The Hilary candidacy

Now that Hilary Clinton has announced she’ll run for president, what kind of candidate will she be? At first blush, she appears cautious and not at all the confident public person you’d think would be the result of being First Lady, an elected Senator, and Secretary of State. Why, for example, would she use a videotaped message for her launch and then follow a schedule of low-profile events? 

Maybe she doesn’t want to peak too soon or maybe she’s worried about having to face some things in her past such as her email habits at State, the lies about the time she was under fire, her vote in favor of attacking Iraq, and her inexplicable capacity to forgive Bill Clinton all his lusty wanderings. Any one of those issues would be enough to keep the most nervy politician out of the race.

Moreover, it’s not clear what kind of campaign she’ll run. The last time around, when she faced Barack Obama, she didn’t play the female card. That now is seen as a mistake and her advisors are suggesting she focus on her emotional intelligence. Will she be bossypants or bouffant? And what about Obama? Should she embrace his views as her party’s leader or should she distance herself from him and go for the anti-Obama vote. And what about her sense of humour that people who know her say she should share with voters?

After all these years in national public life, ever since Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, do we really know Hilary? My sense is that she might win the Democratic nomination but not the presidency. My Democratic friends in Washington, D.C., tell me that America is not ready for a female president. Of all Hilary’s qualities, that’s the one she cannot escape.