Okay, Okay, it’s official — the 2008 race for the White House has begun. Some sympathetic commentators are already describing Hillary’s prospects five years from now a “slam dunk.” Slam dunks can be easy, but her prospects of winning in 2008 — or even getting the Democratic nomination — will not be.
True, Hillary is indeed the current darling of Democratic activists, routinely topping Democrat Presidential preference polls. And, yes, whoever the Democrats nominate in 2008 should have a better than average chance to become president. That said, Hillary is neither the inevitable nominee nor the formidable candidate that many pundits seem to think.
First Things First. Before Hillary steps foot into an Iowa feedlot, the senator needs to be reelected. She has never really run for anything on her own, but she will have to do so in 2006. She gained the 2000 nomination through White House arm-twisting, and her campaign had almost Presidential trappings working in her favor. There was also a strong undercurrent of sympathy for her, to the point that it almost seemed as though she were a widow running to fill her dead husband’s seat. There also was a strong undercurrent of entitlement; Hillary deserved to be a senator because she stood by her man — and for the Constitution — against the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
While New York’s demographics and the usual traits of midterm elections give her an advantage in 2006, she won’t have the White House or the sympathy factor working for her. A defeat, of course, would kill her presidential ambitions there and then. While a “squeaker” victory would keep those hopes alive, it could also embolden potential Presidential rivals, making her nomination more problematic.
Good News: She is Developing a Record; Bad News: She is Developing a Record. Many people always will think of Hillary Clinton in terms of the White House years. But the reality is that the longer she is in the Senate, the more her most favorable persona, the Embattled Heroine, fades from memory. Day-by-day, vote-by-vote, quote-by-quote, she is becoming Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, with all the attendant advantages and disadvantages. She might cast votes and say things that will come back to haunt her, votes and quotes that she will not be able to explain away easily. (Her recent shrill outburst against the president in Connecticut comes to mind.)
Activists Love Her; Activists Nominate Candidates, therefore, Activists Nominate Her. Surveys do indicate Hillary is the preferred choice of the hard-core Democratic activists, but it is unwise to assume that this early support clinches the 2008 nomination. The last time the Democrat left wing chose a candidate his name was Michael Dukakis, and he ran in much the same circumstance as is likely in 2008 — an “open” White House. If, as seems possible, a left-leaning Democrat runs against George Bush in 2004 and is crushed, will the Democrats want to repeat their 1988 experience and run yet another liberal? Or will they turn to a happier time, 1992, to be precise, when they wised up and nominated an apparently centrist southern “new” Democrat (and even then it took Ross Perot to ensure George Bush’s defeat).
Will the Republicans be Out of Gas? Let’s say that Hillary beats the odds and gains the nomination. Then what? According to Dick Morris, “Advantage, Hillary” because, by Election Day 2008, the Republicans will be considered bereft of ideas and drained of energy and, therefore, vulnerable. Looking back at the 1952, 1960, 1968, and 1976 elections — in which voters turned out the party that had held the White House for two terms — he would seem to have a point. However, each election had its own special circumstance that weakens the case for Morris’s scenario.
In 1952, the Democratic liberals’ darling, Adali Stevenson, had the misfortune to run against everybody’s darling, Dwight Eisenhower. Richard Nixon, utterly lacking JFK’s aura and glamour, lost by only a whisker. The 1968 election was fought along the cultural divide prompted by the Vietnam War and despite his LBJ baggage, Hubert Humphrey, the pillar of liberal rectitude, almost won. The 1976 election was the Final Act of Watergate. Gerald Ford, fatally wounded by his pardon of Nixon, still nearly rallied to defeat a socially conservative southern governor.
Suppose that the Republicans put up their own version of Stevenson, Nixon (vintage 1960), Humphrey, or Ford — Advantage Hillary. But, by 2008, could Hillary hope to be the unifying figure that Eisenhower was? Or to have Kennedy’s glamour and charisma or Humphrey’s reputation as the idealistic “Happy Warrior”? And, if this election is to follow in the footsteps of 1976′s, with Americans looking for somebody to restore their shattered faith in our nation’s institutions, would the electorate really be ready to trust Hillary Clinton with that task?
As devoid of “new” ideas as the Republicans might be in 2008, presidential contests have never turned solely on “issues.” The “issues” of the 2000 election were largely peripheral; that election turned out to be a cultural contest between what is now known as Red America and Blue America. Furthermore, intangibles — personality, style, luck, mood — can very well decide the outcome, as they did in 1960. Hillary energizes activists — Republican, as well as Democrat.
Even if there aren’t that many “new” ideas percolating within the GOP in five year’s time, in all likelihood, the party will adhere more or less to the cultural values that have made it a majority congressional party and have the potential to restore and even cement a presidential majority. Moreover, there are plenty of people making their ways up through the ranks of the Republican party, making a name for themselves as they do so. The ideas put forth by a Republican candidate might sound familiar, but whoever carries the banner might be considered “new and fresh.”
So, the contest in 2008 (which began Sunday night) could pit a new, perhaps young, Republican with a record of success as a governor (probably) and an allegiance to conservative cultural and political values against a New York senator with a reputation for ruthlessness and duplicity who is resented by many in her own party and laden with all sorts of left-wing baggage, including her Senate voting record.
Is a Hillary win in 2008 possible, then? Sure, but don’t listen to anybody who tells you it’s a slam dunk — think more of a long heave from three-point land. It could fall in, but the odds are much greater that it will fall short.
— Scott Belliveau is the director of communications for the VMI Foundation and an adjunct instructor in political science at the Virginia Military Institute.