Perhaps no candidate in recent memory, apart from incumbent presidents, has been as obvious a front-runner for their party's presidential nomination as Hillary Clinton is for the Democrats.
But it has also become clear that the intense media spotlight that goes with that front-runner status doesn't suit her. The more we see of Hillary, the less we like. She doesn't wear well, and never has.
Having discarded the radical-left Alinsky persona long ago for reasons of political viability, it's obvious that Hillary doesn't know who she is; hence the continuing need for campaign consultants to tell her what she stands for and how to present herself.
While Hillary shares her husband's troubled relationship with the concept of truth and inability to feel embarrassment, she lacks his redeeming nod and wink soft touch that permits allowances and even forgiveness. Where he is smooth and nimble, she's stiff and programmed. The term "authentic inauthenticity" has been coined to capture her unrivaled fakeness.
The politician Hillary is most frequently compared to these days, Richard Nixon (by virtue of their shared awkwardness, contempt for the media, and dubious integrity), was able to remake himself as the "new Nixon" to narrowly capture the presidency in 1968, but Hillary has been around now for even longer than Nixon had been then, and there are only so many opportunities to reintroduce yourself to an increasingly skeptical electorate; by the third or fourth iteration, whatever space for reinvention has been lost.
Barack Obama's 2008 debate comment that Hillary was "likable enough" was all the more devastating because everyone knew that she wasn't. Indeed, it is difficult to think of any political figure who so abysmally fails the "beer test"--she is the last candidate the typical voter would like to sit down and share a couple of beers with at a ballgame (a test her husband passed with flying colors, and might even have been the key to his political success).
And then there is that troublesome other thing that comes with close media examination of the kind she is now receiving: the perhaps unique inverse relationship for Hillary between political status on the one hand and political achievement on the other.
To put it mildly, while we can think of lots of reasons why Hillary shouldn't be entrusted with the duties of the highest office in the land, no one, including herself, can come up with any for why she should be.
Eight years as first lady featured cattle futures, lost (and then found) billing records, "Travelgate," the debacle of "Hillary-Care," and the expedient suppression of periodic "bimbo eruptions."
Eight thoroughly undistinguished years as a carpet-bagging senator from New York, punching a ticket for the expected presidential run, featured only one memorable vote--in support of the invasion of Iraq, which she will now be forced to disavow.
And then, of course, there were all those high points in four years of Hillary as secretary of state, punching the next ticket on the unbridled ambition tour--"reset" with Russia, Libya/Benghazi, the collapse of Iraq and the rise of ISIS, and the "pivot" to Asia that never happened, among many others.
Along these lines, perhaps the funniest moment of the campaign thus far, and one likely to be used as a campaign commercial by the GOP, is the Bloomberg video in which Iowa Democrats try and fail to cite a single accomplishment from Hillary's years at Foggy Bottom. Although allowances might be made for the obvious imbecility of those questioned, the hunch is that brighter specimens of the species would have still come up empty.
With Obama, we eventually learned, to our regret, that there was no "there" there; with Hillary we already know that there is too much, all of it bad, even before the stories broke on private email servers and foundation slush funds.
Obama had perhaps the thinnest resumé in the history of the American presidency, but for precisely that reason he still could serve as a racial Rorschach blot that voters could read into whatever they wished. Hillary lacks such a redeeming unfamiliarity; rather, her career consists of nothing so much as a steady stream of mediocrity, punctuated by periodic calamity and scandal, excused and rationalized with practiced mendacity. As the old saying goes, she fascinates, but only in the way that an ugly car crash does.
In the end, we are left with nothing but gender and last name courtesy of marriage.
Republicans who are enjoying the slow-motion implosion of Hillary's candidacy should, however, be careful what they wish for.
The Democrats, at least for the time being, are stuck with an "inevitable" nominee who is terrible on the campaign trail, widely distrusted by the public, and carries around more political baggage than "Tricky Dick" at his worst. And then there is that remarkable accomplishment of having compiled a long record of public service without a single accomplishment that can be pointed to by even her most ardent supporters (who nonetheless, and inexplicably, remain ardent).
So why ruin a good thing?
Republicans should be very much "ready for Hillary." Because they should know that any voter with a brain that can't fit inside a thimble won't be.
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 06/01/2015