Hillary Clinton is a monster and has to be stopped.

She is not evil, nor is she a communist, socialist, feminist, feminazi, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t confuse her name with Osama bin-Laden. She’s just more of the same. More division, more bureaucracy, more hawkishness, more lawyerliness, and more focus-group tested.

Hillary is the anti-substance. If renowned investigative journalist Carl Bernstein couldn’t describe her in A Woman in Charge (he interviewed over 200 of her colleagues, friends and enemies), then it seems unlikely that we’ll ever see her true colors. But anyone who can simultaneously appear as a messianic idealist and ruthless pragmatist is naturally difficult to predict, define or judge.

That’s the problem. You’d have a better time looking for Rudy Giuliani’s dignity than trying to discover Hillary Clinton’s ideological muse. The only “ism” in which she believes is “Clintonism,” an impulse to adopt limited moral positions on issues that help people named “Clinton” win elections.

Look at her positions on welfare reform, gays in the military, violent video games. In each case, she went with the safe, calculated and focus-group tested policy. She didn’t fight for what was right for the people, right for the party, or right for morality. She fights for what her handlers think will get her (re-)elected.

Iraq is arguably the most pressing issue in this election. It defines American leadership worldwide and contextualizes American priorities domestically.

And Clinton really is Bush-Cheney lite when it comes to Iraq.

She calls for residual troop forces in Iraq to fight “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” as well as to train Iraqi security forces and deter Iranian intervention. How is that any different from the current plan? She calls for troop withdrawals the way Bush does, singing his tired tune: “We’ll stand down as Iraqis stand up.”

It’s time to admit that Iraq is lost. National reconciliation won’t happen. And any progress that’s made is stymied by sectarian intransigence. But you’ll never hear Clinton say that.

What has remained constant is Hillary’s refusal to admit error in authorizing military force in Iraq in 2003.

Iraq is now number two on the Failed States Index behind Sudan. Iraq was fourth on the list in 2005 and 2006. Pakistan, coincidentally, jumped from thirty-four in 2005 to twelve in 2007, but only Barack Obama and Joe Biden seem to have noticed. Clinton cannot offer an alternative to supporting embattled Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf.

The shortest distance between two points is a line, but Clintonism relies on a triangle. The lack of her substance and ideology underscores what Hillary is really doing.

She voted for the Iraq war resolution, defends her vote, and says the United States must finish what it started. But Bill Clinton told an Arab student audience that the U.S. invasion of Iraq had been a ‘”big mistake.” The Clintons are trying to be everything to everyone. And when you highlight everything, you can be sure you’ve really highlighted nothing.

Her 2003 decision to vote for military force and war is proof that she’ll stick with conventional wisdom at the cost of principle. She willingly followed the White House and voted for $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. And she was one of six Democrats who voted against a measure that would’ve derailed the presumably functional missile defense system in Europe. Worse yet, the life long Cubs fan roots for the Yankees!

A lot is being made of her alleged flip-flop when she said she endorsed Elliot Spitzer’s plan to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants even though she didn’t think it was a good plan. Never mind that this is policy in eleven other states, including Utah. Clinton abandoned the policy points and concluded that everyone was playing “gotcha.” She never made up her mind. She supports the idea, but couldn’t commit whether or not it should be done. She’s for it and against it.

And now she complains about the politics of pile-on. She’s now running simultaneously as the toughest most calculating and electable candidate and as a poor defenseless girl.

Wellesley’s most famous alumna came home last week to try and pile on female support. She didn’t go to defend her positions, make a new tack in policy, or even constructively criticize anything.

She is trying to appeal to women voters because she’s a woman. That’s a natural thing to do, given that she is the first woman to run for president. But at the cost of substantive discussion, the media hypes hype with Hillary’s simple genetic appeal. Fifty four percent of the electorate was women in 2004 and 45 percent of women view her favorably today. So what?

Statistics mean nothing without context. But when there’s no context and no substance to talk about, well, we’re left to talk about exactly what Hillary’s Handlers want us to talk about: her statistics.

When she tells the Wellesley crowd, “We’re ready to shatter the highest glass ceiling,” no one—not even Mark Penn, the Karl Rove of the Democratic Leadership Council—can say definitively what she’s going to construct in its place.

Should Hillary Clinton be elected president, it could be the fatal blow for a content-driven democracy. No longer will a candidate be judged on how he or she will act as president. Candidates will compete to be high school president. Candidates looking to be valedictorian are out of luck. Elections will stop being about what people think. Elections will be simple and dainty little case studies in how people think.

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Max Zimbert is a contributing writer and a graduate student at USC’s Annenberg School.

Tags: anti ideology, flip flop, hillary clinton