REMEMBER?

WSJ.com Opinion Journal (December 29, 2007, editorial) reminds us of what is inevitable with the success of HRC if Obama fails to make Democrats remember the 1990's.


"At least Mr. Obama has begun to challenge Mrs. Clinton on her central claim that her candidacy represents a return to the Age of Pericles, a k a the 1990s. The Clinton candidacy--everyone knows it is a her-and-his affair--is at its core an appeal to selective nostalgia. We are supposed to remember the lack of a hot war, not the "holiday from history" as al Qaeda gained strength. We are supposed to recall the late-1990s boom, not that it began only after the GOP took Congress and repudiated many Clinton policies.

And we are supposed to forget entirely about Travelgate, Whitewater, lost billing records, the Rose law firm, the Lippo Group, Johnny Chung, Harold Ickes, miraculous cattle-future winnings and lying under oath. So selective is our memory supposed to be that we are asked to credit Mrs. Clinton as a kind of co-President during her husband's eight years, while her husband blocks public access to his Presidential records that might let us examine her actual contribution.

Mr. Obama's agenda is conventionally liberal. But his personal charisma and message of uniting the country seem to fit the public desire for change better than does Mrs. Clinton's transparent triangulation. He has nonetheless been reluctant to tell Democrats openly about the electoral risks they are taking if they nominate Mrs. Clinton. This week he began to sound those notes, but if he loses we suspect it will be because he feared taking on the Clinton legacy as forthrightly as the moment demands. "