It's become almost a daily ritual in the White House press briefing room. Reporters ask press secretary Robert Gibbs what President Obama will fight for regarding the health care reform bill now under construction in Congress, and Gibbs refuses to discuss details. Will Obama oppose a move to tax employee-based tax health care benefits, per his campaign position? Gibbs won't say. What does Obama want to see in a public health insurance option? Gibbs won't say.

At Wednesday's briefing, NBC's Chuck Todd tried to push Gibbs on the taxing benefits issues. Gibbs wouldn't give. Then Todd asked, when it comes to the health care bill, what is Obama "inflexible on?" Gibbs replied,

Is Hillary Clinton playing Barack Obama? Does she have a secret political plan? Are the Clintons up to anything? We discussed this all on Tuesday night on Hardball:

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I know everyone is waiting for me to weigh in on the big question of the week: Hillary to State, yea or nay? Well, I offered some thoughts on this matter at MotherJones.com. And here they are:

I was agnostic on the matter of Hillary Clinton's possible appointment as secretary of state--until last night.

If Barack Obama, the president-elect, wanted to pull a Team of Rivals play, that had seemed fine to me. And placing Clinton in Foggy Bottom would remove her from the dicey business of passing health care reform. Would it unite the party? Well, judging from the election results, the party is pretty darn united already. Despite the griping of a few Hillaryites at the Democratic convention, her voters certainly swung behind Obama in the general election (see Pennsylvania), after HRC and WJC campaigned for BHO in the fall. Unless an explicit deal was made between Obama and Hillary Clinton, it did not seem that Obama, after bypassing her for veep, had to appoint her anything for the party's sake. Still, if Obama and his savvy band of advisers thought that handing her one of the best jobs in the Cabinet would generate political benefits they could use to advance their agenda, I, as a non-fan of Hillary Clinton, was willing to say, okay--for what that was worth.

But then this happened: the presidential transition of no-drama Obama became infected by the never-ending soap opera of the Clintons. And it really is time to turn that program off. There are plenty of policy and political reasons for a progressive not to fancy Hillary. She served on the Wal-Mart board when the mega-firm was fighting unions; she screwed up health care reform for almost a generation; she voted wrong on the Iraq war and then refused to acknowledge she had erred. But, worst of all, as the cliché goes, with the Clintons, it always does seem to be about the Clintons.

So we've had a week of will-she-or-won't-she and what-about-him. Couldn't this have been handled with a little more grace? Maybe not, since it involves the Clintons.

I don't know how the Obama camp approached the issue. But before Obama met last week with Hillary to talk about this, his team should have done a pre-vetting of Bill. And then Obama, at this meeting, ought to have said something like this to her:

Remember when Bill Clinton in 1996 pronounced "the era of big government is over"? Liberals were incensed that a Democratic president would bolstered Conservative Talking Point No. 1 and would accept the fundamental tenet of Reaganism.

Well, it turned out Clinton was sure wrong about that. Today, Big Government is on the march, with a Republican administration spending hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street and to partially nationalize banks. So while we wait for the final presidential debate of 2008, here's a question to ponder: is Reaganism dead? Short answer: you betcha. From Bloomberg:

Too much Clintons at the convention?

There will be a lot--perhaps more than needed. On Tuesday, Senator Hillary Clinton will have her time at the podium. But first, reportedly, convention-goers (and viewers at home) will be treated to a film about her, presumably in the style of the Man From Hope biopic shown at the 1992 convention. Then she will speak. No doubt, she will talk about her historic run for the presidency. The question for a Clinton-cynic is how much of her address will be about her and how much will be about Barack Obama?

