Let’s face it, most conservatives like kicking Hillary around. It’s one of Washington’s favorite indoor sports. She is, after all, a cliche defined: the modern busybody who delights just a little too much in telling people what to do and how to live; she is a cultural stereotype, a liberal feminist with little tolerance or patience for those who might have another point of view, whether on health care, child rearing, the role of government, or her current imbroglios and prevarications over Travelgate and the whole Whitewater fiasco.

But when it comes to presidential politics, the so-called experts in Washington, including some conservatives, just don’t get it. People don’t vote for first ladies, they don’t vote for cabinet officials, and they don’t even vote for vice presidential candidates. They vote for the man running for president and the party he represents. Period.

When discussing the pluses and minuses of vice presidential candidates, Washington pundits offer talk about how a potential vice presidential candidate can appeal to this group or that group or carry a key state. This is nonsense. In fact, in the past 40 years, one can point only to the 1960 presidential election as an example of a vice presidential candidate, Lyndon Johnson, arguably delivering a state to his ticket. And at that, he most likely stole Texas, not won it, for the Kennedy campaign.

Vice presidential candidates are usually chosen to produce a unified convention by reaching across an ideological divide. The moderate Dwight Eisenhower picked the conservative Richard Nixon to produce a unified convention in 1952. The conservative Nixon picked the moderate Henry Cabot Lodge in 1960. The moderate Gerald Ford picked Ronald Reagan’s choice, Bob Dole, in 1976, and Reagan himself picked the moderate George Bush in 1980.

The real need in presidential politics is for a unified convention. This is the one event in which the party in question has the center stage and the undivided attention of the American people. United conventions tend to produce winners in November, and divided conventions – for the GOP in 1964 and 1976, and for the Democrats in 1968 and 1980 – tend to produce losing tickets come fall.

But people don’t vote for a vice presidential nominee. They vote for a party and for the man at the top. And they understand that the president has ultimate responsibility for the workings of his administration – the buck stops, or should stop, at the top.

I remember, years ago, when some conservatives felt that Ronald Reagan had gone astray on this issue or that issue, they focused their angst on then White House Chief of Staff James Baker. More clear thinking conservatives realized that it was Mr. Reagan’s administration and not Mr. Baker’s, and that if Mr. Reagan had felt strongly enough about the ideological deviations, he would have fired Mr. Baker.

The point is, in politics, you need to keep your eye on the ball. Running commercials attacking Bush campaign strategists, as Mike Dukakis did in 1988, was silly and stupid. Attacking the state of Arkansas, as the Bush campaign did in 1992, was goofy. And attacking Hillary, without making the psychic connection at all times to Bill Clinton, is pointless.

Yes, let justice run its course. If she is found to have committed perjury or malfeasance, then she should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law like any other private citizen. But if our goal is to retake the White House in November, then its important to keep in mind who’s going to be on the ballot – and who isn’t. Because the American people take their vote for president very seriously (contrary to the snotty comments of some of the Washington intelligentsia) and the nominee of the Democratic party is going to be Bill Clinton, not Hillary. Attacking Hillary for her role in the Decade of Cattle Futures (formerly known as the Decade of Greed) is easy and fun. But using her to defeat Bill Clinton by connecting the two is more useful and more to the point.

Craig Shirley is a GOP political consultant.

LOAD-DATE: January 17, 1996

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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