Hillary Rodham Clinton

“Rather than reveling in these flights of reverse political fancy, I find myself wanting the revisionist Hillary fantasists — Clintonites and reformed Obamamaniacs alike — to just shut up already.”

Traister argues, persuasively in my view, that had Clinton won the presidency in 2008 instead of Obama, there’s no compelling evidence suggesting she would have been any more effective. In this she echoes points made by Jonathan Bernstein in this Salon piece. To be sure, Traister admits to her own bouts of buyer’s remorse, but she thinks publicly airing these thoughts is not helpful:

“I understand the impulse to indulge in a quick ‘I told you so.’ I would be lying if I said I didn’t think it sometimes. Maybe often. But to say it — much less to bray it — is small, mean, divisive and frankly dishonest. None of us know what would have happened with Hillary Clinton as president, no matter how many rounds of W.W.H.H.D. (What Would Hillary Have Done) we play.”

Traister’s conclusion?

“There simply was never going to be a liberal messiah whose powers could transcend the limits set by a democracy this packed with regressive obstructionists. That doesn’t mean we can’t hope for, seek and demand better from politicians and presidents. But we can’t spend our time focused on alternate realities in which our country, its systems and its climate are not what they are. With advance apologies for returning to one of 2008’s most infelicitous phrases, it’s time to let go of the fairy tales.”

Amen to that! It’s a point that longtime readers will recognize from reading my posts on my Presidential Power blog dating to before Obama’s inauguration: that the expectations for his presidency far outstripped the reality of his actual ability to effect significant change. Although we can’t be sure, given the constraints on a president’s power, it’s hard to see how Hillary Clinton’s election in 2008 would have produced demonstrably different policy outcomes.

But who is talking about what happened in 2008? My “Run, Hillary, Run” post was about Democrats and voters more generally looking ahead to 2012! And here there is one very good reason to believe that a Clinton presidency might be marginally more effective than Obama’s second term: She would not be a lame duck president.

Recent history suggests that, should Obama win reelection in 2012 (and that is no sure thing), he will almost immediately begin losing political influence. Presidents Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and Bush all witnessed their influence slip away during their second terms. For Nixon, of course, the Watergate scandal and impending impeachment drove him from office. Reagan’s second term saw some accomplishments, including fundamental tax reform, but he frittered away a good deal of influence due to the Iran-Contra affair. Clinton, of course, had his own second-term impeachment imbroglio. Finally, George W. Bush — Mr. Imperial Presidency — found out in short order that the political capital he pledged to spend after the 2004 election bought him little in Congress. Despite an extensive publicity tour, he was unable to get even fellow Republicans to buy into his plan to reform Social Security or immigration law, and within two years the Democrats had regained control of both the Senate and the House, thanks in part to an unpopular war and Hurricane Katrina.

In the aggregate, then, this is not a very auspicious second-term record, and while there’s no reason to expect Obama to find himself engulfed in scandal should he win reelection, neither is there any strong reason to believe he’ll defy the historical pattern and see his influence grow. Instead, the greater likelihood is that it will begin to wane.

The reason for this seemingly inevitable decline is, I think, more structural than personal. It has to do with the loss of political acuity that accompanies the removal of the reelection imperative. Presidents begin to think historically, and, in some cases, recklessly as well. They see the end of their presidency on the horizon, and they are willing to take risks and to downplay the political constraints that they must normally navigate to achieve policy objectives. Think FDR with his second-term court-packing fiasco. (Although not subject to the two-term limit, FDR did not expect to run for a third term at that point.) Bush experienced a similar dulling of his political sensitivity. He writes in his memoirs that he made a mistake in pushing Social Security reform before immigration reform, since the latter had a greater chance of securing bipartisan support. The failure of the first doomed the second, he believes. He writes, “If I had to do it all over again, I would have pushed for immigration reform, rather than Social Security, as the first major initiative of my second term.” Instead, he went for the riskier reform first, and lost both.

It is possible Obama may be the exception to this rule. But we shouldn’t count on it. Nor, however, should we expect a Clinton first term to be a reprise of FDR’s celebrated 100 days. We don’t want to fall prey again to the overly optimistic “liberal messiah” scenario. Instead, in concert with Traister’s argument, I would expect a Clinton first term to be perhaps even less productive, legislatively, than Obama’s first four years, in large part because she would likely be facing a Republican-controlled Congress. The one advantage she might have is that economic growth may start accelerating during her four years. All this is speculation, of course. The takeaway point is that, in deciding whether to jump on the Hillary bandwagon, Traister’s is the wrong question. It’s not “What Would Hillary Have Done?” It’s what can she do, in her first term, compared to Obama in his second?

Of course, the fundamentals won’t change if she’s running. But note that the forecast models aren’t predicting a Republican blowout — they are forecasting a race that is, at this point, too close to call. That means marginal changes in turnout among key groups are crucial. Here’s where Hillary has the advantage.

