IN THE HOURS BEFORE Hillary Clinton's Iowa comeuppance, standout blogger Tom Maguire aptly described the future of the Clinton campaign: "Whether Obama wins by a little or a lot, Hilary will be the Terminator candidate. She can't be bargained with. She can't be reasoned with. She doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And she absolutely will not stop, ever." At least we all thought it was apt at the time. And then yesterday Hillary went all mushy on us. Inquiring minds must wonder, What has happened to turn the Terminator into a weepy, self-confessional Opraholic?
The Clintons have led a charmed political life. Up until now kismet has especially kissed Hillary's fate, whose career rests almost entirely on the foundation of her husbands' successes. And for all of his undeniable talents, Bill Clinton's electoral victories are directly attributable to him being the luckiest politician of the last half century.
Had Gary Hart not already defined deviancy down for Oval Office aspirants in 1987, Clinton's 1992 run for the White House would have been a non-starter. If you told a Larry Sabato-type in 1987 that just five years later the country would elect a president who the voters widely suspected of serial and ongoing infidelities, the Sabato-type would have roared with laughter.
But Gary Hart paving the way for Clinton's dalliances was just the first instance of the political gods smiling upon Bill Clinton. When Clinton ran in 1992, the Cold War had ended and the country
suddenly and unprecedentedly decided that military and foreign policy experience didn't matter. Ironically, given Team Clinton's current talking points, Bill Clinton was the most unqualified of any presidential nominee of the previous fifty years. Only Jimmy Carter was a comparable neophyte, and that wasn't a comparison that the 1992 version of Team Clinton rushed to make. Meanwhile, the 1992 economy slipped into recession, whetting the public's appetite for a politician who made vapid promises of change, regardless of his lack of experience or specifics.
Clinton also had great luck when it came to his foes. In 1992, he faced a primary slate devoid of strong competition. When he won the nomination, he got to face an uninterested and uninspiring George H.W. Bush. Even with all his advantages in 1992, Clinton still may not have won were it not for the odd presence of eccentric billionaire H. Ross Perot siphoning votes away from the incumbent.
By 1996, the economy had rebounded magnificently in spite of the Clintons' dual efforts to derail it with tax hikes and a disastrously statist health care plan. Meanwhile, the Republicans put forth yet another cranky past-his-prime nominee. In 2000, Hillary won a Senate race solely because of her surname, over yet another weak Republican. Were it not for her husband's success and the fame his success accorded her, she wouldn't have had a chance of being a senator from anywhere. She wouldn't have had a shot even in New York, in spite of her longtime passion for the Yankees.
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