Hillary’s Bad Night

Hillary Clinton finally got too cute by half in her explanation of her convoluted position on giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. The American people saw her tying herself into a knot over the issue, trying to have it both ways.

It was a moment in the 2008 campaign akin to Ted Kennedy’s inability to explain to Roger Mudd why he was running for president in 1980. It was one of those few moments when the real candidate is on display and visible to all.

It came about because Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) had the courage to defy the uni-speak of the Democratic debates, where everybody agrees with everybody else, and spoke out against the proposal to give licenses to illegal immigrants. Hillary, suddenly realizing how exposed she was by her seeming endorsement of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan on illegals, backtracked and pointed out that she had not explicitly endorsed the plan. It was her equivalent of Bill saying that it depended on what the definition of “is” is. It was a Hillary moment, and her parsing and mincing of the vocabulary to have it both ways was on full public display. Caught, she retreated to the claim that everybody was playing “gotcha” — but, indeed, she had been got!