon was detonated over Hiroshima, and six days later, World War II ended.

I was in uniform then in Germany, one of thousands waiting to be sent as foot soldiers to invade Japan. All we knew then was that a mushroom cloud had ended our dread of going to the Pacific to storm beaches and fight through cities. For the first time in years, we could wake in the morning without feeling there was an IOU out on our lives, held by someone unknown and payable on demand.

It was weeks before we learned the moral price for our relief--that over 200,000 would die from that explosion in Hiroshima and another over Nagasaki three days afterward and that our country would forever bear the burden of being the first to use weapons of mass destruction.

Almost two decades later, in August 1963, I was interviewing John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office. "Since 1945," he said, "we have gone into an entirely new period of nuclear weapons. Most people have no conception of what it all means. A nuclear exchange lasting sixty minutes would mean over 300 million deaths. We have to prevent the end of the human race."

This August, as presidential candidates argue over gasoline prices and each other's celebrity status, it's easy to forget they are asking voters to give them a Godlike control over the lives of multitudes of people, not only in our own country but all over the world.

It's too late to anguish over that decision 60 years ago but not too soon to remember how much power of life and death will be in the hands of whoever we choose this November and what qualities of judgment, character and human feeling he will need to make such choices for us in the future.

"Because He's Black"

With Hillary Clinton's chances fading, the issue of race is boiling to the surface, as it did in West Virginia and will again in Kentucky tomorrow.

Last night on PBS, Bill Moyers quoted one of last week's voters telling a BBC interviewer why Barack Obama can't win the White House: "Because he's black."

"There it was," Moyers pointed out, "no longer a whisper but out in public, on the record: Because he is black. The fault line in American history is now a dividing line in this election...We heard it all week and now the political world is asking: Could the candidate who has won more votes, more states and more delegates lose in November and could the reason be race?"

Ugly as the question is, it will be asked and answered between now and November, but what it says about America, regardless of whether Obama wins or loses, is something we all need to know.

How deep does the prejudice go? As he loses two border states, Obama drew 75,000 people in Oregon yesterday, a huge crowd that brings back visual memories of Martin Luther King in Washington over 40 years ago making his "I have a dream" speech.

The New York Times reports Obama's reaction: “Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river on an unseasonably hot day in Oregon.

"It is 'fair to say this is the most spectacular setting for the most spectacular crowd' of his campaign, he told the audience."

Obama is living out King's dream this year, but how will it end? In a replay of yesterday's heartening spectacle or as a nightmare in the darkest part of the American heart silently voting its fears and prejudices in the solitude of ballot boxes in November?

Dick Cheney's Shrug

After the torrent of words over the arrogance of America's self-selected, unelected Vice President, a former Republican colleague and friend boils it all down to one word in today's Washington Post.

Ex-Congressman Mickey Edwards explains what changed his mind about defending Cheney, his "all-too-revealing conversation this week with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz. On Wednesday, reminded of the public's disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: 'So?'"

Into that one word is compressed more than seven years of secrecy, usurping of power and stealing traditional American freedoms.

Skewing intelligence to lie us into a war costing almost 4,000 American lives and half a trillion dollars and counting? So?

Outing a CIA operative to get revenge against criticism and hanging his own Chief of Staff out on a limb and sawing it off? So?

Pressuring Bush, against the opposition of his own Secretaries of State and Defense, to go to war against Iran before they leave office? So?

In the interview that finally tipped the scales, Edwards says: "Cheney told Raddatz that American war policy should not be affected by the views of the people. But that is precisely whose views should matter: It is the people who should decide whether the nation shall go to war. That is not a radical, or liberal, or unpatriotic idea. It is the very heart of America's constitutional system."

For millions of Americans, that won't come as news, but they may want to keep it in mind as John McCain tries to sell them a continuation of what Bush and Cheney have stolen from them and labeling it victory in Iraq.

Now it's up to them to stop it. So?

Yesterday vs. Tomorrow

John McCain says it's too soon for Barack Obama, Obama claims it's too late for McCain and Hillary Clinton is still insisting, against all odds, that the time is just right for her.

