Barack Obama has spent the last few days taking issue with Hillary Clinton's vote in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment designating Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group. While Senator Clinton once again finds herself in the position of justifying a misguided vote, Senator Obama somehow finds himself in a traditional Obama position, as well: that of criticizing his opponent's vote when he cast no vote.
Five years ago when Senator Clinton cast her vote authorizing President Bush to go to war in Iraq, Senator Obama wasn't a senator. As a result, he's gotten a lot of mileage out of claiming to be the only top-tier Democratic candidate who has always been against the Iraq War. Certainly, though, many of us must have wondered whether he would have had the audacity to go against the hyperbolic pseudo-patriotic tide on Capitol Hill and vote "no" five years ago. Just as Senator Clinton failed her "do-over," i.e., the opportunity to vote against anything that further empowers a warmongering president in his search for enemies, Senator Obama has failed his do-over, as well. When he had the opportunity to prove to supporters and naysayers alike that he could vote with the minority in opposing the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, Senator Obama stayed on the campaign trail and missed the vote altogether.
Now, Senator Obama has the audacity to criticize Senator Clinton's vote, intimating apparently that he would have voted differently. Senator Obama's failure to vote is mentioned in a one-sentence aside in the Boston Globe's lengthy article delineating Senator Obama's objections to Senator Clinton's vote. Oddly, though, no one seems to consider Senator Obama's failure to vote a significant point.
How does Senator Obama have the standing to criticize Senator Clinton's action when he took no action? If he were a firefighter, would he stand outside a blazing building and criticize the efforts of those firefighters who worked to quell the blaze and then later tell the world what he would have done? According to The Washington Post, Obama said, "So I'm not sure if any of us knows exactly where [Senator Clinton] is standing on this issue. But I can tell you this, when I am president of the United States, the American people and the world will always know where I stand." Of course, we can't know now, when he's not president, because he didn't vote.
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