WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton has done everything right lately.
She reached across the aisle to work with Sen. Lindsay Graham, onetime House impeachment manager against her husband, to increase veterans’ access to health care. She has come out fighting for the Count Every Vote Act of 2005, a series of broadly popular election reform measures. And she has spoken out on the issue of abortion, calling for “common ground” to prevent the necessity of this procedure, splitting pragmatic conservatives and Victorian Age zealots over the issue of contraception use.
With that said, Hillary Clinton should not be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008.
One need not look any further than this past election to understand my point. Democrats nominated a senator from the Northeast for president, easy to paint as a “flip-flopper,” easier to caricature as an out-of-touch liberal. Certainly, John Kerry provided multiple rounds of ammunition for these charges, with his famous quote about the $87 billion spent in Iraq and his penchant for windsurfing.
Yet, if you do not think the same thing could be done to Hillary, you may need a refresher course. May I recommend VH1’s “I Love the ‘90s?” Because once the media get its hands on the old tapes and talking points from the noise machine of think-tanks, issue-groups and otherwise employed right-wing mudslingers, you can take a pretty educated guess at what is coming.
Hillary was the architect of a failed attempt for government-run health care. She snarled about staying home and holding teas and baking cookies when asked about her career.
The truth is that Hillary will be much easier to destroy than John Kerry, because right-wingers already spent the 1990s working overtime to implant immorality and the Clintons alongside each other in our collective memories.
Additionally, living right outside New York City, or “that den of sin” as it is known in right-wing circles, and being the first female nominee to boot, will allow every extremist with a keyboard to play upon socially engrained fears and still unsettled gender roles in our society. Somewhere Phyllis Schlafly must be frothing at the mouth with a copy of “Sex and the City” rearing to go.
The truth is that Hillary Clinton would make an excellent president. She showed true character in staying with her family for the sake of preserving her marriage and protecting her daughter during very trying times. She has shown an inclination to govern from the center-left, which is a lot closer to where most Americans are than the current occupant of the Oval Office.
Yet, we must be realists in politics. There is a reason that governors, and particularly Democratic chief executives from the “heartland,” have been more successful in running for president.
Their antennae are attuned to the cultural rhythms necessary to build a center-out political coalition to lead. That is what a young governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton did in 1992.
Democrats can count among their number overwhelmingly popular chief executives of important swing states: Mark Warner of Virginia, Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Phil Bredesen of Tennessee and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania. All possess charisma, and all have performed well in rural areas often considered hostile territory for Democrats.
To reverse the tide of fiscal profligacy and foreign policy failure that is currently ascendant in Washington, this is where Democrats must turn for their presidential nominee in 2008.
Cliff Schecter is a political analyst for the Sinclair Broadcast Group.
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