In the closing days of the primary season, unity was finally achieved—between the Obama campaign and the most extreme elements of the GOP attack machine, who spoke with a single voice as they eagerly ascribed the darkest imaginable thoughts and motives to Sen. Hillary Clinton simply because she mentioned the murder of Sen. Robert Kennedy. Just as remarkable, the Obama team was gearing up to resurrect the thoroughly yet fruitlessly investigated Whitewater controversy if the race had been closer.

While Clinton’s own less-than-graceful exit will be long remembered, the Obama campaign’s brutal tactics have left little impression and are likely to be lost to history, perhaps for no more complex reason than the media’s preference for a predetermined storyline of “hardball Clinton” versus “transcendent new politics” Obama.

As Zachary A. Goldfarb reported in the Washington Post, “Obama senior strategist David Axelrod dodged questions about why the campaign was still circulating commentaries criticizing Clinton [for allegedly invoking the possibility of another assassination] even after suggesting it wants to move beyond the controversy.” Axelrod’s interview by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” is revealing:

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “You say you’re not trying to stir the issue up. But a member of your press staff yesterday was sending around to an entire press list — I have the e-mail here — Keith Olbermann’s searing commentary against Hillary Clinton. So that is stirring this up, isn’t it?”

Mr. Axelrod: “Well, Mr. Olbermann did his commentary and he had his opinion. But as far as we’re concerned.”

Mr. Stephanopoulos: “But your campaign was sending it around.”

In fanning the flames of this uniquely vicious smear, the Obama camp cannot even claim to have acted in desperation in the heat of a close contest, since the race for the nomination was already considered over at that point.

Typical of many Obama supporters in the media was Slate magazine’s Emily Yoffe, who falsely accused Clinton of “voicing the possibility of the assassination of her opponent.” Ironically, an ongoing column entitled “The Hillary Deathwatch” has been one of Slate’s most prominent features for much of the campaign (even continuing after her concession). Would it have crossed their minds to run a daily “Barack Deathwatch” if it were the Illinois senator, not Clinton, running a close second?

Right-wing columnists gleefully joined in the fun that their strange-bedfellow allies of the left had started. Worldnetdaily’s Doug Powers, referring to Clinton’s “fantasy assassination,” wrote, “Hillary is hard at work baking Sirhan Sirhan a cake with a file in it. And …you may find Hillary hunched over a Ouija board in a desperate attempt to channel the spirit of James Earl Ray.”

“Progressives” promoting the image of what Yoffe’s blog called “Hillary’s hopes” for the murder of her opponent owe a debt to the pioneering efforts of radio-show host Rush Limbaugh, who, on March 10, 1994, urgently warned his audience, “Brace yourselves,” and then shared a report “that claims that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton .…” As recounted by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, “Limbaugh’s repetition of an unfounded rumor has been credited (Chicago Tribune, 3/11/94; Newsweek, 3/21/94) with contributing to a plunge in the stock market on the day it was aired.” More recently, when Limbaugh described antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan accusing Sen. Clinton “of failing to challenge the Bush administration's policies in Iraq,” he said “she will not mention her again, ladies and gentlemen, unless she wants to end up in Fort Marcy Park. Mark my words on it.”

Similarly, Patrick Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign posted astounding “information” from the right-wing Media Bypass magazine on his website—that the Israeli Mossad, whose agents included the First Lady as well as Foster himself, had murdered Foster.
 
Before adopting the far-right strategy of ascribing horrific motives to Clinton without a shred of supporting evidence, many Obama supporters, including those in the media, already were in the habit of blindly accepting and repeating other conservative attack points such as labeling Clinton “polarizing”—without specifying polarizing statements or policies; and “power-hungry”—although every other presidential candidate obviously had an identical hunger for power.

The widely acknowledged fact that Clinton’s policies are similar to Obama’s did not stop Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power from labeling her a “monster” or popular liberal radio-show host Randi Rhodes from calling her a “f----ing whore.” It is difficult to imagine any prominent figure crossing the line of decency and calling Michelle Obama or First Lady Laura Bush a “f---ing whore,” yet the demeaning personal attacks appear to be business-as-usual when directed at Clinton.

Obama supporters also joined the right’s Clinton-haters in endlessly mocking her alleged “crying incident” (most memorably in Obama’s church, where congregants cheered Father Pfleger’s hate-driven theatrics as loudly as they had cheered Rev. Wright when gloated over the 9/11 attacks as anti-white payback). Like Al Gore’s supposed claim to have invented the Internet, the alleged incident simply never happened. In reality, Clinton got a bit misty-eyed and choked up when discussing her love for America in answer to a question. (Ronald Reagan and Oliver North used to do the same thing on cue, and far from being a negative, it was part of their appeal.) But the truth is easily drowned out by the loud voices promoting the myth.

Remarkably, had the race been closer, the Obama team was preparing to reach into the past and revive the ultimate right-wing line of attack. As Jonathan Weisman reported in the Washington Post on April 23, “a Democratic strategist familiar with the Obama campaign” said the campaign was likely to raise old issues including “Whitewater and possibly impeachment.”

The investigation of the Whitewater land deal of the late 1970s, begun by independent counsel Robert Fiske, failed to uncover anything significant, leading Fiske’s replacement Ken Starr to resort to looking for other kinds of dirt on the Clintons. As former Associate Attorney-General Webb Hubbell told the New Yorker, describing his own experience with Starr’s prosecutors, “They wanted to know about Hillary’s sex life. About the president’s sex life, and mine, too. They specifically asked if Hillary and Vince had had an affair.”

After a four-year, $50-million investigation, Starr released his 445-page report; it contained two mentions of Whitewater, no mentions of Travelgate, and 543 mentions of sex. The cost of the inquiry reached $75 million, with its focus still primarily on sex, when Starr’s successor as Whitewater independent counsel, Robert Ray, released his own final report in March 2002, with nothing significant to add.

How much time and money were Obama’s aides prepared to devote in an effort to succeed where the Whitewater independent counsels had failed? As for the report of the Obama team preparing to bring up impeachment, when was Sen. Clinton ever impeached?

“Audacity” might be a fitting word after all, but how exactly is this “breaking free from the politics of the past”?