This will be her night--which she deserves. But then the Clintons get a second night. On Wednesday, Bill Clinton will get his turn. He is supposedly disappointed that he has been relegated to "Securing America's Future" night, when speakers are supposed to tout Obama's potential as commander in chief. Clinton would rather speak on a wider range of issues. I can understand the Obama camp's concern. Remember his convention speech in 1988? (Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's communications director during her campaign, argues that the Obama campaign still must soothe the hurt feelings Bill Clinton has after the campaign. What is this? High school? Wolfson adds, "President Clinton has his part to play as well. He needs to offer a strong argument in favor of Barack Obama's candidacy on Wednesday night, and remind everyone why he is one of the most gifted campaigners in our generation between now and November.")

Also on Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton will again be in the spotlight, when her name is placed into nomination, thanks to the munificence of the Obama campaign. So of the four nights of the convention, the Clintons will have major roles on two. Not bad for the second-place finisher. Even though Hillary Clinton racked up a lot of votes, pundits can--and will--wonder if this is excessive, given that the whole point of the convention is to move forward with Obama. Wouldn't one night have sufficed? Start with a film on HRC. When it's done, the lights go up and...there's Bill Clinton. He introduces her. And then she comes on. A nice package--all in one. Then for the next two nights, the convention would concentrate on Joe Biden and Obama.

That's not how it's going to be. Perhaps all this Clinton programming will help ease the resentment of the Hillary Hold-ons (whom I wrote about here.) If so, it will be worth it. But is it possible those die-hards cannot be satisfied and that a Clinton-drenched convention will deliver a less-than-consistent message (Obama, Obama, Obama)? Your guess--or calculation--is as good as mine.

I don't like it when people on television say things that are not accurate.

On Tuesday night, I appeared on PBS's Newshour, as part of a panel, to discuss Barack Obama's speech on race. I salute Newshour for playing extended excerpts of the speech and then hosting a long discussion of this address. It was refreshing to have the chance to dig deep into a substantial matter and not merely have to toss off competing soundbites.

Another member of the panel was Earl Hutchinson, a political analyst and an author of a book on race and politics. He was far less impressed with the speech than I was, dismissing it by saying, "Well, we have heard those speeches before. You know, politicians in the past, when forced to, have addressed race. However, they've done it in a very abbreviated and truncated way. As we well know, Bill Clinton, midway through his second term, he actually took a stab at it with a commission. And actually he made several speeches when he did candidly talk about race."

Hutchinson is entitled to an opinion--though he does Obama a disservice by comparing his speech (in which Obama dared to criticize his own community and dared to recognize the reasons for white racial resentments) to those of others, including Bill Clinton. Clinton did develop an initiative on race, but then it petered out. While president, he promised to write a book on race--and never got around to it. And as a candidate in 1992, he dealt with the issue primarily with his Sister Souljah moment--decrying a rap singer who had made controversial statements in what seemed a calculated effort to show white voters he could be independent of the Democratic Party's most loyal base.

If Hutchinson doesn't want to recognize these critical differences, so be it. But what was worse was that he then picked up the old talking points of Obama's political foes. From the transcript:

EARL HUTCHINSON: For the first time, you really heard him put his finger on three or four areas which have been of great concern. He talked about disparities in the criminal justice system. He talked about disparities in the education system, which I presume to mean failing inner-city public schools. And he also talked about disparities in the health care system. So all of these areas, people have asked over and over, "You know, Barack, you make great rhetorical speeches. You're very eloquent. They're very poetic. They're even moving and inspiring, like today. But we really want to know a little bit more to really understand who you are and where you're coming from and what we could expect if you get the nomination and perhaps even win the election." Namely, put some body. Let's see some initiatives. What can we expect, in terms of public policy changes? What are you going to put your political muscle in and behind if you're in the White House? These are things that people are asking, not only about race -- although that's there -- but also in other areas. But especially we hear that a lot from, under the table, not overtly, but from a number of those who are sympathetic toward Barack Obama. "We want to hear more. We want to know more. We want to know specifics."

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you're saying he didn't do enough of that today?

EARL HUTCHINSON: No, I think what happens with Barack's speeches, you know -- and this has been pointed out many times before, not just by opponents, but also supporters....We need to have more details, more specifics in which to gauge and judge you, not only as a candidate, not only as a possible or the possible nominee, but also as a possible president.

