TALKING STRAIGHT ABOUT WAR… The New York Post reports today that Sen. Hillary Clinton, in an effort to “toughen up her message on national security and Iraq,” has signed up former Clinton White House speechwriter Heather Hurlburt. This is good news for Hillary, and for the republic. Regular readers of The Washington Monthly will remember Hurlburt as the author of one of our all-time best pieces, War Torn. In it, she argues that because too many liberals ? particularly Democratic staffers and political operatives ? don’t take the substance of national security issues seriously, Democratic politicians often come off sounding like phonies, like people with positions on rather than convictions about how best to defend the country. The Post piece, however, makes Hurlburt sound like some big hawk on Iraq. But as I recall from talking to her while editing her piece in the fall of 2002, she was far more dubious of, and hence wiser about, Bush’s plan to invade Iraq than a lot of people, including me. You can read more of Hurlburt’s smart musings over at Democracy Arsenal.
