Waiting for Hillary

Waiting for Hillary Clinton to announce her candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2008 is now a job description for the hottest of the Capitol pundits. One of the most thoughtful, my colleague Chuck Todd, the editor in chief of the National Journal’s Hotline, has published a crib sheet for the next two years of Hillary Clinton-watching in which he identifies six weaknesses in Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy that can harry her in the nomination contest. I like Mr. Todd’s list a lot — it is the sort of analysis that would benefit Republican candidates supremely — and yet I still believe Mrs. Clinton is one of the most potent and viable forces in Democratic politics since the patriotic Midwest populist she has come to resemble, Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois in the 1950s.First, a question is raised about the depth of Mrs. Clinton’s support: that she is respected in the Democratic Party but that there is no passion for her, as there can be for that sparkling Southern gent John Edwards of North Carolina, or the fresh, evangelical face of Barack Obama of Illinois. The rejoinder to that is that passionate-about is not an attribute of the most nationally agile of the Democratic nominees of the last half-century, such as Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Walter Mondale in 1976, or Al Gore in 2000. Each of these won the nomination because he satisfied the party’s suggestible establishment with sober fund raising and glib obeisance. Meanwhile, the passionately loved candidates, John Kennedy in 1960 and Bill Clinton in 1992, did not, truth be told, leave the party either richer or sturdier than when they first charmed it.Second, it is asked how Mrs. Clinton can survive the Iowa caucus gamut which last time split its vote between John Kerry and Mr. Edwards and ended the prospects of the passionately liked Howard Dean. Iowa is an awkward process. It’s not about counting votes but about the peculiar teamwork of viably large enough groups in the caucus system that meet in living rooms and church basements on a frigid January night with the whole of the earth’s camera teams kibitzing. Mr. Edwards will shine again, Mr. Kerry will participate doggedly, the darling Mr. Obama may show up, and favorite son Tom Vilsack will play spoiler for also-rans like Joe Biden or Chris Dodd. Mrs. Clinton, at worst, will be everyone’s second choice, and that is enough to survive to get to the Clinton family home-court advantages in the South, New York, and California.Third, Mrs. Clinton’s talent in speaking with a clarifying inexactness about the Iraq conflict is maddening to the anti-war posse of her party, which routinely threatens to turn her candidacy into another Joe Lieberman food fight. This is a delicious opportunity for Mrs. Clinton to make a Sister Souljah-like speech in which she excoriates the tantrum-throwers and sends them for a time-out. Also, Mrs. Clinton can easily demonstrate with one more trip to the front that the first major female candidate for the presidency is a peacemaking hawk, a paradox that won for another candidate in a fractured field, Abraham Lincoln.Fourth and fifth, it is said that Mrs. Clinton’s gender is an obstacle, even in the female-vote-dominated Democratic primaries, and that the Falstaffian Bill Clinton is a burden that no other candidate ever had to carry. My response is to examine the electoral map for the last two cycles. How does being Mrs. Bill Clinton not dominate Main Street conversation in every wintry weekend in New Hampshire? And, in the general election, what blue state does being Mr. Clinton’s wife lose? And how do the Republicans answer Mr. Clinton’s star power when he camps out in the press markets of Cleveland, St. Louis, and Miami?Mr. Todd’s sixth point is that Mrs. Clinton must be seen as a legacy candidate, and that the record with the legacy presidency of George W. Bush is evidence that do-overs are seen as mediocre. This is a keen warning. It is true that Mrs. Clinton’s team is an unchanged lineup from the second Clinton administration. But this caution applies more to the general election than it does to the primaries, where raising cash and cronyism dominate the game.A final concern for Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy comes from a recent Financial Times interview by Graham Bowley with a savant of the Democratic Party, Ted Sorensen, who was John Kennedy’s speechwriter and pal. “Republicans are better at giving very simple, reassuring answers to questions that don’t really have simple, reassuring answers,” Mr. Sorensen said. “People want to be reassured in a time of change.” Mr. Sorensen faults Messrs. Gore and Kerry for speaking to impress press editors and not “Joe Sixpack.” Implicit in this polite criticism is that the Democratic Party will not prosper with yet another smart, tireless, focused, well-financed Ivy Leaguer such as Mrs. Clinton, who not only cannot connect with a television audience but who also represents the very profound change that worries voters. My quick reply to this caveat is that Mrs. Clinton doesn’t need to beat Bubba to win the candidacy, only to outlast several ordinary legislators, not one of whom has ever demonstrated a desire to win comparable to Hillary Clinton’s.Mr. Batchelor is host of “The John Batchelor Show,” now in hiatus.

Waiting for Hillary

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