Clintons' Legacy On Line in Coming Campaign

Ten weeks and from now, Americans will elect a new president. Given the weakness of Democratic nominee Barack Obama with rural and women voters, he badly needs the help of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and arguably her husband, too, former President Bill Clinton.

But will this help be forthcoming? No one can be sure. And so for the fourth time in the past five presidential elections — the only respite coming in 2004 — the Clinton psychodramas will be a key campaign focus. If this makes you want to take a sledgehammer to your cable box, we sympathize.

Any assertion that this Clinton fatigue is a partisan phenomenon is easily refuted. To the dismay of Obama backers, Sen. Clinton has been anything but a good sport in defeat. She has encouraged the view that cultural and media sexism fueled her loss. Meanwhile, her husband continues to offer churlish remarks about Obama's triumph, displaying the deep self-pity seen so often during his scandal-ridden eight years in the White House.

So much for the actual reasons underdog Obama won a surprise victory in the nomination fight. He had a superior strategy (targeting caucus states ignored by Sen. Clinton) and organization (there was no infighting in the Obama camp and endless infighting in the Clinton camp); a big edge in fundraising; and a massive groundswell of voters rallying to his message of change. Hillary Clinton's initial support of the Iraq war, meanwhile, made her anathema to the grassroots Democrats active on the Internet.

Against this tangled backdrop, the Democratic National Convention opened in Denver.

Party officials insist the Clintons — who both have prime-time speaking slots — will be gracious.

But will they signal to their millions of still-fervent backers that they are just going through the motions? Or will they actually work hard to help Obama win?

If they are loyal Democrats who believe their own rhetoric — that a victory by Republican nominee John McCain would amount to a third term of the disastrous economic and international policies of President George W. Bush — then of course they will come to Obama's aid. He needs their help in fending off GOP attacks that he is elitist, untested and untrustworthy — the exact critiques that Hillary Clinton used to revive her primary campaign after initial setbacks. As columnist E.J. Dionne notes, Obama's chances may hinge on whether Sen. Clinton "can now persuade her followers to grant Obama's nomination a legitimacy that her own campaign worked so hard to deny him."

But if the Clintons are the soulless opportunists their critics have always claimed, they will sandbag their party rival. If Obama wins, Hillary Clinton probably wouldn't be able to mount a new White House bid until 2016, when her political star might have dimmed. If he loses, Sen. Clinton would likely begin the 2012 nomination race as the Democratic front-runner.

And for the fifth presidential election since 1992, the Clinton psychodramas would be a key campaign focus. At that point, we also would be ready to take a sledgehammer to our cable box.

REPRINTED FROM THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE.

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