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In its daily E-mail update, the New York Times said today:
Hillary Rodham Clinton's teary-eyed exchange with a voter and her sharpened argument on experience were among the turning points in New Hampshire.
The Times was correct to lead with her "teary-eyed exchange with a voter" before mentioning "experience." If you look at other articles about Hillary, you'll find that most writers believe that her tears gave her an emotional connection to women voters who swung the state to her.
The media have been wanting to anoint Hillary since she announced. The day before the vote, New Hampshire TV folk were close to mourning the fact that her 20 point lead had disappeared and that Mr. Obama was 10 points up in the polls. Then came her tears and a flurry of articles about how earlier presidential candidates had been undone when they cried in public.
Crying in public may create an emotional connection to women voters, but an emotional connection is a lousy reason to elect someone to sit within arm's reach of our nuclear arsenal. One of the advantages of our interminably long process for choosing a President is that we find out who can take it and who can't.
Regardless of ideology, regardless of experience, situations come up that don't fit into anything anyone's ever thought about before. Frankly speaking, we were caught flat-footed by 9-11 and had to make policy on the fly. Going emotional in such crises is a recipe for disaster.
Although nobody wants to admit it with Hillary in the running, the most important qualification for President of the United States is emotional stability. There will be pressure. There will be fatigue. There will be frustration. The last thing we want is a President who makes an emotional connection to an enemy head of state who chooses the right moment to ask about her well-being and makes her fall apart.
Worse, there will be moments when every nerve is crying out to grab the Nuclear Football, push the button, and let God sort the bastards out. Is that what we want to happen?
As Mr. Obama has pointed out, Mr. Rumsfeld had experience, and look where that got us.
Sure, Hillary spent 8 years in the White House, but so did the pastry cook. When asked about her accomplishments, she speaks of all the things she's advocated such as writing books that tell us we're too dumb to raise our own children, and that we parents need government help. Advocacy is one thing, but what has she done? She cried.