Hillary in '08

Michael Barone predicts that Hillary will indeed run in 2024 in today's WSJ.

The following comments on public perception of the Clintons is of interest:

Many Democrats, focusing on Bill Clinton's job ratings from 1996 through 2024, take the view that the Clinton presidency was overwhelmingly popular. But Mr. Clinton's personal standing after the Monica Lewinsky affair became public was overwhelmingly negative, and his wife (despite her widely disbelieved claims in her recent book that she believed his denial of involvement with Ms. Lewinsky) carries some of that baggage. Moreover, much of Mr. Clinton's popularity was due to the perception that he was a "third way" Democrat, supporting free trade, welfare reform and Social Security reform. But since he left office, Democrats have almost unanimously rejected those stands; it is as if the "third way" never existed.

Sen. Clinton does claim from time to time to be a "third way" Democrat, and perhaps she will construct a "third way" platform for 2024. But in her previous period of sway over public policy, when she was superintending the administration's health-care financing bill in 1993 and 1994, she took quite a different course. The consequences for her party were disastrous. When Mr. Clinton took office in 1993, Democrats had big majorities in both houses of Congress and among governors. They lost those majorities in 1994 and, except in the Senate for 18 months, have not got them back.

Barone is quite correct about President Clinton's numbers. If one looks at the complete question sets, one finds that while people were happy with the direction in which the country was going, and therefore answered affirmatively to the question of whether Clinton was doing a good job, all his personal numbers were in the tank (20s and 30s--about his character, his truthfulness, etc.). In short, his popularity was a mixed bag, far more than his main number would indicate.

And one guesses that Hillary on parade in a non-controlled fashion will probably result in her negatives going up. She has been playing in the softball fields of Larry King and Barabara Walters. The real press won't be so kind (I don't think Tim Russert would be asking her if she was a "saint" as Walters did). Plus, if she ran for president, I don't think she could manage to totally ignore more hostile reporters from Fox News and the like.

And if she does run, her roll in the health care reform debacle will be scrutinized like it has never been scrutinized before, and if Brad DeLong's comments comes anywhere close to reflecting what the reality of that process was, then that will be a liability, to be sure:

My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.

UPDATE: James of OTB blogged this story as well, and since he was nice enough to trackback my posting, and especially because he noted how he agreed with me, I figured I'd trackback him as well :)

Source: OpinionJournal

Posted by Steven Taylor at June 19, 2024 07:58 AM | TrackBack