2.01.2007
The Future President Clinton (NYTimes.com)
The Right Stuff
January 31, 2007, 6:08 pm
As I survey the political scene, I don’t think it’s too soon to make a firm prediction about the 2008 presidential race. I think Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States.
The way I see it, the only reason Al Gore and John Kerry didn’t win in 2000 and 2004 is that they ran two of the worst campaigns in American political history. Yet both lost only by the skin of their teeth.
Yes, I know that Gore received more of the popular vote than George W. Bush did, and many people believe the election was stolen from him. But the election never should have been close enough for that to be possible. He was a sitting vice president at a time of peace and prosperity. Consequently, Gore should have won by a margin large enough to preclude any challenge.
While it is true that Bush ran a pretty good campaign in 2000, it wouldn’t have been enough to win had Gore run a half-competent campaign. All he had to do, really, was assure the American people that he would continue Bill Clinton’s economic and foreign policies. People may have had doubts about Clinton’s personal behavior, but they had no doubts about his policies: they liked them. In November 2000, his favorable/unfavorable ratio in the Gallup poll was 63 percent to 33 percent.
For reasons I have never understood, Gore was reluctant to run as Clinton’s heir and tried to reinvent himself. In the process, he essentially threw away all the advantages of incumbency. He lost votes among loyal Democrats who saw his implicit repudiation of Clinton as disloyalty, while picking up none among independents. In the end, Gore couldn’t even carry his home state of Tennessee — a very rare occurrence in American political history.
Gore should have run the same sort of campaign that George H.W. Bush ran in 1988. Basically, Bush Sr. told the American people that he would simply fulfill Ronald Reagan’s third term. That was good enough, and it would have worked for Gore, too.
In 2004, Kerry lacked Gore’s advantage of incumbency and had to run against a sitting president — a difficult thing to do under the best of circumstances. But like Gore, Kerry seemed reluctant to use the Clinton record to his advantage. Kerry seemed to run as if the election were his to lose, and his campaign never developed a really coherent message except that he was not George W. Bush.
Such a strategy perhaps made sense on paper — Bush’s favorable and unfavorable ratings were both at 47 percent in the days before the election. But in the end, people wanted more from Kerry than he was willing to provide in terms of a vision for the future, and they decided to stick with the devil they knew.
In 2008, I see none of the factors that doomed Gore and Kerry coming into play. If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, as I expect she will be, I don’t see her running away from her husband’s record; she couldn’t even if she wanted to. She doesn’t need to make a lot of extravagant promises about what she will do in office, because people are ready for a change. All she has to do is convince people she won’t screw things up and will undertake the messy job of cleaning up the messes Bush will be leaving behind in Iraq and at home.
(More ... New York Times > Blogs > The Right Stuff)
January 31, 2007, 6:08 pm
As I survey the political scene, I don’t think it’s too soon to make a firm prediction about the 2008 presidential race. I think Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States.
The way I see it, the only reason Al Gore and John Kerry didn’t win in 2000 and 2004 is that they ran two of the worst campaigns in American political history. Yet both lost only by the skin of their teeth.
Yes, I know that Gore received more of the popular vote than George W. Bush did, and many people believe the election was stolen from him. But the election never should have been close enough for that to be possible. He was a sitting vice president at a time of peace and prosperity. Consequently, Gore should have won by a margin large enough to preclude any challenge.
While it is true that Bush ran a pretty good campaign in 2000, it wouldn’t have been enough to win had Gore run a half-competent campaign. All he had to do, really, was assure the American people that he would continue Bill Clinton’s economic and foreign policies. People may have had doubts about Clinton’s personal behavior, but they had no doubts about his policies: they liked them. In November 2000, his favorable/unfavorable ratio in the Gallup poll was 63 percent to 33 percent.
For reasons I have never understood, Gore was reluctant to run as Clinton’s heir and tried to reinvent himself. In the process, he essentially threw away all the advantages of incumbency. He lost votes among loyal Democrats who saw his implicit repudiation of Clinton as disloyalty, while picking up none among independents. In the end, Gore couldn’t even carry his home state of Tennessee — a very rare occurrence in American political history.
Gore should have run the same sort of campaign that George H.W. Bush ran in 1988. Basically, Bush Sr. told the American people that he would simply fulfill Ronald Reagan’s third term. That was good enough, and it would have worked for Gore, too.
In 2004, Kerry lacked Gore’s advantage of incumbency and had to run against a sitting president — a difficult thing to do under the best of circumstances. But like Gore, Kerry seemed reluctant to use the Clinton record to his advantage. Kerry seemed to run as if the election were his to lose, and his campaign never developed a really coherent message except that he was not George W. Bush.
Such a strategy perhaps made sense on paper — Bush’s favorable and unfavorable ratings were both at 47 percent in the days before the election. But in the end, people wanted more from Kerry than he was willing to provide in terms of a vision for the future, and they decided to stick with the devil they knew.
In 2008, I see none of the factors that doomed Gore and Kerry coming into play. If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, as I expect she will be, I don’t see her running away from her husband’s record; she couldn’t even if she wanted to. She doesn’t need to make a lot of extravagant promises about what she will do in office, because people are ready for a change. All she has to do is convince people she won’t screw things up and will undertake the messy job of cleaning up the messes Bush will be leaving behind in Iraq and at home.
(More ... New York Times > Blogs > The Right Stuff)
Labels: 2008 election, Clinton, New York Times, Opinion
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