Last night, McCain posed the question, "(W)ill we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested invading our ally, Pakistan, and sitting down without pre-conditions or clear purpose with enemies who support terrorists and are intent on destabilizing the world by acquiring nuclear weapons?"

In doing so, he personified yesterday's politics by distorting Obama's statements about Pakistan and negotiating with America's enemies beyond recognition.

Last night, Obama said, "I revere and honor John McCain's service to this country. He is a genuine American hero. But when he embraces George Bush's failed economic policies, when he says that he is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq, then he represents the policies of yesterday. And we want to be the party of tomorrow. And I'm looking forward to having that debate with John McCain."

Despite another devastating loss in the Wisconsin primary, Hillary Clinton was still holding herself out as the candidate who is in touch with today's realities.

"(Y)ou'll find at HillaryClinton.com all of my positions, everything that I have been working on, because I know what's happening in America," she told a rally in Youngstown, Ohio. "People are struggling...They cannot afford four more years of a president who just doesn't see or hear them at all. They need a president ready on day one to be commander-in-chief, ready to manage our economy, and ready to beat the Republicans in November."

But, after last night's results, it appears the choice will be between Obama and McCain, separated by decades in age and light years apart in their view of the world.

Geographic Long Shots

Deep in the bowels of some Las Vegas super-computer, what are the odds against a 2008 Presidential contest between a former Governor of Arkansas and a former First Lady of Arkansas? Or a three-way race involving a Mayor, a former Mayor and a Senator from New York?

Conservative Crush on Obama

If upscale Republicans and Independents decide the '08 election, Barack Obama might well be our next President, judging from new love letters to the candidate from Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic and Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal.

Sullivan argues that Obama is beyond the toxic quarrels of the Baby Boomers over Vietnam, Nixon and cultural issues, an alternative to a Giuliani-Clinton contest that would be "a classic intra-generational struggle--with two deeply divisive and ruthless personalities ready to go to the brink."

Obama, according to Sullivan, opposed the Iraq war "for the right reasons" and is therefore "the potential president with the most flexibility in dealing with it." His face would be "a re-branding of the United States" to the rest of the world, particularly Muslims. He might even, Sullivan argues, bridge the religious divide in America:

"(H)e is not born-again. His faith...lives at the center of the American religious experience. It is a modern, intellectual Christianity. 'I didn’t have an epiphany,' he explained to me. 'What I really did was to take a set of values and ideals that were first instilled in me from my mother, who was, as I have called her in my book, the last of the secular humanists—you know, belief in kindness and empathy and discipline, responsibility—those kinds of values. And I found in the Church a vessel or a repository for those values and a way to connect those values to a larger community and a belief in God and a belief in redemption and mercy and justice … I guess the point is, it continues to be both a spiritual, but also intellectual, journey for me, this issue of faith.'"

Peggy Noonan's crush on Obama is less global but just as clear. In a column on Hillary-bashing in last week's debate, she writes:

"Barack Obama, with his elegance and verbal fluency really did seem like that great and famous political figure from his home state of Illinois--Adlai Stevenson, who was not at all hungry, not at all mean, and operated at a step removed from the grubby game."

Last month Noonan observed: “Barack Obama has a great thinking look. I mean the look he gets on his face when he's thinking, not the look he presents in debate, where they all control their faces knowing they may be in the reaction shot and fearing they'll look shrewd and clever, as opposed to open and strong...

“You get the impression Mr. Obama trusts himself to think, as if something good might happen if he does. What a concept. Anyway, I've started to lean forward a little when he talks.”

Compare this to her take on John Edwards' attack on Clinton "like a furry animal on a wheel, trying so hard, to the point he's getting a facial tic, and getting nowhere, failing to get his little furry paws on his prey, not knowing you have to get off the wheel to get to the prey. You have to stop the rounded, rote, bromidic phrases, and use a normal language that cannot be ignored."

Andrew Sullivan and Peggy Noonan may not represent much of a constituency but, if the Democratic nomination becomes a battle over electability, their attitudes may foreshadow Obama's advantage on that issue.

