Joe Wilson: From Honesty's Hero to Hillary's Zero

Without Joe Wilson, the former ambassador who was dispatched by the Bush Administration to Africa to "prove" the yellowcake story and instead chose to believe the facts, we would have a more difficult time learning the depth of the deception used to foment the Iraqi invasion. Now Ambassador Wilson, as desperate as the rest of the Clinton crew to stave off an increasingly inevitable defeat, has increased his own shrill voice about how badly the Obama campaign is treating Hillary and how the media are happy to play along.

Hear that? That's the sound of credibility flying away from Wilson — at the speed of sycophancy.

But more than his litany of complaints registered towards David Axelrod, Bill Richardson and Tony McPeak — doing no more, and generally less, than the surrogates in Clinton's campaign at raising "doubts," i.e., insinuating that the other candidate has some serious questions to answer, hmm hmm — there are two points that are deeply troubling in Wilson's screed on HuffPost.

First, his credulity in accepting that Hillary's vote for the authorizing the invasion was not her fault. George Bush tricked her with his devilish lies! Who can blame her? Sorry to quote at length, but context is everything:

My wife, former CIA agent, Valerie, and I accompanied Senator Clinton to Philadelphia the day after her speech. Valerie pointed out in her comments how, in the run up to the invasion, the administration lied to the Congress and the American people about the nature and the seriousness of the weapons of mass destruction threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration's willful twisting of intelligence was crucial to manipulation of the press, the public and the Congress. Not until months later, after the invasion, did the facts of the administration's distortion of intelligence slowly begin to trickle out, partly as a result of my own efforts in a New York Times opinion piece in July 2003.

He then goes on to grouse about how Obama's Philadelphia speech on race allowed his surrogats to attack Hillary on her national defense policy. Joe, what about the vote to authorize the invasion? 21 Democratic Senators, including our own Ron Wyden, were not fooled. I wasn't fooled. Millions of Americans knew better than to trust the Bush Administration and took to the streets to announce loudly they did not believe the invasion was justified. Among the millions that weren't fooled: Barack Obama. Among the dupes: Hillary Clinton.

This is a point over which Joe Wilson happily glosses. La la la, nothing there, la la.

The second, and truly heinous part of his post, is his willingness to join Hillary herself and other flunkies in throwing up the specter of "fiery pastor Jeremiah Wright," Obama's "public relations nightmare." Hillary said nothing about Wright prior to the speech; now, with Obama having made the "nightmare" into a courageous and necessary starting point to talk about one of the most urgent issues facing our country — not to mention rescuing his campaign and probably dooming Clinton once and for all — Clinton and her campaign are pulling a Fox News with it and turning into the major Wright-floggers.

This is politics of the most disgusting kind. This is politics that drives people from the process and lets the special interests dominate and destroy. And it's having the effect it should have: Hillary's approval ratings are at their lowest. According to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, she stands at 37% favorable — her lowest standing since this poll began in 2001. Obama, on the other hand, is at 49% — down just 2 points from the previous poll two weeks ago (and within the margin of error, so basically unchanged). The public, I hope, is starting to recognize that while both campaigns have been pushing hard at each other, it's Clinton herself who has been leading the way with negativity in a way not seen from Obama.

Over the next four weeks, as Clinton tries desperately to make Pennsylvania the proof that Obama can't win the general election, expect her campaign to believe as if it were the general election — and she was the GOP. Ugly, vicious, nasty. Jeremiah Wright and more Jeremiah Wright.

And expect Joe Wilson and other previously respectable figures to sell out in a vain attempt to rescue a candidate who couldn't convince Americans to vote for her on the issues so is resorting to winning votes based on hear.

Joe Wilson. Is his middle name "Spiro?"