It was as if Hutchinson was a spinner for the Clinton campaign, accusing Obama of being mostly talk, and ignoring details. This was so last summer. Did Hutchinson somehow miss the whole debate over the candidates' competing health care plans? That was details ad nauseam. And a quick trip to Obama's campaign site would yield Hutchinson a flood of policy proposals and specifics. Drug sentencing? Obama's site notes that he "believes the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated." He couldn't be much clearer than that. There are proposals for various education reforms. And like Clinton, Obama issued a platform of proposed economic initiatives. There's a heap of stuff for an analyst like Hutchinson to analyze. (Mother Jones did a piece comparing the top ten economic policies of Obama and Hillary Clinton.)

Obama's campaign has produced as much policy nitty-gritty as any. (Dems usually go overboard on this front.) What would cause Hutchinson to suggest Obama has not done so? I don't know. Perhaps he needs to spend more time at the keyboard.

The talk on Friday morning was not about John and Vicki (that's McCain and Iseman, the lobbyist) but Barack and Hillary, and the closing moment of Thursday night's debate, when they shook hands and Clinton said she was "absolutely honored" to be by Obama's side in the debate. The Clinton campaign, as I've noted elsewhere immediately tried to spin this moment into proof she is more presidential than he is. But it looked to me that she might be tiring of fighting him--and fighting the tide.

Is pessimism setting in within the Clinton camp? Obama is closing in on Clinton in polls in both Texas and Ohio, and campaign trend lines seem to be holding in his favor. A few hours before the debate, I spoke to one of the more prominent Hillary boosters in Washington. This person said, "I'm pretty pessimistic. We're all trying to keep our heads up. Even if she did everything right from this point on and started to close the gap, it might not be enough. She's not going to become a young guy who's an inspirational speaker because it's a better strategy."

This Clintonite laughed sadly at his own quip and went on: "She has played to all of her strengths. But everything has gelled for Obama. He's a sanctimonious guy. But we can't make that case."

I wonder if this person's sentiment is widely shared--or spreading--through Clintonland. And if some Clinton people are now thinking in such terms, what will be their attitude should she fail to beat back Obama in Ohio and Texas? The Clintons are famous for their grit, for not yielding to defeat. Bill Clinton came back from a loss in Arkansas to retake the governor's office and, years later, refused to be driven out of the White House by one damn embarrassing scandal. She survived the Monica madness and won a Senate seat in an adopted state. In 1992, Bill famously told voters he would fight "until the last dog dies." Will that dog be barking--or whimpering--after Ohio and Texas?

I attended the American University event on Monday, where Ted Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama, with Caroline and Patrick Kennedy joining in. After hearing Kennedy's remarks, I read them. the second time around, they seemed much more a warning to the Clintons than they had in person. Maybe that's because the volume was too low on the microphones used by the Kennedys and Obama. Kennedy's speech does seem to set up a clash between the two main families of the Democratic Party. (Drop in your own Sopranos allusion here.) And within the Kennedy clan, there is a split, with several Kennedys siding against the Godfather (sorry, couldn't resist) and backing Hillary Clinton. Will this all blow over after a nominee is chosen. I dunno. But I don't see Chelsea Clinton taking on a Michael Corleone-like role. But enough of that. Below is a report I filed for MotherJones.com on the Kennedy event. And check out my colleague John Stein's assessment of the EMK endorsement.:

Democrats don't come much more traditional than Teddy Kennedy, the grand man of the Democratic Party. So his endorsement of Barack Obama--implicitly an anti-endorsement of Hillary Clinton--has punch. Endorsements routinely don't matter much in presidential campaigns--with a few exceptions. A politician who controls a machine--say, a governor--can come in quite handy on Election Day. In this case, Kennedy brings two piping hot dishes to the Obama potluck.