Clinton-Bashing Below the Belt

Should there be an expiration date on White House gossip? The question is raised by "revelations" this weekend by the New York Daily News and Tim Russert on Meet the Press.

"Ford saw Clinton as a sex 'addict'" was the News headline yesterday based on a new book by one of its own, Washington Bureau Chief Thomas M. DeFrank, author of "Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford" and Russert had him on MTP to discuss it.

The timing of Ford's posthumous distaste for Bill Clinton's "skirt-chasing" and Hillary Clinton's "iron will" may seem a tad suspicious and, to eliminate any doubt, the News follows it with Mr. DeFrank's "Giuliani is GOP's best shot against Hillary, said Ford."

Just before he died, DeFrank reveals, the former President described America's mayor as the best candidate to beat Hillary Clinton in "08. "He's really good," Mr. Ford is quoted as saying, "he's articulate--he's just a leader." Nothing about Giuliani's "skirt-chasing."

Aside from dragging a 93-year-old man who died soon afterward into today's electoral mudslinging, there is a sad irony in bringing Gerald Ford forward as a character witness about the Clintons' dysfunctional marriage.

By Betty Ford's own testimony, her husband's being away from home politicking most nights of the year before and after their White House years brought on her addiction to alcohol and pain killers.

With Mrs. Ford in ill health in her ninetieth year, DeFrank might have well waited until she too was "gone" before involving the Fords in a public dissection of the shortcomings in the Clintons' marriage.

Bush Makes Republicans French Toast

He did it this morning, without comment or news coverage, an act that proves George Bush to be, depending on your politics, either the most steadfast or stubborn, the most principled or heartless of American Presidents in memory.

But there is common agreement in Congress that, by vetoing the bipartisan bill that would have dramatically expanded children's health insurance, a lame duck Head of State has committed the most politically selfish act since Louis XV proclaimed, “Apres moi, le deluge” before the French Revolution.

Now Congressional Republicans, facing a guillotine at the ballot box in 2008, are scrambling to limit the damage. Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott talks bravely about a “compromise” with an Administration that takes no prisoners.

The Senate has enough votes to override, but House Minority Whip Roy Blunt is "absolutely confident" that the House will be able to sustain Bush's veto as Democrats keep trying to convince more than a dozen members on the other side of the aisle to switch their position.

If not, Nancy Pelosi can start practicing her knitting for the role of Madame DeFarge, as Republican incumbents go by on their way to the tumbrel in the George Bush revival of “A Tale of Two Cities” next fall.

Wesley Clark for V.P. ?

When the 2004 Presidential candidate announced his support for Hillary Clinton this month, Gen. Wesley Clark seemed destined to become a Cabinet member if she were to win the White House next year. But he is beginning to look more like a potential running mate.

If Rudy Giuliani’s rabid attacks on Clinton and the Democrats as soft on defense against terrorists foreshadow the Republican ’08 strategy, Clark’s military experience and strategic credentials would be an effective counterweight to Gen. Giuliani’s experience as commander of the TV cameras in the wake of 9/11 or Fred Thompson’s laid-back war talk.

On the Daily Show last night, Clark artfully defended Gen. David Petraeus, who served under him when they were both junior officers, on a personal level while noting that the Surge was “too late” to solve our problems in Iraq.

Clark’s experience, not only as Supreme Commander in Europe during the Kosovo war but in the jungles of Washington intrigue with the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, would be useful not only as campaign window dressing but in the realities of a new Clinton Administration elected to clean up Bush’s military and diplomatic mess around the world.

As he makes the TV rounds promoting his new book, “A Time to Lead,” and arguing for diplomatic rather than military engagement with Iran, Gen. Clark may be working his way up more than the best-seller list.

Gallup Rates Rove's Rant

The “architect” spent his farewell weekend on TV repeating with glee that Hillary Clinton was unelectable in ’08 because of her unprecedented high negative ratings in the polls. Today the Gallup Poll people responded.

