TEMPE, Ariz. – Hillary Rodham Clinton said
here Saturday night that she is weighing another presidential campaign
and is “very much concerned” about the direction of the country, citing
climate change as a particular focus.
Right down at the bottom on the list of priorities – “the quality of the environment” and “climate change.”
You know who cares about climate change? Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer. Of course, he’s proving that his $100 million effort this year is more about partisanship than principles, since his team has announced they won’t run ads or criticize Democrats who support building the Keystone Pipeline.
Perhaps Tom Steyer – er, his fortune and his network of like-minded wealthy folks who prioritize climate change rhetoric coming from Democrats – is enough of a constituency to court at this early stage of the nascent campaign. But the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign is going to have to be about something, besides the fact that she would be the first woman president and her own inevitability. That’s more or less what she ran on in 2007 and 2008, and we remember where that left her. And remember, early 2008 was comparable peace and prosperity compared to now, and in all likelihood, the political environment of 2015 and 2016.
Remember, the first draft was that Hillary was going to run as an outsider who would reform Washington. I’m serious:
National Journal’s Ron Fournier
talks to Hillary Clinton’s friends and supporters and writes a “memo”
of advice to her, based upon their thoughts. His conclusion:
Pope Francis has reminded us of the
power of small gestures. Without changing the Vatican’s ideology one
iota, he has transformed the way people think about the Catholic Church,
one symbolic act at a time. And consider the parallels between your job
and that of the pope — an old man running an ancient institution marred
by scandal and incompetence. You can be just as transformative.
Actually, if you run for president, you must be. That’s what a few of us
think.
Stop. Just stop.
Hillary Clinton is more inside Washington
than the District of Columbia Sewer and Water Authority. She’s lived and
worked there since January 1993 — please, no more implausible spin that
her heart is really in Chappaqua and that she’s always been a Yankee
fan. As first lady, then senator, then secretary of state, Hillary
Clinton has probably ranked among the five most influential figures in
Washington every year for the past two decades. Even during the Bush
years, there were few figures in D.C. or the world that she couldn’t get
a meeting with and offer her views. She’s never been shut out of the
policy-making process. During most of her Senate years, particularly
post-9/11, most Republicans respected her. Since then, she and her
husband have turned the Clinton Foundation into an unparalleled
institution for hobnobbing with the world’s elites and the Davos set,
with more than a few serious allegations of influence-peddling and favor-trading.
“This Town” and its methods and culture have her fingerprints all over
them. Since the moment her husband was sworn in, she has been at the top
of Washington’s food chain, with everyone beneath her flattering her, sucking up, hoping to win her favor and have a future friend in the Oval Office. (“Clinton has racked up at least 15 awards in the nine months since she left the State Department.”)
Nothing in Hillary Clinton’s past suggests
she’s ever been that dissatisfied with the way Washington and/or the
country works. For pete’s sake, while secretary of state, she
had Huma Abedin under a “special contract” that allowed her to be a
consultant for private clients while keeping her $135,000-per-year State
Department job.
The status quo has been very, very, very good for the Clintons. They have a net worth estimated at $55 million; Hillary Clinton’s speaking fee begins at $200,000,
with Wall Street banks and private-equity firms most frequently picking
up the tab: Goldman Sachs, KKR, the Caryle Group. Far from an
impassioned reformer, eager to overhaul a system of crony capitalism and
back-scratching, Hillary Clinton is our political and economic status
quo in human form.
Expecting Hillary Clinton to be a
transformative reformer of Washington is like expecting Donald Trump to
become a Bolshevik, Kim Jong Un to renounce power and become a monk, or
the New York Yankees to push for the end of free agency in baseball.
Powerful people rarely if ever decide to completely overhaul the system
that made them powerful.
She’s hinting that she’s going to have to run away from the foreign policy of the Obama administration:
Hillary Rodham Clinton cast doubt on the
interim nuclear agreement with Iran, saying in a muscular policy speech
here Wednesday night that she is “personally skeptical” that Iran’s
leaders will follow through on a comprehensive agreement to end their
march toward nuclear weapons.
Clinton said the United States should “give
space for diplomacy to work” and avoid imposing new unilateral
sanctions or any other actions that might lead any allies to back out of
existing international sanctions against Iran.
“The odds of reaching that comprehensive
agreement are not good,” Clinton said. “I am also personally skeptical
that the Iranians would follow through and deliver. I have seen their
behavior over the years. But this is a development that is worth
testing.”
(Click link below to read more)
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