This isn’t going to go over well at dKos

W. is giving out free advice – to some non-traditional clients:

President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.

In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ”

Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”

This is almost Rovian in its cleverness. Not only is it wise counsel in its own right, it could also serve to fatally split the responsible elements of the Democratic Party from the fringe left. While all that mad money provided by the perpetually agitated True Believers on the netroot side looks attractive to campaigning politicians, they won’t want to be pulled so far from the mainstream that they’re unelectable or that any electoral gains they may get in 2008 are unsustainable.

The True Believers held their nose and voted for the Clintons’ DLC-style centrists back during the 90’s, choking down balanced budgets, retreat from gay rights, gun control and even welfare reform because it was presented as the price of access to the levers of power. For their pains they saw a Republican congress elected and then – horror of horrors – Bush elected not once but twice to the presidency. They’re tired of compromise and are demanding fealty – exactly what they won’t get from professional political partisans that need to attract a substantial part of the center and for whom winning is the One True Thing, an end rather than a means.

I think it’s quite possible that once again the man has been misunderestimated.