A Headline says it all: “Hillary for vice president movement gains traction.” I have no doubt it’s true, but I have a question: Why?
On one level, the answer is obvious — politics. Without a boost of voters and enthusiasm, President Obama is looking like a one-termer. Hillary, to those who want her on the ticket, is the solution. They believe she could supply the troops to eke out a second Obama term in 2012 while securing heir-apparent status for 2016.
As for Joe Biden, if he isn’t expendable, nobody is.
But there’s another level on which to consider the movement, and it leads to me conclude the Hillary-as-veep scenario is half-baked and will never happen.
It starts with competence. Unless Obama starts to show he can govern, nobody, especially a member of his Cabinet, can help him survive the coming voter backlash.
He’s had large Democratic majorities to back his Big Government, blank-check approach, yet the economy refuses to cooperate. The official unemployment rate of 9.5 percent undercounts millions of Americans working part-time or who have stopped looking for a job.
Meanwhile, the debt piles up — 40 percent of this year’s budget is borrowed — and the tax and regulatory burdens he’s planning or has already imposed are certain to retard growth.
Finally, the nation remains bitterly divided, with Obama overtly partisan despite promises to the contrary. He blames George W. Bush for something nearly every day.
Hillary would be no help with either problem. She is at least as polarizing as Obama is, and has no background on economic issues. She’s never met a payroll, and lost the 2008 nomination after blowing through a $100 million war chest in one-third of the primaries.
As first lady and senator, she never met a tax hike or government program she didn’t embrace, so has no credibility to negate Obama’s big-spender rep.
But isn’t she “a team player who has earned good marks” as secretary of state, as former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder wrote in urging Obama to make the switch?
Ah, no. Inadvertently, Wilder has put his finger on the ultimate reason why Clinton can’t save Obama.
America’s foreign policy is a mess, from the surge/withdraw incoherence in Afghanistan to the damaging snits with allies that have alarmed our friends without bringing a single adversary to our side.
On Iran, the United States wasted more than a year in fruitless “engagement” before getting Security Council support on sanctions. But even the White House doesn’t believe the sanctions will stop the mullahs’ nuke march, yet there remains doubt around the world about whether America is determined to stop Iran, or is ready to try containment after it has a bomb.
Clinton is identified with all those issues, not to mention the ineffective entreaties to get China and Russia to stop trading with Iran and North Korea. A good team player on an unpopular, losing team wouldn’t be a virtue to most voters, especially independents. And she can’t very well run with Obama if she decides to oppose him on major policies.
Add the negatives up and it’s hard to see how she could be on the Obama ticket. While she and Bubba desperately want to restore the Clinton presidency, I suspect some of the growing 2012 chatter is a signal to her supporters not to give up.
But the calendar is her enemy. She won’t run a primary against Obama in 2012 — even if she beat him, she’d divide the party and lose the black vote in a general election. So she has to wait until 2016.
By then, she’ll be 69. Certainly not too old, but that’s a very long time to sustain a political base, either as a secretary of state or, more likely, as a private citizen.
Sure, anything can happen in politics. But another President Clinton looks like the longest of long shots.
A voice of reason amid rant
After his rant on the House floor, Democrat Anthony Weiner depicted his meltdown as righteous anger over the failure to fund health care for 9/11 responders. But Weiner’s outburst never made sense, and now an important member of his party is coming forward to help clean up the mess.
Robert Zimmerman, a New York member of the Democratic National Committee, is joining with Long Island Republican Pete King, the target of Weiner’s rant, to broker a bipartisan deal that would let the bill pass.
Their solution is simple: a majority vote. Had those rules been in effect, the bill would have passed easily. The problem is that Dem leaders engaged in gamesmanship that required a two-thirds vote.
The measure failed, even though it got 255 votes, far more than the 218 needed for a majority. Weiner then went nuts, inexplicably attacking King — who voted for it.
“This issue has come to symbolize the crisis in confidence that our nation has in our government,” Zimmerman told me about why he is crossing party lines to work with King.
“Our legislators are defining their credibility and effectiveness by the number of YouTube hits and sound bites that are generated.” Weiner reportedly wants to drum Zimmerman out of the party leadership for daring to break ranks. The inclination is a telling example of his extreme partisanship.
Weiner, not incidentally, is all over the place on 9/11 issues. He wrote to Mayor Bloomberg, congratulating him for supporting the Ground Zero mosque. And long after others dropped their support for trying 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in lower Manhattan, Weiner continued to endorse it.
If Weiner gets his way, maybe KSM can stroll over to the mosque during trial lunch breaks. Imagine how the 9/11 responders and families would like that.
Strife of the party
After watching Charlie Rangel stumble through his 30-minute defense speech yesterday, I have a tip on something else to watch: See which pols show up for Charlie the Chiseler’s birthday party tonight. Those who do cannot be trusted to reform politics. Take names and remember.
DROP THE PICKUP
Mitt Romney has an authenticity problem, and no clue about how to fix it. The former Massachusetts governor, gearing up for another GOP presidential run, has jumped on the pickup-truck bandwagon. Looking like a Sen. Scott Brown wannabe, Romney has been spotted driving a pickup to political events.
Did he think of this himself, or did he actually pay somebody for the advice? Either way, he ought to fire the genius behind the idea.
Gay it ain’t so!
Now hear this — nobody is responsible for their own actions anymore. After a New York Times profile on the gay Army private who is the suspect in the Wiki Leaks fiasco, some bloggers suggested the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is to blame.
Well, at least this one’s not George Bush’s fault. Not yet, anyway.