Today, practicing Catholics are coping without an infallible Pope. Must professional Democrats always have an
inevitable Clinton to follow?
For the time being, “Yes, buster” is
the Sound Observer’s answer when talking about the next president, according to
Scott Conroy in
Real Clear Politics.
Conceivably, “others” will start
getting “active.” It’s a free country. But we must be patient: 2013 will be
used up waiting for Hillary Clinton to rest up, create her own profit center in
the Clinton Empire of memoir-writing and motivational speaking, nurture and
prune her cadre of insiders, and decide whether she wants to be the next president of the United States.
Hillary Clinton is not an incumbent
president, Conroy reminds us sternly. She is, however, an “almost president”
who could “freeze the field.” Clinton strategist Doug Hathaway suspects that eventually
there will be a race. For now, however, no one is prepared to accept that, yes,
there will be primaries, challengers, and, for heaven's sakes, divisive issues
along the way. Those “others” will become “increasingly visible”; who knows
what they’d have to say.
Let’s assume that the Freeze for
Hillary Clinton Campaign lasts through the spring; and when it melts away,
let’s enjoy ourselves.
The closest Democrats truly have to an
“almost president” is Al Gore: he looks as healthy as Hillary Clinton, has
published more books than all the Clintons combined, and is as opinionated as
they come about what Obama and next president must do. Still, he’s not even
qualified to be one of the “others.”
Hillary Clinton’s strength on paper is
highly flammable.
According to Quinnipiac’s latest poll,
she’d beat all the best-known Republican challengers winning around 50% of the vote. With a personal profile as high as Barack Obama’s—without
four years of having to say or do anything unpleasant on a wide range of
unpleasant domestic issues—she’d do just as well as Obama. Wow.
Hillary Clinton was a great pick and was
an industrious Secretary of State; and she is an intelligent woman. These two
characteristics are advantages, unquestionably, but they’re not keys to the
presidency or, together, settle who is the best candidate for president.
If luck holds for Obama—and the
world—foreign-policy discussion could be even less exciting in 2016 than it
was in 2012. It’s widely agreed that electing a women is overdue. However,
women don’t get special favors in today’s labor market.
Two big questions about 2016 can’t be
honestly answered now: the state of mind of the Democratic Party and Clinton’s
vitality in 2016.
Whatever you think of President Ronald
Reagan retrospectively or hear about how Hillary wore out her younger staff in
her last job, we can’t be sure about the future vitality of anyone who is 65 today. It’s polite, but it’s dishonest to avoid the question. And it doesn’t
allow for a firm answer—an “inevitable” candidate.
Most important, the Democrats need a
good fight about the future. A range of candidates—appealing to their Party’s
silent left, smug center, and silent right—need to express new ideas and need
to be called out when they say stale things.
Four most of this frustrating century,
Democrats have cut their teeth fighting “nutty” Republicans. However, in 2016,
they may very likely face an electable Republican and will definitely have to
explain why many of the problems that they always say are so important are as
big in 2016 as they were a decade earlier, when the Republican tide started to
pull out.
On health costs, pubic service
performance, domestic security, surveillance and civil rights, tax reform,
middle class jobs, social mobility, schooling for poor families, the resources
left to the states and cities and the resources spent in Washington, on higher
taxes and less generous services, Democrats will have a record to explain-—and
transcend.
They won’t be able to run yet another election
rallying voters to protect what they have from those who want to go back to a
rapidly receding past.
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