In the usual long-winded, cautious verbiage of pollsters, the answer is that Rove is full of it. Among others, his own creation, George W. Bush, proves the point:

“A review of Gallup poll data suggests that Hillary Clinton's current high unfavorable ratings are not unprecedented. Other candidates have had similarly high unfavorable ratings at various points in presidential election campaigns in previous years. Two of these candidates--George W. Bush in 2004 and Bill Clinton in 1992 --went on to win the election.

“Additionally, Rove's assumptions that Hillary Clinton's candidacy is ‘fatally flawed’ run counter to the historical finding that candidates' images often change, sometimes dramatically, as the campaign progresses. In other words, Clinton's ultimate electability will likely be determined more by what happens in the next 15 months while she campaigns than by what Americans think of her now.”

There is only one “fatally flawed” figure in all this, and he’s going back to Texas at the end of the month.

Getting Blacker and Funnier

Barack Obama is no Chris Rock, but he’s trying. At the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Las Vegas today, he sauntered in late to make a little joke about “colored people time.”

“You guys keep asking if I'm black enough," Obama said, "so I thought I'd just stroll in."

Until now, the issue has been no joke for the Illinois Senator, who has been running behind Hillary Clinton in polling of African-Americans. Starting in January as a 3-1 underdog, he has only recently caught up into a virtual tie.

“We're still locked into the notion,” he told black journalists today, “that somehow if you appeal to white folks then there must be something wrong," adding, "There's some of that 'Is he keeping it real because he went to Harvard,' which a lot of you in the audience had to deal with...you'd think that we'd be over that by now."

Because his mother is white and he is not descended from African slaves, Obama has had to overcome both the hurdle of trying to become America’s first black president and carping by some African-Americans that he is “too white.”

Keeping a sense of humor about it all can’t be easy, but Obama is working at it. "If I'm outside your building trying to catch a cab," he told Charlie Rose in an interview, "they're not saying, 'Oh, there's a mixed race guy.'"

Distorting Obama's "Inaugural Address"

At the invitation of Lee Hamilton, one of the nation’s wisest elders, Barack Obama made the speech of his life today, one that presages what he might say as President in January 2009. Typically it was mined for a media headline and reduced to: “Obama Might Send Troops Into Pakistan.”

Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, whose director of Middle East Studies is in a Teheran prison, Obama laid out a foreign policy that projects the use of U.S. military strength and diplomacy in a way that would reverse the bluster and bungling of the Bush-Cheney Administration.

He began with an indictment: “After 9/11, our calling was to write a new chapter in the American story. To devise new strategies and build new alliances, to secure our homeland and safeguard our values, and to serve a just cause abroad. We were ready. Americans were united. Friends around the world stood shoulder to shoulder with us...

”We did not finish the job against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did not develop new capabilities to defeat a new enemy, or launch a comprehensive strategy to dry up the terrorists' base of support. We did not reaffirm our basic values, or secure our homeland.

”Instead, we got a color-coded politics of fear. Patriotism as the possession of one political party. The diplomacy of refusing to talk to other countries. A rigid 20th century ideology that insisted that the 21st century's stateless terrorism could be defeated through the invasion and occupation of a state. A deliberate strategy to misrepresent 9/11 to sell a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.”

From there, Obama proposed in detail a new approach to “stop fighting the war the terrorists want us to fight” and “wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.”

As President, Obama promised to remove troops from Iraq and put them "on the right battlefield," sending at least two more brigades to Afghanistan and increasing nonmilitary aid by $1 billion as well as initiate a three-year, $5 billion program to share intelligence with allies to take out terrorist networks from Indonesia to Africa.

In Pakistan, he said, “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.”

Obama’s speech is sure to generate criticism from other Presidential contenders and ridicule from commentators and bloggers as a ploy to one-up Hillary Clinton in their squabble about talking to enemies.

But, prepared with the best foreign-policy advice he could get, it is a serious statement by a serious man that should go far to ease voter qualms about his lack of experience or possible softness as Commander-in-Chief.

If the critics have substantive counter-arguments, let’s hear them. Invective won’t cut it.

Fred Thompson's Conjugal Campaign

Does an unborn candidacy have a right to privacy? If so, Fred Thompson might complain about some of the recent unwelcome attention to his prepping for a run at the Presidency.

