The Weak Spot

The legend of Achilles is that his mother dipped him as an infant into the River Styx, an act that made him invulnerable. Except that the mother had to hold onto him somewhere, and so his heel was not protected. Hence the term Achilles Heel for a weak spot. Howard Fineman at Newsweek thinks Hillary Clinton has one. It could well be her political undoing.

Heading into yet another TV debate, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton faces a potent enemy—not onstage, but in her own mind. She has a lifelong obsession with seeking out, and trying to control, unruly events and people. She often fails, and harms herself trying. If she doesn't ease up, she risks losing the race. Brainy women don't frighten voters; control freaks do.

Hillary hates surprises yet chooses to live in the most chaotic situations imaginable—from her eyes-wide-shut marriage to an undomesticated Arkansan, to a race for president in today's impossible-to-tame Wild West of bile-filled blogs and You Tube videos.

I've seen this disaster flick before. In her husband's 1992 campaign, she turned a family real-estate deal into a horror show by refusing to show documents about the transaction to The New York Times. She played the reporter along; then she stiffed him. The maneuver was too clever by half. "Whitewater" dogged the Clintons for years.

The latest example of the Control Freak Syndrome arose in Newton, Iowa, where her campaign planted in the audience at least one (and maybe several) questions to be asked of her. What on earth did she have to fear? By now she has answered thousands of questions and is smarter and better-briefed than any candidate in the field.

Why plant an innocuous question about global warming? The answer: because she could.

That may well be the most insightful, concise analysis of the situation to date. "Brainy women don't frighten voters; control freaks do." That is precisely how Clinton is coming across and that is precisely what is setting people's teeth on edge. The one thing no politician can tolerate is having their weak spot exposed publicly. It does not take much to ruin a candidate's chances, especially these days with all the mass media and new media. To have your weak spot exposed gives your opposition a target. They will take it. It might be an interesting debate tomorrow.

The one thing a politician never wants revealed