Hill and Bill and Judi and Rudy

OPINION:

Michelle Obama got it right. Discourse on traditional family values is not the exclusive domain of Republicans and conservatives.

But do Republicans and other Democrats get it? Can, say, Rudy Giuliani stand toe-to-toe with Mitt Romney on family values? Can Bill Clinton, who on more than one occasion contented himself with a woman not his wife, throw jabs at Elizabeth Edwards? Will the voting public take it out on Hillary if he does? Pound for pound, is Rudy the only one who can beat Hillary? If you’re questioning the boxing metaphors, then you’ve not been paying close attention.

On the stump the other day, Mrs. Obama, wife of Barack, the Democratic presidential candidate, said: “That one of the most important things that we need to know about the next president of the United States is, is he somebody that shares our values? Is he somebody that respects family? Is a good and decent person? So our view was that, if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House. So, so we’ve adjusted our schedules to make sure that our girls are first, so while he’s traveling around, I do day trips. That means I get up in the morning, I get the girls ready, I get them off, I go and do trips, I’m home before bedtime. So the girls know that I was gone somewhere, but they don’t care. They just know that I was at home to tuck them in at night, and it keeps them grounded, and, and children, the children in our country have to know that they come first. And our girls do and that’s why we’re doing this. We’re in this race for not just our children, but all of our children.” Where does “he” stand on values? Does “he” respect family? C’mon, people. Does Hillary really have to show her cleavage again? The knee-jerk reactions from the bloggers and pundits got it wrong. Mrs. Obama hit where it hurts.

Mrs. Obama connected. Team Hillary had no comeback as she did when Mr. Obama tried to talk up talking up some of to antsy saboteurs in the Middle East. (I give both spouses a tip of the dreadlocks.) Mrs. Obama poked a finger in Mrs. Clinton’s bluest eye.

As for the folks on the right and the left, including the Hillaristas and the Rudy Bunch, they both missed their mark with claims that the Obama and John Edwards campaigns are switch-hitting.

Nobody wants to see guys beating up on a gal, even if that gal is a political diva who ages ago trained the guys on bobbing and weaving taught them how to dip to the hem of a skirt even when she’s wearing a pantsuit.

Hillary is bare-knuckle tough, a domestic pugilist who learned the hard way that married life ain’t always grand.

Conservatives know Mrs. Clinton can hold her own. So, on the one hand they are begging for a fall 2008 bout between Hill and Bill and Judi and Rudy, but on the other they dare the Democrats to go where the Republican candidates dare not.

Mano y mano. A New Yawker vs. a New Yorker. No way.

C’mon, people. As George Orwell said, “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs constant struggle.” If anything, it was a brilliant one-two from Michelle Obama. One to the left, at Hillary and Bill, for sure, and one to the right at Rudy and Judi.

Can the latter couple counter? What’s Rudy going to say? “My children don’t get along with their stepmother because I stood outside our home and told the press I was leaving their mother for another woman”? “I don’t know why my daughter is an Obama girl, but you can’t ask her?” “Stop calling Judi, er, Judith, a gold digger. Her medical background helps me, as a Republican, with my pro-abortion position”? The only-Rudy-can-beat-Hillary message is as cliched as Obama for Change and Hillary the Experienced thing is, change is gonna come.

History reminds us that, come Election Day 2008, it will have been 80 years since American voters had no White House incumbent in the race for the White House.

As for experience, let’s just leave it at the fact that Joe Biden could take Hillary out if he were to put senatorial weight behind his punch.

Rudy certainly could represent change, and, yes, he has experience, for what that’s worth. But you know what? Rudy, like Hillary, doesn’t like to lose. He doesn’t jump into the ring with just any contestant. On the civil side, he’s tied and untied the knots on one too many occasions. As a politician, he skipped a chance to take on Hillary head-to-head in the 2000 New York Senate race. And just this month he skipped again, in Iowa. (The Rudy Bunch gave them their blessing, of course.) Foreign affairs. Education. Health care. The economy. The environment. Immigration. War. Cleavages and hair cuts. (Yawn.) Family values.

How each (and spouse) stands on that single issue speaks louder than any rhetoric that could possibly be spoken between today and Election Day 2008. Immorality is cut from whole cloth; insidiously so since we elect two people for the price of one vote.