By awarding him the Kennedy Seal of Approval--with Caroline Kennedy (daughter of John) and Representative Patrick Kennedy (son of Ted) chiming in--Kennedy makes it official: Obama is the Next Generation leader of the Democratic Party and, in that role, has a lock on the vision thing. And by pledging to campaign arduously for Obama in the coming days, Kennedy will be assisting Obama's efforts to reach out to traditional Democratic voters: working-class Dems. Clinton has been faring better among that core demographic chunk of the Democratic electorate. Kennedy is no white knight who will rescue Obama on this front. But if Kennedy pulls a few votes here and there, it could be significant--only if Obama on his own can close the gap between him and Clinton on blue-collar Democrats and Latinos. It is too late for any candidate--or any set of endorsements--to change the fundamentals of the presidential race in time for Supersaturated Tuesday on February 5. And Ted Kennedy on the campaign trail is no match for Hillary Clinton's hit man: her husband. Yet any bit of Kennedy magic dust the Massachusetts senator sprinkles for Obama can only help.

Kennedy's endorsement speech--held before an enthusiastic crowd at an auditorium at American University--was a roar. He noted that Clinton and John Edwards were fine people and his friends. "But I believe," he said, "there is one candidate who has extraordinary gifts of leadership and character, matched to the extraordinary demands of this moment in history." He completely adopted Obama's own arguments: "He is a leader who sees the world clearly without being cynical. He is a fighter who cares passionately about the causes he believes in, without demonizing those who hold a different view." That last line, an echo of a remark Obama made on Saturday night after winning the South Carolina primary, was a dig at the Clinton camp.

Other digs followed: "We know the true record of Barack Obama. There is the courage he showed when so many others were silent or simply went along. From the beginning, he opposed the war in Iraq. And let no one deny that truth." The Clinton crew has been trying to undermine Obama's natural advantage on the war. (He opposed voting for it: she did not.) Kennedy was calling them out on this matter and essentially telling them to shut up.

And then Kennedy passed the torch:

With Barack Obama, there is a new national leader who has given America a different kind of campaign--a campaign not just about himself, but about all of us. A campaign about the country we will become, if we can rise above the old politics that parses us into separate groups and puts us at odds with one another.

I remember another such time, in the 1960s, when I came to the Senate at the age of 30. We had a new president who inspired the nation, especially the young, to seek a new frontier. Those inspired young people marched, sat in at lunch counters, protested the war in Vietnam and served honorably in that war even when they opposed it.

Obama can be the new Kennedy--John or Robert, take your pick. Who says so? Their brother. Such rhetoric might be easily dismissed by the cynical, but it is heady stuff. And Kennedy probably did not make the decision to anoint Obama in this manner lightly. He compared Obama to Clinton and found one inspiring, the other merely commendable. "What counts in our leadership," Kennedy thundered, "is not the length of years in Washington, but the reach of our vision, the strength of our beliefs, and that rare quality of mind and spirit that can call forth the best in our country and our people. With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion."

Kennedy's red-hot endorsement can be read as something of a pushback to the Clinton gang's assault on the junior senator from Illinois. "Let us reject the counsels of doubt and calculation," Kennedy said loudly before the American University crowd. Whose doubt and calculation? The Clintons', of course. And he was not indirect.....

You can read the rest here.

UPDATE: After Barack Obama's trouncing of Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, will the Clinton Attack Machine--starring Bill Clinton!--continue to fire away? I ponder this point here.

During a conference call on Friday with Clinton aides--who were again blasting Barack Obama for having noted that the Republican Party developed a reputation as "the party of ideas" in the 1990s--I asked whether the Clinton camp was stepping over the line (you know, that line of respectability and accuracy) in its attacks on Hillary Clinton's chief rival. As one example, I cited a remark Representative Barney Frank, a Clinton backer, had made at the start of the call.

