The outing of Hillary Clinton’s emails is a blessing for Republicans but good for Democrats, too, and better still for the public. Her premature coronation as Democratic presidential nominee — and president — is in no one’s interest.
Hillary remains the front runner for the nomination, but now there’s reason — and perhaps room — for Democratic rivals to emerge. And that’s all to the good.
Admittedly, the Democratic bench is thin. Hillary has, as cliché puts it, sucked all the oxygen — press attention and early cash commitments — out of the run-up to the presidential season. No one else has gotten even a modest look-see. It’s all Hillary all the time, especially on copy-cat cable television.
Now, perhaps, there’ll be a useful pause in her parade to the prize — maybe even something resembling a real contest for the nomination, one that can draw out her thinking on the years and issues ahead.
She needs such an outing, especially if a Wall Street Journal poll finding voters associate Hillary more with the past than the future is accurate. Nothing could be worse politically than an uncontested, Clinton on cruise-control to the nomination.
Who might oppose her? Former Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, a combat marine in Vietnam and ex-secretary of the navy, has indicated interest. And Martin O’Malley, former mayor of Baltimore and a two-term governor of Maryland with a likable demeanor and liberal record, gets some mention.
Then there’s Vice President Joe Biden. He gets almost no mention but, despite his shoot-from-the-lip image, he’s a shrewder politician and sharper guy than his reputation suggests. (It’s Biden, remember, who suggested Iraq be federalized into Shi’a, Sunni and Kurdish sectors, which seems to be occurring without our help).
But it’s Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, currently busy hurling grenades at Wall Street and a federal establishment beholden to corporate lobbyists, whom the party’s liberal base yearns for. More than the others, she’d dramatize the fact — uncomfortable for liberals — that Hillary’s a foreign policy hawk and uncomfortably close to Wall Street and big money interests.
A Warren campaign could compel Hillary to move more left, against her better political instincts.
I’ve never believed Hillary is a lock — for the Democratic nomination, yes, but not for the White House. She’s certainly smart enough to be an effective president and tough as a 50-cent steak — a capable combination of competence and combativeness. She’s got the brains and the brass for the presidency.
But her pugnacious personality, coupled with an almost paranoid secrecy born of distaste for the press, makes her a magnet for controversy.
Moreover, she strikes many as devious and solicits money shamelessly. Remember her straight-faced claim that she and Bill left the White House “dead broke” — with a fortune awaiting them in speeches and books?
It appears she violated no laws with her e-mail adventures. But it’s unclear whether she violated any rules or regulations short of law; also, which e-mails she plans to release and which she’ll withhold or destroy.
In short, she courts complaints, some true, some flagrantly false, that she’s not squeaky clean.
Barring more damage, the e-mail dust-up is unlikely to hurt her much among Democratic primary voters. But it’ll dog her through a long general election, giving House Republicans another excuse to run their bogus Benghazi hearings ad nauseam.
Then there’s the dynasty thing. Hubby Bill gave us (among other things) the most prosperous decade in recent history, plus a $250 billion budget surplus. We could do with more of the same. But are eight more years of Clintons too much? Do we really want more?
Jeb Bush as GOP nominee would dilute the dynasty thing. But a Clinton-Bush race of old familiars might reduce turnout to a near-record low, robbing the victor of anything like a mandate.
The upside for Hillary (drum roll here) is the Republican Congress. It got a gift from the gods with Hillary’s e-mails. All the Grand Old Partisans had to do was sit silently and let Hillary twist slowly in the wind. Instead, they elbowed their way into the spotlight with a bone-headed letter to the Iranian Ayatollah, undercutting President Obama’s nuclear negotiations.
The New York Daily News, usually a reliable Republican voice, branded the 47 GOP signers of the letter “traitors.” A bit over the top? Yes, but understandable. Personally, I prefer Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s characterization of the GOP after an earlier self-inflicted wound.
We are, he said, “the stupid party.” Glad somebody noticed.
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