Woodman: The price of the bride

Barak Obama was destined to win in Iowa. The cuckoos who rule the Democratic caucuses there would have preferred a hero with more ideological dementia, but Obama was the closest they could get to their beloved Maoism.

Which brings us to Lucrezia. When Hillary Clinton jumped in, there were no other pimples begging for attention in Iowa. So sure, she'd love to milk some cows and chew some straw. She'd show the nation how germinated she is in moderation. To the lunatic fringe, Lucrezia became a siren call to battle. Quick, find us a Marxist. Nobody was more surprised than Barak Obama, who was just moseying by: Really? Me?

When a spy defects, the more people he betrays, the more he's indulged. In spydom this is called "the price of the bride."

Lucrezia, taking her pledge of moderation to radicals, paid a high price and placed third. Had the Clinton brain trust remembered history or measured the field, Lucrezia might wisely have by-passed Iowa.

Sen. John Glenn of Ohio made the same mistake in 1984. Instead of winning Iowa as promised, he placed a distant sixth behind five liberals. The much-touted Mondale-Glenn match-up in New Hampshire died with the Glenn campaign the night of the Iowa caucuses.

Appealing to Iowa Democrats is an exercise for left-wingers only. No token normal belongs there. Almost 100 years ago, Sen. Jim Reed had to open a Democratic convention without a clergyman. He called upon Republican editor William Allen White in the press box to deliver the invocation. White scowled, "Really, Mr. Reed, you will have to excuse me. I am a little out of my element, and the fact is, I prefer the Lord does not know that I am here." That's how any lucid Democrat would decline an invite to the Iowa caucuses.

Lucrezia the moderate paid greatly just by showing up in Iowa, and her considerable baggage will be more closely inspected now. Here is what The New York Times said about her as a senatorial candidate in 2000: "Her health care task force failed to deliver the promised reform. The investigative literature of Whitewater and related scandals is replete with evidence that Mrs. Clinton has a lamentable tendency to treat political opponents as enemies. She has clearly been less than truthful in her comments to investigators and too eager to follow President Clinton's method of peddling access for campaign donations. Her fondness for stonewalling in response to legitimate questions about financial or legislative matters contributed to the bad ethical reputation of the Clinton administration. If she should choose to carry these patterns and tendencies into the Senate, her career there could be as bumpy and frustrating -- and ultimately, as investigated -- as her White House years."

In its editorial entitled Hillary Clinton for the Senate, The Times found her "capable of growing beyond the ethical legacies of her Arkansas and White House years." Therefore, "We have concluded that Mrs. Clinton is an unusually promising talent." So was Bonnie Parker.

That nauseating Times editorial illustrates why the American news media is held in such contempt. The list of Lucrezia's iniquities is so deleterious that merely naming her opponents from 2000 might defame them. What she did by enlisting the corrupt FBI to frame the White House Travel Office on charges of criminality, instead of simply firing them, was an act of unforgivable sadism. The woman is thoroughly despicable. Maybe that's why the invidious press is so enthralled with her candidacy.

If Lucrezia becomes the Democratic nominee for president, the Republicans will not be as forgiving as The Times. Nor should they be. To that extent, the Iowa caucuses may have stumbled upon a patriotic act.

Sen. Barak Obama seems a wholesome, articulate alternative with a most promising future in the Democratic Party. He probably is not the indulgent liberal Iowans think he is, but that's probably because he's had no tangible record to defend and little time to form a philosophy. One truly troubling element of his public service was voting "present" on dozens of roll call votes when he was a state senator in Illinois. The president's desk does not have a "maybe" box. Some might think him a political coward.

Thanks to Iowa and the poor judgment of the Clintons in arguing their credentials there, the Republican Party is in a much stronger position than George Bush has given it any right to be.

What, now, will The Times exact as the price of the bride for Lucrezia betraying liberalism in Iowa?

Wendell H. Woodman is a freelance writer living in Boston.