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 Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Just answer the question

At a press conference earlier this month, Hillary Clinton said: "I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold. I believe that I've done that, certainly Senator McCain has done that, and you'll have to ask Senator Obama with respect to his candidacy." You can watch it here.

I might have never known about this except that it prompted an enormous outpouring of outrage by commentators on liberal-leaning blogs, including some who are otherwise pretty level-headed. They said that Clinton had gone too far, she was out of control, she's a traitor to the party, and if she wins the nomination we could never never vote for her.

This is silly overreaction. There's nothing wrong with questioning the qualifications of someone running for office. It makes no difference who asks the question. The sensible response is to simply answer it.

I assume that anyone who supports Obama's candidacy believes that he is qualified to be commander in chief. (I do.) So why not just say so? Instead of telling us how foul Clinton is for suggesting otherwise, just say, "If Clinton means to imply that Obama is unqualified to be commander-in-chief, she's wrong; he's completely qualified."

If you're just a neutral observer with no stake in the contest, you can leave it at that. If you're an Obama supporter it's a great opportunity to follow up with, "As a matter of fact, he'd be an even better commander in chief than either Clinton or McCain, and here's why," and then you can go on about Obama's values, his judgment, his leadership, or whatever it is you like about him.

But for every one post I saw doing that, I saw about 20 that just attacked Clinton for daring to question Obama. It's things like this that make me wonder if most of the political observers I find online are more interested in the sport than in the substance.

I have no quarrel with the Obama campaign, by the way. To their credit, they responded to this incident quite sensibly. It's just the multitude of bloggers and commenters I think responded foolishly.

10:22:56 PM  [permalink]  comment []