Newstradamus

St. Louis Globe-Democrat's famous photo of Harry Truman with infamous headline.

Everybody was expecting another volley in the "Obama's an elitist" flurry when Hillary Clinton addressed the nation's editors and publishers on Tuesday. However, she turned her criticism on the Republicans — first on George W. Bush to critique his presidency and then on John McCain, to show how the likely GOP presidential candidate would be more of the same if elected.

Unlike the speech by Barack Obama yesterday (which had tickets for specific tables, with mine ending up way in back), this time it was first come, first served, and a little waiting in line paid off with a front row seat.

Hillary had music for her entrance — "Our Country" by John Mellencamp, which unless I am mistaken is also used in commercials for Chevy trucks. Has she been using that song for a while, or is its selection a metaphor for her non-elitism? Since questioning Obama's electability following his analysis of small-town Pennsylvanians as being "bitter," she has downed a shot of whisky in Indiana and talked of how she learned to shoot from her Scranton granddad.

(On Tuesday, the big screen image of her in the hall clearly showed the gleam coming off her necklace. I asked the woman sitting next to me if they were real diamonds. She replied, "Oh, yeah!)

Like the other candidates, Clinton played up to the editors. She started off by jokingly declaring the speech off the record, expressing admiration for a group of people used to getting calls at 3 a.m., and declaring her support for a federal reporter shield law, now before the Senate.

She also thanked the editors for a headline she has thought about recently, "Dewey Beats Truman." Actually, the premature headline that appeared in the Chicago Tribune in 1948 was "Dewey Defeats Truman," but we understood what she meant. It also underlines how the speed of news has accelerated so much since those days.

Before taking on Bush in the main part of her speech, and doing a short Q&A session, she praised the mission of newspapers, which "predates our country. It is essential that we have you to inform an active citizenry.” She noted the dangers faced by journalists in the world (citing the slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Iraq), and praised investigative efforts such as the exposure of conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital, which won a Pulitzer Prize last week for the Washington Post.