Keep your friends close and your enemies closer
Here's my take. If the November House and Senate elections turn out to be the Democrat train wreck that politicos of both parties say it will be, Hillary will resign from Secretary of State effective the first or so of 2011. Magically, her book about international politics and her experience as secretary will hit the shelves before Labor Day. She'll already have formed her presidential race exploratory committee by then and the full campaign apparatus will be in place by the end of October. The 2012 Iowa caucus will be in early January as usual and the Hillary 2012 train will be in full steam.
2012 is, effectively, Hillary's last chance. In 2016 she'll turn 69 just before election day. Only Ronald Reagan has been elected at that age level; Hillary surely recalls that Bob Dole and John McCain, each with extensive government experience and both bona fide war heroes and only a little older, were rejected by the electorate.
I think that the only reason Hillary accepted the State post was to burnish her credentials for 2012. I posted in November 2008, "It stretches credulity that Senator Clinton would give up an assured slot of power and opportunity in the Senate for the chance to appear shrill and useless for the foreseeable future."
She has avoided the shrill but not really the useless. She is not influencing Obama's foreign policy and she knows it. She is sort of a Potemkin secretary - put on for show by the White House. Obama likely tabbed her for the post in order to neutralize her politically during his four years - the State and Defense posts are hard-traditionally non-political and their occupants do not campaign during elections or make public, partisan comments.
Surely Hillary knew this when she accepted the post. But she now will be able to claim on the campaign that she knows from the inside how the White House works, how the Congress works and how the foreign-policy establishment works. This will be campaign gold for her.
But as I said, '12 is her last hurrah. When campaigning begins in earnest she will be merciless toward the sitting president. The fight for the Democrat nomination will be the harshest in decades.
When the last man is left standing (or woman) and their convention is over, the Dems will have spilt so much of their own blood that the closedown to November should be a trot for the Republican nominee - that is, if the Republicans actually have a nominee that can stand on his or her own feet, and not look good merely because s/he is not Hillary or Obama. Right now, I don't know who that could be.
Speaking of Hillary, this post is a good excuse to refer you again to my top three scariest pictures on the internet.
Number three.
Number two.
And still in first place with no real competition: the Number One scariest picture on the internet.
The first place picture will be an albatross around the Dems' neck in '12 no matter who the nominee is.
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2 comments:
Looks like she fired her opening salvo from overseas today with her announcement that the Obama Justice Dept. will file suit over the Arizona immigration bill. Why would the Secretary of State make such an annoncement regarding domestic policy unless to make "The One" look like a bufoon over an issue in which the majority of American's are siding with.
Further evidence, I think Hillary recently did a very good and fairly subtle implantation of something sharp and pointy in Obama's back. She revealed in a foreign interview that Obama's Justice Department intends to sue AZ over their new illegal immigrant laws.
Now, I think everybody thought the odds of this happening were pretty good, but by announcing it the way she did she took when should have been a program announced with specific timing and a political offensive and has forced Obama to handle it on the defensive.
They can't even let the idea drop if they find out it isn't workable because their base will go berserk and it will make Obama look even more incompetent internationally, having 'announced' it internationally.
As well, all of the proponents of the legislation will be looking to
take political potshots at Obama because of their anger.
In short, she got inside their OODA loop and has forced the administration into a position they now can't afford to back down from, one which it isn't definite yet that they can win.
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