Tag: Hillary Clinton

[Alex]

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. Dashing around the city, trying to organise matters for the holidays and all the rest of it. Have nagging fear that I’ve forgotten something quite important. Too late now.

Clearly, Hillary Clinton continues to inspire conversation. For my part I’ve never understood the wild enthusiasm Hillary attracts, nor the vicious (vile, even) hatred she inspires among so many on the right. Yet, to judgeby the classic journalistic "source"  – taxi drivers – Hillary is what the people want to talk about. In the last 24 hours alone, two Edinburgh taxi drivers have asked me if she can really win the White House.

I don’t think Bill will be too much of a problem, despite what Dick Morris and others migth vae one believe. The Clinton scandals may look tawdry but they’re trivial compared to what we’ve seen these past five years. My friend Garance Franke-Ruta has a useful post reminding us why political husbands tend to be more problematic for female candidates than wives (even Teresa Heinz, as she has now, I think, reverted to calling herself) are for male politicians:

Even today, husbands frequently become issues in women’s campaigns in ways they don’t in those of male candidates (see: Pirro, Jeannine), because political husbands are more likely than political wives to have had independent careers and finances that can be investigated. Sure, times have changed since [Geraldine] Ferraro ran in the veep’s slot [in 1984], but it seems pretty clear that the husband of any woman who runs for president will become an issue one way or another, and certainly will be the subject of indpendent and close scrutiny. The one advantage Bill Clinton would have in such a situation is that he has already been so thoroughly investigated, and subjected such great scrutiny, that the bar for opinion-changing news about him is pretty darn high. Plus, if any political husband in America knows how to ride out negative media attention, it’s him.

My own suspicion, tentative though it is, may be that Hillary’s problem is a dynastic one: is this republic really ready to share the Presidency between two families from 1988 to, potentially, 2016? Isn’t that ultimately actually quite un-American? Or doesn’t it at least run contrary to a fondly cherished American myth that this is not an aristocratic country?

Meanwhile, Marty Peretz seems delighted by the rise of Barack Obama – largely because, well, he isn’t Hillary…

There was no way to see Barack Obama coming. And, damn it, he is a picture of America’s future, black and white. African father. Columbia. Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Law Review, no slouch he. Taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, greater evidence of his brilliance. Supple in mind and bearing, evoking energy and thoughtfulness. Ah, yes, his most important public quality: He is comfortable in his own skin. She is not. Oh, is she not! What could Hillary possibly say against him? In the Democratic Party, it is still difficult to honestly criticize an African American. You can’t even say a bad word about Al Sharpton, even though you can’t say a truthful good word about him, either. But what, for heaven’s sake, is there to criticize about Obama? Nothing.

She really shouldn’t run. It would divide and polarize the country; she’s dreadful on the stump; she has very high negatives; most Democrats only like her; almost no-one loves her; and do we really want 20 years of two families in the White House? Besides: what do you do with Bill? Chuck Todd lays out why the primary season could be much rougher for her than expected. I think she’d make a great Supreme Court Justice or Senate Majority Leader. I had a chat recently with a senior Republican and former presidential candidate. We were discussing how deeply divided the Republicans are. I asked him: what could unite them again at this point? He answered in one word: Hillary. She’s the last hope for the far right. Please, Senator Clinton. Don’t do it.

(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty.)

Is she back-sliding? That’s one interpretation of her recent chat with the editors of the New York Daily News.

She seriously considered running for prez two years ago, according to a dishy new profile in the current Atlantic. Money quote:

Though she has always downplayed the issue, Clinton apparently flirted with running for the presidency in the 2004 election. According to one insider, in 2003 Mark Penn had created a unit within the polling firm of Penn, Schoen & Berland so clandestine that most of the staff didn‚Äôt even know it existed. It operated in a room whose computers had been disconnected from the company‚Äôs network. Penn polled to find out whether Clinton could break her pledge to serve a full term in the Senate and still maintain enough political viability to run for president. (Penn wouldn’t confirm ‚Äî or deny ‚Äî this episode, and said he believed that "at no time was she ever leaning in that direction.") Ultimately, of course, she chose not to. But she must have been tempted. "Some very important people were coming to her on bended knee asking her to run," a close friend of Clinton‚Äôs told me. "That was the phrase she used: ‘on bended knee.’"