Referring to Obama's "party of ideas" comments, Frank said that Obama had been "wrong to say Ronald Reagan was right about government getting too big." But did Obama really endorse Reagan's signature gripe? I'll post and you can decide. Here's the relevant passage:

I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.

I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

Do these words add up to an endorsement of Reagan's antigovernment rhetoric?...Since you asked, they don't for me. I read the remark to be a stab at historical analysis, with Obama characterizing (rightly or wrongly) popular opinion during the 1980s. But in response to my question, Frank argued that Obama's reference implied approval.

I'm sure not looking to pick a fight with Frank, the sharpest wit on Capitol Hill. But let me point out that on January 27, 1996, then-President Bill Clinton gave a radio address and said:

These are the seven challenges I set forth Tuesday night -- to strengthen our families, to renew our schools and expand educational opportunity, to help every American who's willing to work for it achieve economic security, to take our streets back from crime, to protect our environment, to reinvent our government so that it serves better and costs less, and to keep America the leading force for peace and freedom throughout the world. We will meet these challenges, not through big government. The era of big government is over, but we can't go back to a time when our citizens were just left to fend for themselves. [My bold.]

The era of big government is over. How's that for a grand Reaganesque declaration? It's certainly a much clearer endorsement of Reagan's view of the world than anything Obama said. Will Frank now ask Hillary to disavow Bill?

I'm waiting to get on a conference call with Clinton campaign officials, who, no doubt, will again defend their attacks on Barack Obama by claiming they have no choice but to respond to his criticisms of Hillary and Bill Clinton. But many of their attacks have been disingenuous. On a similar call yesterday, Mark Penn, her chief strategist, blasted Obama for saying as a candidate for the Senate in 2003 that he would not vote for Iraq war funding and then doing so after he entered the Senate. But there's a problem with that shot: as a candidate, Obama never said he would never vote for Iraq war funding; he said he opposed the war spending bill then pending for several reasons. The Clinton camp has legitimate criticism it could toss at Obama. The experience issue is a real one. But the Clinton crowd continues to mix real and phony attacks, pissing off some Democrats but succeeding strategically by keeping Obama bogged down in an acrimonious mudwrestle. I wonder what they'll come up with next. Meanwhile, allow me to cross-post my take on the recent GOP debate, which first appeared on MotherJones.com. Bottom line: they were nice to each other but, boy, did they mug the truth.

At Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, the GOP contenders did their best not to make any news. No one attacked anyone; no one disagreed on any major policy matter--except regarding a proposal to establish a national catastrophic insurance fund that would back up private insurance firms. (Rudy Giuliani, playing to Florida homeowners, voiced his support for it; Mitt Romney supported the general notion; John McCain attacked legislation that would set up such a fund as a $200 billion boondoggle.) Generally, the candidates made up a chorus for tax cuts and fighting--make that, winning--the Iraq war. (Then there was Ron Paul.) At times, the candidates hailed their rivals. It was so.... un-Democratic. No nastiness--even though McCain and Romney, essentially tied for first place in the Florida polls, have been hurling negative ads at each other. (A Romney ad assails McCain for flip-flopping on tax cuts; a McCain spot blasts Romney for...flip-flopping on tax cuts. McCain is actually comparing Romney to John Kerry.)

If you were forced to pick a winner--and in the absence of policy disputes, the debate was all about the horse race--you'd probably have to choose Romney, who seemed quasi-commanding and who this night, for some reason, looked more like Hollywood's idea of a president than usual. But no candidate hurt his own prospects. That doesn't mean, though, they didn't come out with some whoppers. Here's a sampling:

* Moderator Tim Russert asked McCain about a comment McCain had supposedly made--"I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues; I still need to be educated"--and McCain shot back, "I don't know where you got that quote from; I'm very well-versed in economics." Well, McCain did tell the Baltimore Sun, "The issue of economics is something that I've really never understood as well as I should." So much for being "well-versed."

