Hillary Clinton's Risky Iowa Strategy

Oscar de la Hoya vs. Felix Trinidad. A world championship boxing match. Oscar de la Hoya dominated the fight up until the final few rounds at which point he had enough points to secure the win if he continued to fight with the same aggressiveness that had secured his dominance throughout the bout. His corner, believing the fight was in the bag and not wanting to take any chances, advised Oscar to dance around the final few rounds and avoid engaging Trinidad. While Oscar refused to fight, Trinidad fought. He continued to score points while Oscar avoided engagement. Trinidad won the fight. Moral: If you have a winning game plan, stick with it until the end. Many a contest has been lost by the changing of momentum.

With just a few days until the Iowa Democrat primary, Hillary Clinton is refusing to answer questions from potential voters or the press. Rather than to continue to engage, she is employing Oscar de la Hoya's tactic in the last few days leading up to the primary. She is being advised to not take any chances. Perhaps one could assume that for Clinton to speak is to take a behemothic chance of something going awry.

The Clinton Machine has consummated the epitome of the cumulation of the ensuing ideologies, philosophies and applications. The battlefield tactics discoursed in the The Art of War by Sun Tzu and the tyrannical, political methods prescribed in Nicole Machiavelli's' The Prince have been used in every application of human endeavor throughout history since their publications. They have been indispensable tools in corporate, political and personal philosophy. The same too can be said of the sporting tactic of "playing to win rather than playing not to lose." Clinton, as did Oscar de la Hoya, is "playing not to lose" rather than "playing to win."

John Edwards and Barack Obama are still playing to win in Iowa. They are still scoring points. They will do so until the bell rings in Iowa.

The Clinton Machine has apparently developed an affinity for a hybrid version of the military's "don't ask don't tell" policy--which she is vehemently opposed to. When asked any question at this juncture, she refuses to answer. Case in point: This week Benazir Bhustto was assassinated in Pakistan. Clinton has been a very harsh and outspoken critic of President Pervez Musharraf. The dynamics are myriad concerning the United States' foreign policy in regard to Pakistan in the future, especially in light of Bhutto's assassination and its aftershocks in Pakistan. When asked for a comment about the murder of Bhutto in Pakistan, Clinton refused to answer and walked away.

Even though she has nothing to say, her actions speak a million words.

In the past week when Clinton does speak, her speeches have been orchestrated to say nothing and are completely void of substance.

Be assured that if Clinton is elected to the Presidency you can expect the same result in Pakistan, given her past rhetoric concerning Musharraf, that Carter gave the world with his injudicious insistence that the Shah of Iran step down and turn over power to the Ayatollah Khomeini, thus being the direct causation of the United States' precarious relationship with Iran for the past 30 years concluding with the current situation with Ahmadinejad and the prospect of Iran becoming nuclear.

Perhaps, with astute justification, the Clinton Machine is taking the correct path by not allowing Clinton to engage and keeping her at arms length from her most formidable opponent in the remaining days until the Iowa caucus--herself.