Clinton 2012?

For all the condemnation of Clinton's 2008 campaign from elite quarters - she got most of it right. She stayed in until the very end, thereby creating a constituency that didn't exist in December of 2007. She was the presumptive nominee by virtue of her last name early on. By June of 2008 she had legions of supporters - many on the Right and a political base independent of her husband's. She used her new power to force Obama into granting her the job she wanted: Secretary of State. I, for one, don't think she wanted to be Vice President - knowing all to well that Obama would shove her aside. He has done just that to SoS Clinton- but the bureaucracy of the State Department is mighty - and she owns it. Obama's marginalization of Clinton has worked to her advantage. She marches on with policy close to her heart. He dithers on issues that make the news.

She got out of the Senate and moved up. Again - this shows a canny political sense. She knew the winds would be blowing against the Democrats by 2010. She saw it in 1994. Imagine Hillary, the defeated presumptive nominee of 2008, having to support Obama's half baked domestic policies in the Senate of 2009...being "whipped" by the lowly Harry Reid. Or worse, going against the Democratic grain and being immolated by much of the national media. She got out at the right moment - and got a better job. Much better. She is nowhere near the health care train wreck, cap and trade, the stimulus, the unemployment stats, or the economy in general.

I've said all this before. Tony Blankley has a piece at RCP wondering if Hillary in 2012 is such a far out idea after all. He takes it further than I did earlier this year by making the case that even any foreign policy wrecks during the Obama years will not fall on her shoulders. He's aced her out for his boy's club.

I can't say as I hanker for Clinton in 2012. Though her campaign from New Hampshire on was inspired and inspiring - Clinton's core strength is her work ethic and her love of doing the job she has. She's that girl in high school who always had a notebook under her arm when she entered any room. To be sure this would make for a perfect President about now. Her husband worked hard - but was inordinately sloppy at times. (Bubba has said she'd make a better President than he was, and he's right.) W confused decisiveness with thoughtful analysis. Obama's process so far is to punt on first down...and if he can't punt, to stall...using all his time outs in the first quarter. It's leadership by increasingly tiresome flowery speeches and even more increasingly tiresome "charm". President Hillary Clinton would almost certainly be more Presidential than the last 2 Presidents or the current one.

But the Presidency entails so much nonsense - I'm not sure I want to see Hillary give up the detailed notebook for the pathological indulgences a President must dole out. She not crazy enough to be President. Besides, the tiny penis brigade in the media would go fully rabid if she won. For those of us in the provinces, avoiding Olbermann's mommy issues would be a full time task for four years.

Finally, the eventualities that would lead to a Clinton Presidency in 2013 entail an Obama failure on an epic scale. I wouldn't wish that clean up duty on anyone - much less someone I'm prone to like.

The road before us today looks more like President Romney in 2012 and Clinton, if she wants the job, in 2016.

But it's interesting to speculate.