If she wins in 2016, Hillary Clinton would be America's first female president -- right? Wrong, according to Bill Kristol, in this post about why she's not a shoo-in (and, in his view, probably won't run at all):
Wait, wait, wait ... We've forgotten something: Hillary would be the FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT! That might be enough to get her to run and conceivably to get her elected. But Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher hadn't been first lady before taking power. Hillary will be the second Clinton president. That fact overwhelms her claim to first-ness. As a feminist, Hillary surely knows that when your husband's been president, you're not really breaking any glass ceilings on behalf of womankind. And lots of other women understand this as well.Really? Even if she spends years running, wins in a free and fair election, and actually does the job for four or eight years, it doesn't count as a breakthrough for her gender? Gee, I hope Kristol had the opportunity to tell Katharine Graham before she died that she wasn't really the first woman to run The Washington Post, given the fact that she took over after her husband's suicide. I suppose he'd also argue that Indira Gandhi didn't break a glass ceiling in India when she became prime minister, or Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, since they were both daughters of prime ministers. Pity he'll never have a chance to tell them to their faces.
Kristol adds this, which I'm sure he regards as cheeky:
Speaking of Bill, one gathers that he does very much want Hillary to run. It will be a liberating moment for Hillary -- and perhaps an inspiring one for other women -- when she decides that she doesn’t have to do what her husband wants.Right, because it's inconceivable that Bill and Hillary might agree on this.
Kristol might be a closet Brian Schweitzer fan, to judge from his read on the Democratic voter base:
There's also the matter of winning the nomination. Hillary is very likely to be out of step with the Democratic primary electorate in 2016 -- too close to Wall Street, too establishment, a prominent part of an administration that employed drone strikes and used the NSA in all sorts of dastardly ways. For Democrats in 2016, Hillary Clinton might be too much of a ... Clinton Democrat. She’ll have a tougher nomination fight than everyone now expects.Oh, right -- it would be such a burden for her to run in the Democratic primaries given her similarities to the sitting president, whose approval rating among Democrats ranges from the mid- to high 70s. Also, she's linked to her husband! Yes, what a burden to be linked to a guy with an overall favorability rating in America of 71%, according to a poll conducted last spring by, um ... Fox News. (Bill Clinton's favorable rating among Democrats in that Fox poll: 94%.)
Kristol's certainty that Hillary either won't run or can't win tells me one thing: she's probably a shoo-in.
