According to a Newsweek Poll, Hillary Clinton leads all heavyweight presidential challengers — John McCain, Barack Obama, and Rudy Giuliani. Not that it means squat. Presidential-race history is littered with the forgotten corpses of front-runners. In our recent lifetime, the cadavers of Edmund Muskie (who cried himself to ruin in New Hampshire), Michael Dukakis (who was so far ahead of Bush Sr. after the Democratic Convention that he could’ve stayed in Massachusettes), Mario Cuomo (who dropped out for shrouded-in-mystery reasons), and Howard Dean (who was beaten by dark horse John Kerry in Iowa before he self-imploded with a shriek as eerie as grandma on acid), are buried in the dirt of also-rans.
Hillary might avoid their fate, though we prefer she doesn’t. Her vote approving the invasion of Iraq was as cowardly as they come. With an apparent eye on the Oval Office, she not only participated in the destruction of a country that, while brutalized, was barely functioning, but also helped instigate the senseless slaughter of thousands of soldiers and civilians. Like many senators, she’s got blood on her hands.