Firewall has become a popular term bandied about in this year's Presidential campaign.  New Hampshire was initially Mitt Romney's firewall, Rudy Giuliani and his camp were insistent that Florida was their firewall, and now Hillary Clinton has identified Texas and Ohio as her prospective firewalls.  Considering how well employing such a strategy worked for her republican counterparts, one would have to think that this is a curious move by Clinton to adapt this approach. 

 

This leads me to wonder, is Hillary Clinton actually more Mitt Romney than John McCain?  People have often compared her to McCain who shares her moderate sensibilities.  However, unlike McCain, Clinton is clearly a power broker within her party.  As this campaign wears on, Clinton is surprisely starting to resemble Romney.  Like Romney, Clinton is a problematic establishment candidate.  Evangelical's questions about Romney's Mormon faith are tantamount to lefty-democratic disdain for Clinton's hawkish sensibilities revealed via her vote supporting a war in Iraq and later to label Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.  Similar to Romney, Clinton is also faced with the unwelcome task of retooling her campaign's strategy, organizational structure, and fending off a surging competitor, all the while trying to keep face and reassuring her supporters of her purported dominance.  

 

For all of his polling, reordering of advisers and consultants, and ad blitzes, Romney could not stave off McCain and had to eventually concede.  Even in his concession speech at this past weekend's Conservative Political Action Convention, Romney remained adamant that he was the best candidate to lead America through its current dilemmas.  Unlike other candidates who believe that America needs new leadership, Romney and Clinton both believe that America needs them as President.  IT's safe to say that no candidate in this year's election wants to be President, and feels they deserve to be President as sincerely as Romney and Clinton.  This hubris coupled with his naive expectations about the level of scrutiny that he'd garner as a presidential candidate led to Romney's downfall.  Clinton, as she has said over and over again, has been vetted for sixteen years, so she is unlikely to make the types of mistakes that inevitably undermined Romney's campaign. 

 

However, by making such declarations, Clinton is again placing herself in the same sphere as Romney.  She fails to realize like Romney failed to learn that, it's not about you this year--it's about us.  With each message switch, each deployment and recoiling of former Presidnet Bill Clinton, and staff turnover, Clinton is esentially focusing on the same issue which she repeatedly tells us is her greatest strength, her image.  By consistently picking at the scabs known as likeability and popularity, Clinton risks unraveling the stitches of her character.  What Clinton needs to convince Americans is that she can be trusted, not that she is popular, likable or even electable.    

 

Can we trust you with the lives of our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters in the millitary?

Can we trust you to revive our economy and rein in the rich?

Can we trust you to fund public education and social security?

 

Getting a new campaign adviser or zeroing in on Latino voters in Texas does nothing to answer these questions.  If Hillary Clinton wants to be President as desperately as we know she does, she will have to take heed of Fabolous's prophetic words, "I'm a movement by myself, but I'm a force when we're together."  The we cannot be her and Bill, or their 90s DNC cabal.  HIllary Clinton will become a force when she marries her fate with that of the American people.

 

In other news...

 

Roland Martin says Hillary must go Back to Black...

 

LA Times columnist Jonah Goldberg sees Obama's true colors

 

If things weren't already bad for McCain with Huckabee's insistence on sticking around, he now has Fidel Castro on his back