* Asked whether it was un-American for U.S. banks to seek infusions of billions of dollars in capital from foreign sources, Giuliani said there was nothing wrong with that as long as "they're transparent." Giuliani, though, still refuses to be transparent about his own multi-million-dollar business dealings, declining to release information about the clients and foreign officials he has worked with as a consultant.

* McCain said that the invasion of Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein was "hell-bent on acquiring" weapons of mass destruction. Actually, he wasn't. Saddam might have desired WMDs. But for years prior to the invasion, the Iraqi dictator had suspended his WMD program and done nothing to pursue WMDs, according to the final report of Charles Duelfer and his Iraq Survey Group.

* Mike Huckabee, voicing his support for Bush's invasion of Iraq, said that just because the United States didn't find WMDs in Iraq that "doesn't mean it wasn't there." The aforementioned Duelfer report--and Duelfer took over the Iraq Survey Group as a hawk who had believed Saddam possessed WMDs--made it clear that Saddam not only had no weapons in the years leading up to the war, he had no WMD program. In other words, there were no WMDs to be found in Iraq--period.

* Romney praised Bush for mounting the Iraq war and making sure al Qaeda could not gain "a safe haven" in Iraq "for launching attacks against us." That was certainly not an issue prior to the invasion. Saddam had no operational ties with al Qaeda. And now there's little, if any chance, that the small and unpopular al Qaeda outfit in Iraq could take over Iraq, pushing aside the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds.

* Romney claimed that under Hillary Clinton's universal health care proposal, everybody will get their coverage "from the government." Here's how Clinton describes it: "If you have a plan you like, you keep it. If you want to change plans or aren't currently covered, you can choose from dozens of the same plans available to members of Congress, or you can opt into a public plan option like Medicare." That's not a government-only plan.

* Huckabee said that Americans "ought to be able to respect people who don't have any [faith]." Yet in a book he co-wrote in 1998, Huckabee huffed, "Men who have rejected God and do not walk in faith are more often than not immoral, impure, and improvident (Gal. 5:19-21). They are prone to extreme and destructive behavior, indulging in perverse vices and dissipating sensuality (1 Cor. 6:9-10)." That just doesn't come across as a respectful attitude regarding people who don't have faith.

But the candidates sure did behave nicely.

Is there a mini-neo-quasi-backlash setting in against the Clintons for their attacks on Barack Obama?

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that some Democratic leaders were getting mighty peeved at the Clintons--especially him for unfairly assailing Barack Obama. (I've reported several times on how the Clinton camp has made false accusations against Obama regarding his position on the Iraq war. See here.)

And there's a rather compelling video in which the former president of Chicago NOW says she has switched from supporting Hillary Clinton to backing Barack Obama because the Clinton campaign has disingenuously assailed Obama's record on abortion rights. It's powerful evidence for those who claim the Clintons are going beyond acceptable politics into the realm of slime and smears. Here it is:

Will this nascent backlash matter? Well, there's not that much time between now and Supersaturated Tuesday on February 5. It's hard to see a full-scale Democratic rebellion against the Clintons emerging. Meanwhile, all this sniping is keeping Obama pinned down. That is, it's working for the Clintons. Their calculation is obvious: the heat is worth the gain.

The political news of the moment, of course, is Thursday night's Democratic debate. The morning-after front-page headline in The Washington Post blared, "Democratic Contenders Step Up Attacks in Debate." But they really didn't--not much. Edwards and Obama mostly stuck to the same critique they had been making of the former First Lady. Each only took a few stabs at the front-runner and then moved on to other matters as it became clear that (a) she was going to give as good as she got, and (b) the audience, which booed several of the attacks, was in no mood to watch Dem-on-Dem violence. It was Clinton who truly intensified her assaults on her key rivals, hurling specific charges at them on policy issues (particularly health care). Previously, she ignored those in her shadow. But with the most recent Iowa poll depicting the race in Iowa as practically a three-way tie, Clinton indeed had to "turn up the heat"---not, as she usually says, on Republicans but on Obama and Edwards.