Even before announcing, there is news of high-level staff changes, some of which are attributed to the influence of his wife, Jeri.

In the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza reports the de-facto campaign manager has been “pushed aside due to clashes with Thompson's wife.”

Previously, another Post columnist, Mary Ann Akers, had written: “Her hands-on approach to her husband's political operation is rubbing some the wrong way.

"’She's running the campaign,’ grouses one veteran GOP political operative involved in the Draft Fred movement. ‘It's the No. 1 rule of politics: The wife can't be the campaign manager.’

“Playing a role is fine, says the unnamed operative, ‘but not calling all the day-to-day shots.’”

All this comes after gabble about Mrs. Thompson as a “trophy wife,” 24 years younger than the former Senator-actor. But, as a lawyer who worked in the Senate and at the Republican National Committee, Mrs. Thompson obviously intends to be more than ornamental.

When the Senator makes his long-awaited official entrance, Mrs. Thompson can pitch in and help him deal with mounting questions about his role as a lawyer during the Watergate hearings, his lobbying for an organization advocating abortion and all the other little housekeeping details that have accumulated during his non-candidacy.

Somewhere along the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton would undoubtedly be happy to advise the Thompsons about the pitfalls of a two-for-one presidency.

Fred Thompson's Brief Honeymoon

Media cycles are getting shorter. After weeks of blowing kisses at the unannounced candidate who is front-running in Republican polls, reporters are piling on.

Last week’s sighing over his track record with the ladies as a bachelor has turned into clucking over the drawbacks of having a “trophy wife.”

On one coast, the New York Times reports that Thompson’s supporters “have been wrestling with the public reaction to Jeri Kehn Thompson, whose youthfulness, permanent tan and bleached blond hair present a contrast to the 64-year-old man who hopes to win the hearts of the conservative core of the Republican party. Will the so-called values voters accept this union?”

On the other coast, the Los Angeles Times reveals that the former Senator-actor “accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction.”

Suddenly, the earthy, straight-shooting country-boy candidate is being re-cast as a dirty old man who talks out of both sides of his mouth about the sacredness of unborn life.

Welcome to 21st century Presidential politics, Senator. After they love you to death, the harpies will turn on you. Ask John McCain about “media payback.”

But don’t be discouraged. The next cycle will undoubtedly be devoted to debunking some of the debunking.

Clinton-Obama: They I-They Divide

Opinion polls are revealing in the difference between what people say about themselves and an anonymous “they.” Today’s figures from Newsweek show that dramatically.

While 92 percent of respondents would vote for an African American candidate, only 59 percent believe the U.S. is ready. Although 86 percent say they would vote for a woman, only 58 percent believe the country would accept the idea.

That divide, which has been shrinking over the past year, seems to reflect the common tendency to claim “correct” attitudes for one’s self and project ambivalence onto others “out there.”

If so, Sens. Clinton and Obama can take heart that their newness is gradually being accepted.

In this uncharted political terrain, time is helping the former First Lady. When expressing their “comfort level,” more than two-thirds of voters feel Clinton has enough experience in government to be a good president. For Obama, the number is 40 percent.

Whichever of them becomes the Democratic nominee will benefit from this long season of persuading Americans to bridge the gap between themselves and the anonymous “they” toward a confident “we.”

All the Votes Money Can Buy

Despite the clamor over his defecating dog, Mitt Romney is in clover for the early primary races. Polls show him ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire after starting the year in single digits.

But that was $32 million and 4,500 commercials ago. While McCain, struggling to raise money, lays off staffers and Giuliani keeps repeating his mantra, 9/11, Romney has been selling his blandness like soap or toothpaste, boosting his brand share seven to nine percentage points above them in those early states.

Nationally, the man who has spent $0 million, still undeclared Fred Thompson seems to be proving that absence makes voters hearts grow fonder by taking a 27-24 percent lead over Giuliani.

But Romney can’t keep spending at that pace and Thompson can’t hide forever. Will charisma trump cash? But then again, New York billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg, now a former Republican, may come in to run as an Independent.

If he does, the question becomes moot.

