IN THE HOURS BEFORE Hillary Clinton’s Iowa comeuppance, standout blogger Tom Maguire aptly described the future of the Clinton campaign: “Whether Obama wins by a little or a lot, Hilary will be the Terminator candidate. She can’t be bargained with. She can’t be reasoned with. She doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And she absolutely will not stop, ever.” At least we all thought it was apt at the time. And then yesterday Hillary went all mushy on us. Inquiring minds must wonder, What has happened to turn the Terminator into a weepy, self-confessional Opraholic?
The Clintons have led a charmed political life. Up until now kismet has especially kissed Hillary’s fate, whose career rests almost entirely on the foundation of her husbands’ successes. And for all of his undeniable talents, Bill Clinton’s electoral victories are directly attributable to him being the luckiest politician of the last half century.
Had Gary Hart not already defined deviancy down for Oval Office aspirants in 1987, Clinton’s 1992 run for the White House would have been a non-starter. If you told a Larry Sabato-type in 1987 that just five years later the country would elect a president who the voters widely suspected of serial and ongoing infidelities, the Sabato-type would have roared with laughter.
But Gary Hart paving the way for Clinton’s dalliances was just the first instance of the political gods smiling upon Bill Clinton. When Clinton ran in 1992, the Cold War had ended and the country suddenly and unprecedentedly decided that military and foreign policy experience didn’t matter. Ironically, given Team Clinton’s current talking points, Bill Clinton was the most unqualified of any presidential nominee of the previous fifty years. Only Jimmy Carter was a comparable neophyte, and that wasn’t a comparison that the 1992 version of Team Clinton rushed to make. Meanwhile, the 1992 economy slipped into recession, whetting the public’s appetite for a politician who made vapid promises of change, regardless of his lack of experience or specifics.
Clinton also had great luck when it came to his foes. In 1992, he faced a primary slate devoid of strong competition. When he won the nomination, he got to face an uninterested and uninspiring George H.W. Bush. Even with all his advantages in 1992, Clinton still may not have won were it not for the odd presence of eccentric billionaire H. Ross Perot siphoning votes away from the incumbent.
By 1996, the economy had rebounded magnificently in spite of the Clintons’ dual efforts to derail it with tax hikes and a disastrously statist health care plan. Meanwhile, the Republicans put forth yet another cranky past-his-prime nominee. In 2000, Hillary won a Senate race solely because of her surname, over yet another weak Republican. Were it not for her husband’s success and the fame his success accorded her, she wouldn’t have had a chance of being a senator from anywhere. She wouldn’t have had a shot even in New York, in spite of her longtime passion for the Yankees.
AFTER A WHILE, good luck can come to seem like a birthright. If the Clintons consciously realize how lucky they are, I’m sure they’ve long since convinced themselves of the old saw that luck is merely the residue of design. But in 2008, their luck has run out.
Hillary’s up against not a cranky septuagenarian or a weak congressman, but a truly gifted candidate who makes her look like the cranky AARP member in the race. (In trying to spin her “victory” in Iowa, she had a deliciously ludicrous moment where she bragged to the press, “We did very well with voters over 45 years old!”) It’s not supposed to work this way for the Clintons, and fate’s vicissitudes have angered her.
At the risk of anthropomorphizing Hillary Clinton, her debate performance on Saturday night evidenced a profound sense of shock and betrayal. ABC’s broadcast was most unkind to her. Often when one of the other three candidates spoke, Hillary was fixed and prominent in the background. Throughout the evening, she stared daggers at her competitors. It looked like she wanted to spring like a wolverine across the stage and rip Barack Obama’s voice box out.
And then came yesterday’s crack-up. Hillary’s lachrymose lament over her dwindling chances may be the most pathetic political moment in recent memory. The Dean Scream will have to step aside. Some viewed her breakdown as an invitation to discuss whether or not it proved that she is in fact human. But the Clintons have always been demonstrably human. As a couple, they’ve consistently displayed abundant samples of human frailties such as pride, greed, and lust.
Most noteworthy is what elicited Hillary’s tears; it wasn’t the misfortune of others, but rather her own troubles. The preening narcissism that so distinguishes the Clintons was on stark display when Hillary wept. Naturally, she showed traditional Clinton audacity and claimed her tears were for the children, the very same children that she has dedicated herself to for 35 years. But this Clinton’s claim to selflessness comes a bit late in the game. I guess Hillary wants us to believe that she fired and framed those fellows at the White House Travel Office for only one reason–for the children! And that she allowed shadowy benefactors to direct her to a shady commodities windfall for the same reason–for the children!
Every politician gets into the game partly because of outsized quantities of ambition and a desire for self-aggrandizement. This is especially true at the presidential level, and exponentially more so for people named Clinton. The Clintons are hyper-ambitious bare-knuckled brawlers, not self-sacrificing altruists. Hillary Clinton’s weepy boast that she is the personification of selflessness is patented Clintonesque insincerity on stilts. If it provides the long overdue final memory of the Clintons demeaning presidential politics, it will serve as a fitting epitaph.
Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
