It's a no-go for Clinton
It's hard to believe that it's over, but for Hillary Rodham Clinton, it is. She will not be president in 2009.
How did a "sure thing" a year ago turn into a what-might-have-been today?
The 2008 election season will be studied for years, but it is already clear what major mistakes by the Clinton forces helped sink the White House hopes of one of the smartest, shrewdest women of our time.
The basic problem is that long ago Clinton positioned herself as an establishment candidate. She went to all the traditional moneybags and locked in a stupendous amount of money and support. But she could not have foreseen that the voters would be desperate for change and for something new.
She probably never even thought when she started her campaign that millions would conclude that after 20 years of having a Bush or a Clinton in the White House, the prospect of four or eight years more of another Clinton was just too much. Americans liked the TV show but tire of dynasties in general.
When she cast her vote for supporting President Bush's position in Iraq, she did not foresee that after five years and more than 4,000 American lives and thousands more Iraqi lives, the word "quagmire" would be operative.
There was the moment when it was revealed that she had loaned her campaign $5 million. And now we learn she has loaned it another $6.5 million. If she couldn't manage the millions of dollars people gave her to run for president, how well could we expect her to manage the billions we would entrust her with to run the country?
There were all those staff turnovers and constant internecine bickering. That speaks of a candidate who was not a good manager. She rewarded the loyal and punished the disloyal, even if their ideas were good. With the Clintons, if you aren't 100 percent for them, you're against them.
She demanded that everybody play by the rules. But when Florida and Michigan refused, she wanted them to get a pass.
Many got tired of the pandering. The silly gas-tax holiday, all sizzle and no steak, was the final straw. In the Midwest, she was vehemently against free trade agreements. In other states that benefit from free trade, much less so. She promised so much with so few details, on health care, on restoring the U.S. position in the world, on blowing up Iran, it was hard not to be cynical.
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