To begin, her stint as secretary of state has done wonders for her approval rating, as indicated by Gallup poll surveys dating back to her time in the White House. While the president, mired deep in the political muck of Washington politics, sees his approval falling to 40 percent, Hillary’s has climbed close to 70 percent — and even higher in other surveys. Yes, this is partly an artifact of her position, which places her above the fray of domestic politics, and yes it will fall if she enters the race. But the fact remains that her public profile has been bolstered in the last several years, and she enters the race with that advantage. Indeed, she can use that non-partisan vantage point to frame her decision to run: It’s not about politics — it’s about the future of this country both here and abroad.

Her second advantage relates to the first: She’s not part of the mess at home. She didn’t weigh in on the stimulus bill, or healthcare, or the banking overhaul, and she certainly bears no responsibility for the state of the economy. In this respect, she’s the Obama of 2012: a candidate who can run on the promise of change, without specifying the nature of that change. And she has an added advantage: years of governing experience in the White House, the Senate and most recently within the foreign policy establishment. To be blunt, her résumé outshines the incumbent’s. Meanwhile, her liabilities (the healthcare fiasco, Hill and Bill) have largely receded from public consciousness. And in any case, they are now dwarfed by Obama’s baggage. In 2008, Obama was the unsullied one. Not anymore. Heck, even the Big Dawg has been largely rehabilitated.

This leads to a third point: buyer’s remorse. It’s not one she can directly bring up (after all, she’s above politics), but others will certainly remind voters that she did warn you. Remember that 3 a.m. phone call? Remember the warning about the rose-colored petals falling from the sky? Remember about learning on the job? Sure you do. Doesn’t a part of you, deep down, realize she was right? If I heard it once this past week, I heard it a thousand times: You were duped by Obama’s rhetoric — the whole “hopey-changey” thing. And you wanted to be part of history, too — to help break down the ultimate racial barrier. That’s OK. We were all young once. But now it’s time to elect someone who can play hardball, who understands how to be ruthless, who will be a real … uh … tough negotiator in office. There won’t be any debate about Hillary’s, er, “man-package.”

All of these factors mean Hillary will appeal to precisely those voters who are most disillusioned with Obama, and who the Democrats lost in the 2010 midterms: older voters, the less educated and independents. Moreover, she has stronger support in the key battleground states of Ohio and Florida and maybe even Pennsylvania, whose electoral votes may determine the 2012 election. And the chance to finally put a woman in the Oval Office will energize voters in a way that Obama’s candidacy cannot.

The problem with this scenario, of course, is that it ignores a very big obstacle: the nomination fight. The reality is that, at least until the recent debt deal, Obama continues to have strong support among Democrats. Why should we expect Clinton to prevail in a nomination fight? Indeed, a Gallup poll survey from last September shows Obama beating Clinton in a hypothetical nomination contest.

Politically speaking, however, that poll came out ages ago. Since then, it has become clear that the economy is not going to rebound any time soon. Obama’s approval ratings continue to drop, and this is before the full impact of the debt negotiations on Democratic support — particularly within Obama’s base: those Democrats with higher incomes and better education, as well as minorities and younger voters. The other fact to remember is that despite the gaffes in Clinton’s 2008 primary run — the failure to fully contest caucus states, the mishandling of the Florida and Michigan delegates issue — she essentially fought Obama to a nomination draw. Indeed, by some estimates she won more popular votes than he. In the end, his nomination was secured not by winning enough delegates at the ballot box, but by gaining support from the non-elected superdelegates. Four years later, who do you think has gained more politically among likely Democratic voters?

Make no mistake about it: A contested nomination would be a nasty, brutish spectacle. But in all likelihood the winner would come out stronger. Think back to 2008: Despite the appeals from Obama backers that Clinton should drop out for the good of the party, she stayed in until the end — and in so doing exposed vulnerabilities in his candidacy in time for him to address them before the general election. A primary challenge will be good for the party — it will give Democrats a real choice. It will mobilize the base. And it will expose candidate strengths and weaknesses leading into the general election. Remember, there’s no evidence that previous primary challengers weakened incumbents. The causal arrow runs in the other direction: Incumbents like Carter in 1980 were challenged because they were already weak. A Clinton run won’t damage Obama, and may strengthen him — if he fends her off.

And really — isn’t it time to elect a qualified woman as president? We are way behind the rest of the world in this regard.

But there’s a more important reason why Hillary should run — one that transcends party, or personal gratification, or payback, or breaking barriers. She should run for the good of the nation. She should run to prevent a rollback of healthcare, to make sure the Bush tax cuts are not renewed, to protect entitlement programs, to make sure Republicans — who are poised to regain the Senate in 2012 — don’t control all three governing institutions through 2016. It’s not about her — it’s about the future of the country.

Madam Secretary, if you are reading this — the president is a good man who happened to be very unlucky in office. He inherited problems of almost unprecedented severity. But this is no time for sentiment to cloud your judgment. You need to do what’s right.

If not now, when? If not you, who? The nation cries out for leadership. Run, Hillary, Run!