Hillary Won't Run
MACKINNON, DOUGLAS
Hillary Won't Run That's my prediction, and I'm sticking to it. by DOUGLAS MACKINNON BACK IN NOVEMBER 1999, I wrote a column for the San Francisco Examiner in which I basically guaranteed that...
...After a few tsk, tsk's, and some shakes of the head, they remind me that they would actually like to win the 2008 election...
...He is also a former White House and Pentagon official...
...I laid out a very clever rationale for why she would not enter the race, the main thrust being that her candidacy was really just a red herring devised to deflect attention from her husband's mounting ethical problems...
...I am a Republican who happens to have a lot of Democratic friends...
...While I'm no fan of polls, a recent CNN/^S^ Douglas MacKinnon was press secretary to Senator Bob Dole...
...Come November 2008, Senator Clinton will be 61 years of age—16 years older than when her husband took office, but still young enough politically to make one or two more runs at the Oval Office...
...Today/Gallup poll would seem to indicate that these Democratic friends of mine are on to something...
...So with that lesson well learned, I am here to say that Senator Hillary clinton will not run for president in 2008...
...Another question my Democratic friends fret about: Is Hillary enough of a team player to let someone like former governor (southern governor, they always say) Mark Warner of Virginia become the standard-bearer of her party...
...Clinton runs, all of this old, unpleasant, and somewhat unresolved baggage is going to be run on a loop by certain conservative, Christian, and even Democratic groups...
...Part of their thinking is that even if you believe George W. Bush has been a great president (I do), and even if you really like the Republicans (I like some of them), the American people are suffering from "party in power fatigue...
...Some of them worry, rightly in my opinion, that if Mrs...
...Because, from the Democratic party's point of view, it makes no sense for her to run...
...That's the way it goes when you come from Dorchester, Massachusetts...
...All Democrats I speak with on this subject, and even a surprisingly large number of Republicans, think 2008 is shaping up as a pretty good year for the Democrats to take back the White House...
...She will do this, but, of course, not without exacting a steep price...
...It takes a village idiot to bet that Hillary won't run in 2008, and I'm that idiot...
...What will they offer the woman from Chicago who thought New York seemed like a nice state to represent in the Senate...
...A fine résumé builder for a future race...
...That said, they don't rule out that Hillary is powerful enough, tough enough, and smart enough to work out a deal where she would be named vice president late in the first term or early in the second term of a Warner (or fill-in-the-blank) presidency...
...Why aren't the Democrats I speak with happy about that news...
...I think, after doing the math, and calculating what's best for her in the long run, she will decide to forgo the race and wave her pom-poms from the sidelines...
...Free lunches and dinners will be paid in 2009...
...Their feeling still being that Hillary at the top or bottom of the ticket will doom them to four more years of doing without White House cufflinks and not being invited to state dinners and presidential Christmas parties...
...Guaranteed...
...Next on the hit parade of things my Democratic friends worry about when it comes to Senator Clinton is that they really would like not to revisit the Whitewater, commodities, Monica, Lincoln Bedroom, Hillary-care days...
...The obvious question of these friends being: "Why should our party relive that pain...
...I, for one, happen to think Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is highly intelligent and factors almost every decision she makes on how it will frame and then cement her place in history...
...I was so sure of my pet theory that I proceeded to make lunch and dinner bets with any number of people in Washington...
...Bets that, to this day, I am still paying off...
...Their rationale, not mine, is that they don't think enough Americans, especially American women, are actually going to vote for Senator Clinton in a general election...
...So, before the race even starts, one could build a case that the Democrats have a bit of a head start...
...Let me stress again that this is all coming from loyal, albeit desperate, Democrats...
...Denying her party a realistic chance to win back the White House is not posterity-friendly...
...I'm talking, none...
...So, at least, will go the argument from various Democrats in the smoke-free, racially diverse, politically correct back rooms from which they plot these days against the evil GOP...
...And what most of these Democratic friends of mine tell me for private consumption is that their party is really, really, really desperate to win back the White House, and in their minds, for that to happen, Hillary Clinton has to get out of the way...
...Namely, after eight years of Republicans in the White House, maybe it's time to send in the other team...
...Because they feel that if Hillary is the one carrying the baton in the general election, then she's going to collapse and get lapped by even a mediocre Republican...
...When asked, only 16 percent of respondents said they would "definitely" vote for Hillary Clinton, while 51 percent said they would definitely not...
...Upon hearing that, I asked them, "Why not just put Hillary on the ticket as his vice presidential candidate...
...Heavy is the head that wears the crown, but heavier still will be the Democratic head that has to broker the deal with Hillary to have her put her party before her lofty ambitions...
...I've heard, again from my Democratic buddies who will henceforth all deny knowing me, that secretary of state in the first Warner administration might be an acceptable offer...
...She even lost in the poll to Condoleezza Rice, a woman who has made it crystal clear that she has no intention of running for president...
...by DOUGLAS MACKINNON BACK IN NOVEMBER 1999, I wrote a column for the San Francisco Examiner in which I basically guaranteed that Hillary clinton would not run for the Senate in New York...
...While they seem to think that she is too selfish to entertain such a thought, I'm prepared to give her more credit than that...
Vol. 11 • February 2006 • No. 22
