I want to revisit an event in the Democratic primary campaign that happened back in January. In the mainstream news I'm sure it would be a dreadful faux-pas to discuss something so obsolete, but it's a point I never saw raised and I don't think it's any less relevant today than it was then.

On Jan 15 there was a debate in Nevada in which Clinton, Obama and Edwards participated. It was sponsored by MSNBC with Tim Russert moderating. At one point he asked each candidate to describe his or her greatest strength and greatest weakness. Obama got the question first, and for his weakness he said something about being disorganized and losing paperwork. Edwards followed with a speech about how deeply he feels people's pain, and Clinton wrapped up with a speech about how impatient she is to help people.

If you follow politics, you may remember it. Journalists everywhere seized this as the key news-bite of the debate. There was a plentiful variety of opinions offered — criticizing Obama for his naivete, criticizing the other two for not answering the question, and various other twists — but all agreed that the story was how Obama answered the question straightforwardly while Clinton and Edwards didn't.

Here's a typical reaction, from David Brooks:

I wonder if, in their eagerness to pursue the easy angle, all the commentators missed something here. I want to go back and take another look at what Clinton actually said. I couldn't find a video clip (if your skill a YouTube searching is better than mine, feel free to add it in the comments), but I did find the transcript from MSNBC. Here's Clinton's answer:

I think Clinton does reveal her greatest weakness with this answer. It really is that she gets impatient, and it's exactly as she describes it, too — you just have to see it from her point of view. I start with the assumption that Clinton acts in good faith. When she has a political agenda, it's because she truly believes it will help people. And so she pushes for it. Then if someone else is opposed, or doesn't want to go as fast, or wants to pursue the same goal in a different way, she is baffled. To her, they don't seem to understand that her way is right. And then she gets impatient.

I think that this really is Clinton's greatest weakness, and it's at the heart of her political failures, including her health care plan in the 1990s and her failure to win the nomination earlier this year.

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