“Undistinguished, hawkish, corporate, opulent, for sale — Hillary Clinton is like a caricature of a Republican. As long as she can obscure that fact from the Democratic masses, from the anti-corporate doves whose social progressivism is far more strident than her own, she will be able to maintain the illusion of the impregnable frontrunner. But nothing lasts forever. Either Clinton will realize this soon, and spend out her days relaxing and cooing over her grandchild. Or she will realize it later, the hard way, sometime in 2016.”
Hillary Clinton may end up deciding that she wants to spend the 935 days until Election 2016 making corporate speeches and spoiling her grandchild. Recent events have exposed weaknesses in Clinton’s supposedly impregnable armor, gaps through which a Democratic or Republican challenger could damage, perhaps even defeat her. The bad headlines to which she has been subjected are enough to make anyone — anyone who isn’t a Clinton — think twice about running for president.
Look at the polls. This week’s Fox News poll has Clinton’s favorable rating at its lowest point in six years. She is at 49 percent favorable, 45 percent unfavorable — similar to her 47/46 favorable/unfavorable rating when she ended her last presidential campaign.
More important than the individual results, however, is the trend. Since leaving office as secretary of state, Clinton’s favorable rating has been on a downward trajectory. And this is before the rigors of a campaign, before a Biden or a Warren or an O’Malley or a Cuomo or a Schweitzer or a Sanders throws a punch or two, before Christie, Bush, Rubio, Walker, Jindal, Paul, Kasich, Ryan, Perry, and Pence go for the Cobra Clutch Bulldog. A shoo-in? So was The Undertaker.
Already Clinton is finding it difficult to articulate a rationale for her presidency, to pronounce a record of achievement on which to base a campaign. In an appearance this month at the Women in the World Summit, she had trouble naming her proudest accomplishment as secretary of state. It is a question that her strongest supporters, in her party and in the media, cannot answer. “Hillary Clinton Struggles to Define a Legacy in Progress,” read the headline in Thursday’s New York Times. “Mrs. Clinton is striking a delicate balance,” the paper reports, “when discussing a job that would be a critical credential in a presidential race.” The last secretary of state to become president was James Buchanan. He gave us the Civil War.
Clinton, the Times goes on, wants “credit for the parts of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy that have worked,” while “subtly distancing herself from the things that have not worked out.” Imagine that. “The things that have not worked out” compose quite a list. What Hillary Clinton wants is to have it all, to enjoy the fading residual glow of President Obama’s halo without having to answer for all of the messes he will leave behind. Her friends tell the Times that her upcoming memoir, for which she was reportedly paid $14 million, will provide an opportunity to “provide her view of WikiLeaks, Benghazi, and smaller missteps like the Russia reset button.” It will provide an opportunity, in other words, to offer a generous helping of self-serving and exculpatory spin.
