WSJ mistakes Hillary's latest zigzag as being a meaningful, principled hard-left turn

Today's WSJ OpinionJournal features an editorial headlined "The end of Hillary as security hawk." I'm not sure if that's just headline-ese and the regular English language version would read, "The end of Hillary as a security hawk," or if they indeed meant to refer to her as, say, the most prominent "security hawk" of the Democratic Party. At any rate, the event being marked in the editorial, of course, is Sen. Clinton's vote this week against the supplemental war funding bill (ellipsis by the WSJ):

So all of the Iraq maneuvering was merely for show to appease the antiwar left that elected Democrats. Ms. Pelosi couldn't even deliver a majority of her own Members for the war spending bill, and she voted "no" herself. Thus she can claim to oppose the war but also sleep easily knowing that others voted to fund it. The troops will be funded because 194 Republicans joined 86 Democrats to support it. Two Republicans and 140 Democrats opposed it.

At least Majority Leader Reid voted for the bill, which passed 80-14 in the Senate. To his credit, so did Joe Biden. But the main story in that body was the "no" votes by Presidential candidates Chris Dodd, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The vote won them praise from the likes of MoveOn.org, which threatened not to support anyone who voted for the bill. "Senators Obama, Clinton and Dodd stood up and did the right thing--voting down the President's war policy," said Eli Pariser, MoveOn's executive director. "They're showing real leadership toward ending the war, and MoveOn's members are grateful. This bold stand . . . won't soon be forgotten."

The WSJ's editorial board is undoubtedly correct that Sen. Clinton's vote was designed to keep her competitive with present and former Sens. Obama and Edwards for purposes of the Democratic primaries. But I think this editorial is short-sighted in its political handicapping. There's no doubt in my mind that Sen. Clinton will eagerly score cheap points with the Hard Left on occasions like this one — that is to say, when she can do so without any demonstrably adverse consequence for American military and security interests, as viewed through the eyes of moderates and conservatives. But she also will campaign hard during the primaries to grab every moderate Democratic vote, and the "pragmatist" votes from even the Hard Left, by painting Edwards and Obama as being unelectable in the general election because they will cut and run from Iraq immediately, without any regard for the military, geopolitical, or humanitarian consequences. Mark my words: The claws of that argument, largely sheathed now, will come out as the Democratic primary elections approach — and they'll be wielded occasionally by the candidate herself, but relentlessly through her proxies.

Then, if and when she has the Democratic nomination in hand, she can tack back hard enough further toward the right for the general election to ensure that she can hold her own party's centrists, avoid terrifying independents and left-leaning Republicans who might be inclined to sit this one out, and even pick up a few from those ranks who might be willing to cast a vote to punish the Republican nominee for Bush-43 Administration policies they've hated. And she would thus be the one potential nominee of the Democratic Party whose general election candidacy could conceivably weather a major change in the landscape like another 9/11-scale terrorist attack on American soil.

I think the WSJ's editorial board is just being naïve, however, if it genuinely meant to suggest that this vote actually represents some significant and even semi-permanent "turning point" in her overall political philosophy and career, or her position on national security/GWOT issues generally, or even in her position on the Iraq War specifically. I'm not much of a sailor, but if I can extend my shaky nautical analogy: They may think Hillary has actually come fully about to the hard left, when in reality she's just beating a course back and forth upwind against the currently prevailing squalls in the Democratic Party.

Hillary is Mrs. Captain Triangulator: If there's any politician in the Democratic Party who can nimbly tack left and right and at every angle in between to try to grab forward momentum from every passing gust of wind (and who's not prohibited from running for President by the Twenty-Fifth Amendment) — it's her. In that respect, she makes John Edwards — who's equally insincere, but in this election already committed to being a one-trick pony — look like the rankest of amateur sailors.

It's a strategy that will require a genuinely masterful political seamanship to pull off, but I think the harder part of it by far will be in the Democratic primaries. And were I a betting man, I'd bet against her getting the nomination right now, simply because I think there are too few Hard Left pragmatists and the rest of the Hard Left have driven the moderate Democrats from prominence and influence (in the same way the McGovern/post-Watergate Democrats did in 1972 and 1974). If Obama capsizes early, Edwards might still ride the Hard Left gusts in ahead of her. But if Obama stays upright, my money is still on him for the Democratic nomination. Those squalls are just blowing too hard right now, and he's got the sails to run with the wind.

And as a Republican, that's frankly what I hope will happen, because I'm convinced that on that point, Sen. Clinton is correct: Obama can be beaten in a general election precisely because he's not just weak, but absolutely hollow, on national security issues.

(Real sailors among my readers are welcome to sharpen or correct outright my feeble nautical metaphors here. I'm not sure of the terminology; I just know that the hard winds buffeting the Democratic Primary aren't representative of the wind pattern in the country at large, and I know that Hillary knows that too.)