A feather in her cap, or a fire in her belly:
Such are the twin engines of a possible Hillary run.
They won’t both fire, though; only one.
If appetite consumed her, she’d have made her decision.
If a feather is her motive, she’ll surely lose.
Mrs Clinton is on tour promoting her book Hard Choices
published by Simon and Schuster.
No, Kerry isn’t running for president, but he sure looks presidential these days. The man who was so painfully awkward as a presidential candidate has come into his own as secretary of state, where his outstanding personal qualities shine to an almost dazzling degree. I have enjoyed hearing his firm voice spell out American views fearlessly, even calling out Dick Cheney on the PBS Newshour the other day. Kerry’s perspicacity, conviction, and personal power are more evident than ever before.
More than that, he is palpably comfortable with leading. The stiffness of his patrician face has finally softened into one that’s warm and even sunny sometimes.
As Democrats contemplate Hillary Clinton’s almost certain presidential run, they may as well as themselves, why not Kerry? Or some combination?
Kerry’s amazing grasp of foreign policy, forthright patriotism, and chops in the military, would beautifully complement Hillary’s more charismatic, everywoman style of leadership and politicking. Both are broadly experienced and command wide respect in their party and beyond. Moreover, concerns about Mrs Clinton’s health and whether she has the stamina for the top job are not going to go away. Even I have my reservations, while wishing her best should she run. Kerry’s evident vigor, intellectual maturity, and unquestionable fitness for the presidency make him an ideal running mate, one whose presence on the ticket would silence these qualms.
Text © 2014 Susan Barsy
Images: Courtesy of the US State Department; click on images to go to the source.
I heard it first from the security guard in my office building. We were chatting about the inauguration, when he grew animated. “What’s going to happen after this?” he abruptly asked me. “The Democrats don’t have anyone to come after Obama. They only have one person. You know who it is?” It astonished me to realize he meant the First Lady.
“If that happens, I’ll tell everyone I heard it here first,” I replied, taking his words as a measure of the fervid loyalty the First Family enjoys in some camps. Whether Mrs. Obama, who has never held public office and was a reluctant first lady, would ever contemplate a presidential run seems doubtful to me. She’s an entirely different sort than Hillary Clinton, who, since her school days, has been a political animal through and through.
Imagine my astonishment, then, when I ran across this image on a heavily visited website (The Obamacrat) that assumed the same thing: that a Michelle Obama candidacy would be viable in 2016. If nothing else, this incipient “draft MO” movement suggests how ready citizens of perhaps any nation are to place their trust in established political families, fueling a dynastic element that has been an unmistakeable and constant feature of American politics, as evident during the Federalist era as it is today.
Photograph of Mrs Obama
made from PBS Newshour coverage of Monday’s presidential inauguration.
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With Election Day 2012 finally in sight, national attention is riveted on the possible electoral outcomes of the presidential vote. A useful interactive on the New York Times website makes it easier to envision the implications of losses and victories in various swing states. Click on the image to go to the site, then use the “next” button to take advantage of its interactive features.
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Voters pinning their hopes on Mitt Romney’s purported momentum may find that a visit to Nate Silver‘s blog, FiveThirtyEight, puts them in a sour mood. Silver, a youngish statistician whose 2008 predictions were highly accurate, has consistently assigned President Obama favorable odds of victory. Even as isolated polls show his challenger pulling even with Obama in several key states, the margin by which Silver’s quantitative model favors Obama has been increasing. (Silver assigned Obama a 77% chance of winning with 299 electoral votes, as of my site visit earlier in the day.)
Not surprisingly, Silver has come under attack from the right and finds himself the center of eleventh-hour controversy. The key charges, defenses, and countercharges are contained in the various links below. The weirdest charge is that of Dean Chambers, who insinuates that Silver is too effeminate to be a competent predictor of the presidential odds. Also discernible is an anti-intellectual discomfort with hard numbers.
Dylan Byers, Nate Silver: One-Term Celebrity?, Politico.
Brett LoGlurato, People are flipping out over Politico’s attack on Nate Silver, Business Insider.
Ezra Klein, The Nate Silver Backlash, The Washington Post.
Robert Schlesinger, Mitt Romney’s Electoral Problem and the War on Nate Silver, US News and World Report.
Charles P Pierce, The Enemies of Nate Silver, Esquire.
Brace yourselves for one of the weirdest days of analysis we’ve seen in this election cycle, as pundits and pollsters parse the political effects and meanings of Hurricane Sandy. A major natural disaster one week before the election is the one thing the campaign season lacked to make it truly harrowing.
The fact that high winds, driving rains, and surging seas are even now imperiling lives and physically rending the fabric of the nation isn’t going to deter anyone from spinning the storm. On the contrary, the timing of this freakish event, coinciding as it does with Halloween and a full moon, seems intended to arouse our interpretative instincts, sending an unnerved body politic on a quest for cosmic meaning.
Don’t be too surprised if the lines of analysis fall mainly along party lines.
My own first reaction was essentially a pro-federal one. Disasters, whether natural or man-made, bring out our natural sympathies, heightening our sense of interconnectedness and reminding us of the bonds that have long knit us up into one political body. Disasters arouse patriotic and charitable feelings, prompting us to value customs and institutions that protect us collectively while enabling us to repel threats from outside. I imagine President Obama benefiting from the gratitude and relief that a threatened and vulnerable populace feels, when it rediscovers the national government as a source of safety and strength. Yes, Sandy could really benefit the Democrats—as long as all those East Coast voters can get to the polls.
Yet the historian in me can readily envision how Sandy could be spun from the other side, by the more religious, evangelical side of America that has a tendency to see natural disasters as divine judgments, expressing God’s displeasure with wayward man. Are there, in some far reaches of our country, fundamentalist voters unaffected by the storm, rejoicing in an event so perfectly designed to cast Democratic strongholds into confusion and deliver an electoral victory to the other side? At the end of a hard-fought campaign in which Republican forces have seldom been confident of a preponderating victory, is it possible that this massive storm, crippling the northeastern corridor and its media, has given them the lucky break that they so desperately need? Between professions of sympathy, Republican operatives will be doubling down in the hope of churning meteorological chaos into political victory.
At the end of this long campaign season, when every American is being called on to get involved and work to secure partisan victory, the storm is at the very least a reminder of vast impersonal forces at work, and of the maelstrom that American democracy is today. Sandy may have passed over, but sit tight: we may be in for more stormy weather next week.
Image: Hurricane Sandy over the eastern US, from this source.
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Could Hurricane Sandy Delay the US Election? The Telegraph
