Hillary doesn’t have to speak…

Ed Morrissey has good commentary on the WaPo’s lovesong to Hillary. She is the only politician who is praised for going quiet and ducking out of the way whenever a tough issue arises, and then saying as little of substance as she possibly can, when she does finally speak. She is the only candidate in the world the press would let get away with a “listening tour.”

He writes:

If she has a plan for Iraq, this is the moment to offer it, because events are about to overtake the Democrats very quickly. The voting for the new, constitutional National Assembly has already started. The insurgencies have started to fall apart, struggling against each other while both lose relevance in an Iraq where even the Sunnis have begun to embrace the ballot over the bullet. By 2008, the only perspective will be retrospect, and Hillary’s subterranean record will not provide much opportunity for “told you so” in either direction. Kerry, Dean, Pelosi, and others will be discredited — but only the Liebermans and the Hoyers will reap the benefits. The debate dodgers will have little or no credibility and will have exposed themselves as singularly lacking in leadership when their party most needed it.

Hillary, in other words, exposes herself as a lightweight.

All true, of course, and well-said. But the truth is, Hillary does not have to speak – the press would prefer it if she didn’t – the easier to cover her as the somehow “centrist” marvel of unthreatening feminism and socialism they have been building up since the 1970’s. So, while any other politician would be castigated for not having the chops to opine on any given issue, Hillary is able to simply duck her head and wait out any given news cycle; the press does not press her to speak.

Thus, Hillary never had a word to say about Terri Shiavo, and nothing to say about Harriet Miers, either.

Thus, she has very little to say about her own party’s confusion over Iraq, although she is smart enough to not utterly embarrass herself by saying “Bush lied,” when he went by the same information she found “credible” in 2003.

Hillary doesn’t have to say anything. Just as the press tried to carry John Kerry to the White House, just as they routinely call John McCain a “maverick” but have no such glowing label for Joe Lieberman, the press knows their goddess and she knows them.

And even as we speak, the Clintonistas who all moved quickly from the White House to the Press Box once the party was over are getting into position. They have joined network news organizations, and the international press. They have married journalists. They are so ready, they’re almost chomping at the bit.

And the children are being prepared, too. Get ’em while they’re young. Give me a kid when he’s 28 months, and the kid’s mine for life….(in fairness, I didn’t appreciate this either. But it wasn’t quite as sickening.)

Comes the Rodham, soon, in living color, husband and daughter in tow, magazine covers, and Oprahfests, and gushing op-eds galore. She who can do no wrong, she who will “have to take something away from you for the common good,” she who decries the lack of “any editing function or gatekeeping function” within the internet, will begin to ascend.

And with the press behind her, spinning for her, excusing her, defending her, defaming any who swear against her (only today’s press could ignore 250 Vietnam veterans – many of them seriously decorated individuals – and never ask Kerry for a firm answer about anything, or – ahem – the full release and disclosure of his military records…) she will have a pretty easy time of it, all together.

Hillary is hedging right now. She knows we’re winning in Iraq, so she says only enough to be on record as having “concerns,” just in case things go wrong. The rest is silence.