Nice Gals Finish Last

In case you had any lingering doubts about the hapless fecklessness of Jeanine Pirro, the presumptive Republican challenger to first-term U.S. Senator Hillary Veronica Lodge Eva Peron Leona Helmsley Madusa Rodham Clinton (D-NY), this story should kill them deader than smelts:

When Jeanine Pirro announced her interest in running against Hillary Clinton, she reminded reporters who dismissed her chances: "I'm a fighter."

But already Pirro appears to be unilaterally disarming - by issuing a promise not to fight back against a vicious series of personal attacks by Mrs. Clinton's media surrogates.

"Republicans who want us to throw mud at [Hillary] will be disappointed," Pirro campaign manager Kieran Mahoney tells New York magazine, before stating flatly: "We won’t engage in negative attacks."

Asked to certify the no-negative-campaign pledge with a formal promise, the Pirro insider responded: "Jeanine already has."

Ugh. I hate faux piety in politics. Maybe Mr. Mahoney never got the memo, but as a general rule, negative campaigning works. If it didn't, Mrs. Clinton wouldn't already be engaging in it. And it is certainly necessary for a challenger, since Mrs. Pirro's job isn't just to make the case for herself but also to sell New York voters on why Hillary should be replaced.

And what whiz-bang alternative strategy will Team Pirro deploy?

Instead, Mahoney said, the thrust of his boss's campaign will be to complain that Mrs. Clinton is a "part-time" Senator with her eye on the White House.

What about critics who say that line's likely to wear thin sooner rather than later?

"Those people have never won a New York statewide election," Mahoney scoffed. "I’ve won many."

Not against the Clinton machine, you haven't. But leaving that aside, isn't the "part-time senator" complaint a criticism? And isn't criticism...negative campaigning? This is like accepting a duel with swords and, instead of secreting a pistol in your shorts, showing up wielding a butter knife instead. I mean, if the "scoffing" Mr. Mahoney is going to be a hypocrite, can't he do so in a way that will actually give his client a chance of winning? This supposed angle sounds like a rehash of Rick Lazio's pathetic campaign of 2000 that Hillary swatted aside effortlessly.

How can Mr. Mahony possibly leave all the following ammunition in the closet?

*Hillary's role as first lady in appointing Jamie Gorelick to replace Webb Hubbell as her eyes and ears at the Justice Department - a particularly disastrous move given Gorelick's "Wall of Separation" directive, which critics say blocked the FBI from questioning lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta a year before the attacks.

*Mrs. Clinton's decision to criticize President Bush's handling of the Iraq war to the Arab press in a May 2004 interview that her office at first tried to deny. According to an account in a leading Iranian newspaper, Hillary blasted Bush Administration policies as "arrogant and insolent."

*A claim by media mogul and one-time former Clinton supporter Steven Brill that Hillary had her office provide false documentation showing that she had dozens of meetings with 9/11 victim families. "None of it turned out to be true," Brill said after checking with the families themselves.

*Hillary's continued reliance on Sandy Berger as a senior national security advisor, even after Berger pled guilty to stealing top secret 9/11 documents from the National Archives - and shredding some of them. In March, the New York Times reported that Berger helped Mrs. Clinton draft a speech she gave to a German security conference.

We're to believe that Mrs. Pirro is going to forego all of that to harp on Mrs. Clinton's anticipated presidential run and how it will impact her senate attendance record? Are we on Candid Camera or something?

Look, I don't think there's anybody outside of Mrs. Pirro and Mr. Mahoney who think that there is a snowball's chance of Hillary Clinton being denied a second senate term. But if this senate race is to serve as a dry run for the far more formidable task of keeping her upside-down legs out from under Old Resolute three years from now, these issues have to be raised and pounded on relentlessly, because they are the strongest reasons why it is to the infinite advantage of both the state of New York and the entire country to keep the former first dragon as far away from any elective office (much less the presidency) as humanly possible without sticking her in a nosecone and shooting her off-planet atop a Trident missile.

I don't care what this or that poll might be saying; no New Yorker is going to base his or her vote on what everybody already knows will be an absentee second senate term that will never be finished if Hillary attains her ultimate objective, regardless of whether or not she dishonestly pledges to serve it out.

Ditto the other, meatier reasons quoted above.

But those might just ensure that the U.S. Senate becomes her political glass ceiling.