Posted on 08/13/2005 9:27:04 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
Critics say Hillary Clinton needs vision for her expected tilt at the presidency to succeed. Dan Balz reports from Washington.
Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a diligent legislator for nearly five years, introducing a blizzard of bills and amendments, forging relationships across party lines, establishing credentials on national security and boosting her approval rating at home by paying close attention to all regions of her state of New York.
What she has lacked, according to some of her advisers and other Democrats, is a broader, more imaginative frame, a forward-looking national message that Democrats say they badly need in the wake of two demoralising defeats at the hands of President George Bush.
Now she is embarking on a project that could provide a new blueprint for the Democrats — and the foundation for her own possible presidential candidacy in 2008 — as the leader of an initiative by the centrist Democratic Leadership Council to create an agenda for the party. How she uses her new platform will demonstrate just how much she will take the Democrats back to the 1990s or is prepared to lead them forward in a new direction.
Senator Clinton's challenge will be to avoid offering the politics of restoration, whose appeal is built on an implicit return to the policies of her husband's administration. That would appeal to many Democrats who yearn for the successes of the 1990s. But the Clinton years carry considerable baggage for many independent and swing voters.
Some Democrats wonder whether Senator Clinton can grapple with what ails the party and come out of the experience as a candidate with an appeal, and an identity, distinct from her husband's administration — one that fits far different times.
"There's a feel of nostalgia creeping into her message that she has to be particularly sensitive to," one veteran of presidential campaigns, who declined to be identified as critical of the senator, said. "I think there's a sense of let's go back and revisit the Clinton model and that's the way to get elected … I think it's going to be very hard for her to get out of the comfort zone of the Clinton administration."
Defenders say she can easily navigate from past to future. "I would quote her husband who often said — and it's absolutely a truism — that people vote for the future, not the past," Harold Ickes, who was White House deputy chief of staff in the Clinton administration, said. "Rhetorically, she will invoke the halcyon days of the 1990s. The fact is she knows that people are concerned very much on the future and that she very much has to address that."
The Clinton brand is a powerful asset and a divisive force. As Mr Bush showed when he ran for president in 2000, an attractive brand and past association with another presidency is not sufficient to win the White House.
Mr Bush's first presidential campaign may have been motivated by a desire to avenge the defeat of his father at the hands of Bill Clinton, but he did not run as the political twin of his father's administration or as the instrument to resurrect his father's agenda. He traded on the Bush name, but did not allow it to restrict his vision.
How Senator Clinton plans to deal with this, if she becomes a candidate in 2008, is less clear. Former president Bill Clinton presented himself as a New Democrat, Mr Bush as a compassionate conservative. The senator has been a workaday legislator without a defining imprint of her own. In a recent leadership council speech, she offered a description of an ideal America in 2020, which many in the audience regarded as an appealing vision. But it was not intended as the kind of hard-choices agenda Democratic Leadership Council leaders might envisage.
Senator Clinton is the biggest celebrity in her party but not the freshest face. If she hopes to be a bridge to the past and a gateway to the future, she may have benefited from listening to several potential 2008 rivals, including Virginia Governor Mark Warner, who also spoke to the leadership council conference. Mr Warner noted that Democrats had been talking about education, health care, the economy, fiscal responsibility and national security, but warned that accelerating change in the world rendered old ideas obsolete.
"In a post-9/11 flat world, sometimes even the solutions that we offered in the 1990s aren't enough," he said. "We need leaders who can see farther down the road."
Senator Clinton's work on the Armed Services Committee, and her support for the invasion of Iraq when many rank-and-file Democrats opposed it, show her determination to overcome the party's historic weakness on national security that plagued John Kerry when he ran against Mr Bush last year. Her work on economic development issues crucial to New York has given her an understanding of how a Democrat can make inroads in Republican environments. Her admission of mistakes in trying to restructure the health care system in 1993 and 1994 shows she knows when to cut her losses.
The political benefits of Senator Clinton's high-profile role with the leadership council (DLC) at first seem obvious. She gains a platform from which to reinforce the moderate side of her profile, and the DLC, struggling to maintain its influence inside the party, can trade on her star power to raise its profile and power. But the relationship may prove more difficult. Her advisers say Senator Clinton begins without an agenda of her own and with a goal of bringing all wings of the party together, which on issues from trade and Iraq to the role of religion in politics, could prove difficult to achieve.
Senator Clinton risks being caught in a political time warp that could make it more difficult for her to establish that she is not merely an extension of her husband's administration. And she has made it more difficult for her advisers to say she is focused only on winning re-election next year.
If the initiative results in a sharper, fresher and more future-oriented profile for a politician who has been on the national stage for 15 years, the political benefits for the Democrats may be significant. If it produces lowest-common-denominator policies, vague statements of principle or intra-party warfare, then the DLC exercise may accomplish neither the DLC's nor Clinton's political aspirations.
Ug, headline like this brings all kinds of images I need to clorox out of my brain...
Hillary is the Bob Dole of the 2008 election--she wants to "take us back to a better time." Well, 9-11 slapped us all across the face with the future if we don't fight back, and Ma Clinton in a political apron calling us all to return to those wonderful nineties just ain't gonna sell.
I'm sorry...I couldn't read the words "warp", "dog", "thrust" and "Clinton" in the same sentence without laughing...
It's astounding...
Time is fleeting...
Madness takes its toll...
But listen closely,
Not for very much longer...
I've got to take control...
Guess she'll be boinking female interns in the Oval Office, too.
Unfortunately, unlike Bobdole - who ran possible the worst campaign in the history of electoral politics against an extremely beatable and vulnerable opponent - the Hildebeast will run to win.
How exciting -- !"
Hillary is well marketed and packaged, but not very smart. Like a pretty balloon, a lot to see on the outside, but, nothing inside just hot air, like her husband the felon.
The beast must be stopped.
Well daid.
No lots inside just all evil.
I don't think her running to win is going to matter. It can't be emphasized enough that the hardcore libs are pretty tired of her game--they know she's out for herself and doesn't care what she has to say or do to get power. She has no charisma, gives dull speeches, and while that didn't prevent Kerry from getting close in 2004, she has no war record, unless we're talking shrapnel wounds from thrown lamps.
The halcyon days of the 1990s. When America rode a wave of prosperity built on Enron and the Internet stock bubble. Before the bill for eight years of appeasing the terrorists came due. When our armed forces were decimated by an administration that loathed the military.
Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a diligent legislator for nearly five years, introducing a blizzard of bills and amendments, forging relationships across party lines, establishing credentials on national security and boosting her approval rating at home by paying close attention to all regions of her state of New York.
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This is putrid hype. Hillary has accomplished NOTHING. And with a rap-sheet that is a mile long, all that can be put forth is LYING CRAP like the above statement from this obvious kool-aid drinking writer...
"To the last I grapple with thee, From Hell's heart, I stab at thee, For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee!"
Let's do the Time Warp again!.
What Hillary really needs is a mass case of Amnesia to grip the nation.
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