I scored the Las Vegas debate a draw--no KO's (though fellow CQer Craig Crawford awards Clinton a TKO). And this is good news for Clinton because she certainly needed to stop her slide in the polls. I explain it all here.

But while we're talking about Clinton, a few words about the Other Clinton. It now seems rather amusing that earlier in the year, the politerati were wondering whether Bill would be an asset or liability for Hillary. Would he outshine or upstage her? Would the Clinton campaign have to keep the old wolf at bay? Maybe send him to central Africa for six months. Well, such thinking, in retrospect, was plenty silly.

BC remains quite popular, particularly among Democratic voters who think of the pre-W days as a glorious era of peace, prosperity, wine, roses, milk, and honey--and a time when Democrats (Bill and Hill) bravely stood their ground against evil Republicans (when they weren't busy triangulating). So he's a great and, better yet, popular pitchman for his wife. And since she has generally performed strongly as a candidate, she has not looked small compared to the Big Man.

He appears to be willing to do what it takes to get her elected. (It's a helluva way to get out of the doghouse.) Look at the ad the Clinton campaign released yesterday. It opens with Bill in sweats on a treadmill watching a television set showing a commercial for a succulent, juicy hamburger. The screen freezes and the words appear: "Exercising is hard." The spot goes on to feature former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack trying to dance in a disco ("Dancing is hard") and Hillary mugging "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a ball game ("Singing is hard") before proclaiming that attending the Iowa caucus (to vote for Hillary) will be easy. At the end of the ad, there's a shot of an empty treadmill. Cut to Clinton eating that burger, with a look of extreme satisfaction on his face.

Is there a not-too-hidden message in the ad when moments later it shows a white-haired couple, with the woman saying, "Being married is hard, caucusing is easy"? I don't know. But the ad is the latest evidence that Bill is quite the willing asset for Hillary. He recently defended her after she ran into trouble at a debate. He has campaigned solo for her in Iowa, and he presumably will do more stumping for her as the all-important caucuses approaches. I imagine her strategists see him as the big gun to deploy if she slips any further in the polls.

Yesterday, Post columnist David Broder claimed that there were two "paramount issues" in the Democratic race: immigration and "the prospect of a dual [Clinton] presidency." He's wrong on both counts. At last night's debate, the candidates did split on the question of issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, but they mostly agreed on the big picture: the need to increase border security and to create a pathway for citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already here. There was--perhaps surprisingly--little demagoguery on this front.

As for Broder's worry that the public cannot stomach the Clinton's "two-headed campaign," what's the evidence? He writes that the possibility of the Clinton couple back in the White House

will test the tolerance of the American people far more severely than the possibility of the first female president -- or, for that matter, the first black president.

Oy, he screams (or sort of screams), this has never happened before. And he quotes a "friend from the Clinton administration" who says, "There is nothing in American constitutional or political theory to account for the role of a former president, still energetic and active and full of ideas, occupying the White House with the current president." A constitutional crisis in the making? Quick, let's get an opinion from Harriet Miers.

It may be presumptuous to challenge Broder's "friend"--and I do so as no partisan for Hillary--but I assume that Clinton's well-financed campaign has focus-grouped and test-polled Bill's impact on the race and has discovered that Democratic primary voters do not share Broder's fear. It may even be that after the past seven years of incompetence and, at times, idiocy in the White House, general election voters might not be all that anxious about having two smart people residing in the White House, whatever Bill's role might be. And put it this way: if the general election ends up pitting Hillary Clinton against Rudy Giuliani, would voters rather see Bill Clinton advising the next president or Judith Giuliani? End of issue. Mr. Broder, you are free to fret about other matters.

NIXON ON REAGAN. What did Tricky Dick and Henry Kissinger think of Ronald Reagan in 1971? According to a new transcript of one of the Nixon tapes, it wasn't very flattering. I have the exclusive here.