Myth of the Washington Outsider

As Republicans run away from George Bush in’ 08, one avenue they will take is that of the “Washington outsider.” Giulani and Romney can legitimately do that, and even Fred Thompson, who started as a Party lawyer during Watergate and went on to years as a lobbyist followed now by a second generation, will try.

But there is a contrarian case to be made that much of the Washington mischief of the past half century goes back to White House outsiders who didn’t know the rules of the game and where the boundary markers were.

Start with Nixon, the insider who always felt like an outsider, and surrounded himself with the likes of Mitchell, Erlichman and Haldeman, who didn’t know enough to worry about being caught doing the dirty tricks that brought them down.

During Reagan’s time, it was Oliver North et al who stepped over the line with Iran-Contra and got caught.

Now, with so much focus on Cheney’s fiefdom, it’s easy to forget that Karl Rove’s overreaching is at the heart of what Pat Leahy, Henry Waxman and other Democrats are trying to lay bare. It isn’t hardened Washington operators, but true-believing amateurs like Alberto Gonzales and his crew who stepped over well-established lines in the Justice Department.

This is not to glorify traditional politicians but, as voters look for answers, they may want to look carefully when candidates promise to change the ways of Washington rather than get the political process back under control. So far, the alternatives to politics as usual have turned out to be politics as nightmare.

New Low in Lieberspeak

The Senator who has made “Independent” a dirty word in Washington outdid himself today.

On ABC “This Week,” Joe Lieberman found unspeakable new ways to attack the Party that nurtured his political career and rejected him only after his cheerleading for George Bush in Iraq.

"The leading Democratic candidates for president,” he intoned, “are competing with each other to see which one can more quickly pull more of our troops out of Iraq, while our troops are there fighting and now succeeding with a lot on the line."

They are doing this, Lieberman says, to satisfy "vested interest groups within the left" and so he now inclines toward Giuliani and McCain for ’08.

The real test may come when Mike Bloomberg decides to run as an Independent. It was Bloomberg who saved Lieberman’s sorry hide last November with manpower and money, but loyal old Joe may forget that as easily as his pompous declarations that it was the idealism of John F. Kennedy that inspired him to go into politics.

Being kissed in public by George W. Bush, like being bitten by a vampire, is obviously a life-altering experience

Save Our--Repeat, Our--Ship

Asked whether he was quitting the Bush Administration because it would be good for his political future, Rob Portman, the outgoing budget director, replied this week: “It would be good for my mental health.”

At least 20 senior officials have bailed out in the past six months, but any gloating about rats and sinking ships should be tempered by awareness that it’s our ship of state, and we’re all on it.

The abysmal approval ratings of both Bush and Congress reflect public awareness that nobody is winning this war of attrition over Iraq and that sniping at those who don’t share our exact political positions about ending it is like firing at gladiators in the arena from the safety of the cheap seats.

Keep the pressure on by all means not to let Congress and the ’08 candidates forget, to belabor the maritime metaphor, that whoever gets into the wheelhouse is going to have to right the ship and steer us all through a turbulent future. But don’t encourage them to get off course by bashing one another to impress us.

End of S.O.S.

Ralph Nader's Finishing School

The phrase “Independent candidate” evokes a Pavlovian response from America’s perennial Presidential also-ran.

Ralph Nader pops up today to tell us Mike Bloomberg is interesting but unpredictable: "I really like the stand he took against smoking, but he goes along with corporate welfare in New York and tax-funded stadiums. So he is unfinished in that way."

In 2000, Nader finished Al Gore and gave us George Bush. Now he hints that, if Bloomberg is not up to the job, he may make himself available to finish off a Democratic candidate in ‘08, particularly one named Clinton.

"She is a political coward," Nader says. "She goes around pandering to powerful interest groups on the one hand and flattering general audiences on the other. She doesn't even have the minimal political fortitude of her husband."

The response from the Clinton camp: "His entry into the race, even to those who voted for him in 2000, would be just another vainglorious effort to promote himself at the expense of the best interests of the public. Ralph Nader is unsafe in any election."

That may be a bit harsh. Try “irrelevant.”