Not the old Hillary

Anyone believing the columnist to be engaging in sexism in comparing Hillary Clinton to a Buick should feel free to assail him via a missive to the email address published at the end. He is standing by. It seems to him that he's also calling Bill Clinton a Buick, or worse. But he's ventured into Hillary metaphors before, and there are scars. He's never been quite certain what hit him.

Thoroughly modern Hillary and Buick must have the same ad agency.

In television commercials, people are looking for the Buick but can't find it anywhere. That's because they're scouring the terrain for some old person's drab sedan suitable to roll Miss Daisy to the market at 25 miles per.

The contemporary Buick--today's hip Buick, like the Oldsmobile that wasn't your father's Oldsmobile a couple of decades ago--is that shiny, swanky thing outfitted for today's consumer. It has gadgets. It is metallic silver, not beige. It has chrome wheels, not hubcaps.

It's right in front of them, but they don't see it, because the old context no longer applies.

So now comes Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2015/16.

People are looking around for a cranky old model saying "what difference does it make?" and "vast right-wing conspiracy" or "I could have stayed home and baked cookies," and walking huffily detached from that husband who dallied with the plump girl and lied to her and us about it.

And they're looking right past her even as she stands square in front of them.

She's buying a chicken burrito at the counter at Chipotle, for goodness' sakes. She's talking to that woman next to her about grandchildren. And she's saying she so looks forward to chatting up those community college kids who weren't born in the '90s.

Then she goes to the community college and sits with paper and pencil and takes notes about what's on these kids' minds. This is not the woman who, in 1994, holed up with policy wonks to remake American health care in secret sessions in the Old Executive Office Building.

This is today's Hillary, updating her blog from the passenger seat of today's Buick.

And that husband, Bill ... where the heck is he? Who knows? Who cares?

You haul that rascal to Chipotle and he'll draw a crowd. He'll seem so old with that white hair and weak voice. He'll have the 1990s written all over him.

He's the beige Buick. Or maybe he's the El Camino with Astroturf, part car and part pickup, ever trying to be all things to all people.

Hillary is on her way to Iowa in a shiny van with Wi-Fi, sending emails and then deleting them. That van probably has its own server.

All of that is to say the rollout of the Hillary rebrand last week fell somewhere between effective and brilliant, up to and including that four-fight manifesto she outlined to those community college kids as her reason for running for president.

One fight is to build the new economy. It's all about the new with her. And a community college is newly in vogue, more affordable than elite colleges, giving kids postsecondary schooling along with targeted training for the modern job.

The second fight is to strengthen families and communities. Did she mention she has a new granddaughter?

The third fight is to protect ourselves from security threats current and looming. Did she mention that, while she is surely new, a rebrand, she was, after all, secretary of state?

The fourth fight is to repair our dysfunctional political system and get the unregulated, unaccountable big "independent" money out of it, even if it takes a constitutional amendment.

That last fight may be the most fascinating and fruitful of all.

Hillary didn't suggest by spontaneous mistake this prospect of a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United and stop all these wealthy groups from doing their secret smears in incessant attack advertising.

She suggested it tactically and strategically, as she does all things, of course.

She was fortifying herself against the billion dollars the Koch brothers will spend against her. She was leaving it to the Republican presidential candidates to defend big unregulated money and secret smear jobs.

She was angling to position herself as today's reformer. She was working a little Elizabeth Warren into her political wardrobe. She was putting a 2015 sticker on her window.

She was saying I'm a retrofitted vehicle and just what you need for the modern trip.

She was saying this is not your former first lady's Buick.

Meantime, her likeliest opponent, Jeb Bush, is looking a little like some old blue-blood's vintage Mercedes.

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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 04/19/2015

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