Of course, she meant it in a completely different way than her husband.

Someone finally says no to torture.

This nugget from the Karl Rove biography seems too weird to be true:

Soon after Rove moved into his new office in the West Wing, previously occupied by Hillary Clinton, he invited three top Catholic priests to conduct a ceremony to purge the room of evil spirits. "It was an actual liturgical ceremony," says participant Deal Hudson. "We sat at the table, we prayed. A priest said a series of prayers, including a blessing."

Deal Hudson, however, is not likely to make this up. Maybe it was just a blessing. Whatever, it’s not exactly reassuring about what drives the Bush administration, is it?

by Ana Marie Cox

My former corporate masters over at Gawker are having some fun with the conceit behind my current corporate masters’ idea of "interactivity":

TIME turns this week’s cover into a ballot on Senator Hillary Clinton, inviting readers to vote whether they "love her" or "hate her." Readers can check their preference on the cover and mail it to TIME or they can go on TIME.com to register their "vote" starting Monday.

Gawker notes that you can go through the laborious process of writing down your vote, tearing the cover off, putting in an envelope, putting on pants, etc., or you could just "go to NewsMax, Drudge, or any other number of right-wing sites and answer the same question" — AND get a chance to win a gift certificate for the Olive Garden… though to use it, you’d also have to wear pants so the whole thing’s a wash, really. There is then a mean joke at the expense of a treasured colleague.

Mock away, Gawker, mock all you like. I’ve always said DC is like high school, why NOT have a vote for prom royalty? (And, hey, then maybe John Edwards will have a chance.) In any case, the conceit is based on one of the cover story’s most interesting if not revelatory points: people have, uhm, strong feelings about Hillary. Undercutting the "good" news for Hillary supporters (she leads field, has good favorable ratings), is this:

Only 3% of those surveyed in the TIME poll said they had no opinion of her, positive or negative. She is the inkblot test of a polarized electorate. In the TIME poll, Democrats overwhelmingly describe her as a strong leader (77%) who has strong moral values (69%). Republicans by and large see an opportunist who would say or do anything to further her political ambitions (68%) and puts her political interests ahead of her beliefs (60%). As for independents, more than half (53%) of those surveyed said they would not support her, with 34% putting themselves in the "definitely not" category.

I think this is pretty devastating for a Hillary candidacy, at least in the general. There’s not a lot of wiggle room for them to win anyone over who isn’t already there — even independents don’t like her that much. (More specific parsing here.)

People here in Washington think that Hillary ’08’s campaign is a foregone conclusion. In fact, the one aspect of the story that’s gotten most attention and the most raised eyebrows is the assertion that Hillary is "geuinely undecided" about whether or not she’s running. I agree that such a statement is more of a manuever than the truth, but that’s exactly why I now doubt if her candidacy is the sure thing it was even a month ago. She’s the most calculating person in modern politics this side of Karl Rove; she’s made a career out of appearing to risk more than she really does — she won’t run if she can’t win. And these numbers make winning look really, really hard.

The sculptor says: "I didn’t want to give her a face-lift or change her age." I take him at his word. But that boob job is quite spectacular. I’m not sure if the photo is Reuters, though, so you never know.

He’s much more popular than she is in the latest Gallup poll – and her unfavorability ratings haven’t budged much in six years. 52 percent of men have an unfavorable view of her. And the Dems want her to run? They can’t be serious, can they?

It’s not looking too good. Money quote from Friday’s Hardball:

NORAH O’DONNELL: Tom, you are blazing the trail out there with everybody on the ground, the activists that really matter, even before the rest of us get out there. So you really know the ground truth out there about what‚Äôs going on. And I understand you’ve been in Iowa recently as well. And so how are they feeling about Senator Hillary Clinton as the Democratic front-runner?

TOM CURRY: You know, Norah, the strange thing that I found when I was in Iowa 10 days ago is that active Democrats, loyal Democrats, they are pessimistic about Hillary Clinton running for their party’s nomination.

O‚ÄôDONNELL: Really? Because they don’t think she can win?

CURRY: Because they think she would be defeated in the general election and because they think she is too polarizing a figure. I didn’t ‚Äî I could not come across one active Democrat in my four or five days in Iowa who was enthusiastic about her running.

Makes sense to me.

(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty.)