Hillary Who? It's the Teflon Senator vs. the Stealth Candidate
Feb 01, 2007 Filed in: Politics
She May Be Leading Now, but a Democratic White House
is Going to Take a Different Kind of Star Power
Hillary Clinton may be leading in the polls, but with negative ratings of over 40%, her poor resonance with independents, her flipflop vote on the Iraq war, and a general wariness among Democrats that she is unelectable in the general election, her race to the nomination is anything but assured. The best indicator that her front-runner status is on shaky ground is that fact that most of the buzz about other possible candidates centers not on other “heavyweights” like Senators John Kerry (gone) and Joe Biden (going), both of whom have terminal cases of foot-in-mouth disease, but rather it is all about two surprise candidates; the first, surprising because he’s brand new, the other because he isn’t running at all. But that’s not stopping millions from looking forward to a President Obama or a President Gore.
Senatorial heavyweights have a long-history of presidential aspirations but there are a very short list of success stories. The last person elected to the presidency who had served as a senator was Richard Nixon. He had also served in congress and as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower. The last sitting senator to be elected president was John F. Kennedy. In fact, the only other sitting US Senator to be elected to the presidency was Warren G. Harding, who served for two short years before dying in 1923 of complications of pneumonia, his administration mired in scandal. In all, 15 of our 43 presidents have served in the US Senate. One out of three might sound like reasonable odds (most of the rest were governors), but in considering the actual success rate, take into account that there have been 55 elections for the presidency, and more than twice that number of major-party candidates.
The reason that US Senators have done so poorly is that, just like Hillary, they come with lots of baggage: a long history of public scrutiny, controversial votes, and for a sitting senator, the perception of stealing time away from the “day job,” as in: Why are you spending all your time fundraising when you’re supposed to be doing your job in the Senate? As far as public scrutiny, anyone remember Whitewater? You’ll be hearing a whole lot more about that and every other scandal that came out in the 90s as Hillary gets further into the campaign. And as far as controversial votes, being a “flip-flopper” on the Iraq war did a lot better job of sinking John Kerry’s presidential ship than the Swift Boaters ever could have hoped to. Know any other prominent senators with presidential aspirations out there who also flip-flopped on Iraq? The junior senator from New York will have a lot of explaining to do.
The success story behind the last sitting US Senator to be elected the White House had to do with one very simple phenomenon: star power. JFK had his medals of honor for rescuing fellow crew members during World War II, his humility about his war service, his Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage, and that first-ever nationally televised debate, in which JFK looks cool and calm and Nixon looks like a sweaty child molester. Plus JFK was darn handsome. Unfair though it may be, looks and star power count for a lot in presidential politics.
If any of this is starting to sound familiar, it should: Obama has two best-selling books, he is articulate, calm, reflective and humble. And darn good looking. Obama also has the Teflon factor going for him. It’s a rare thing among politicians, the last person who comes to mind being Ronald Reagan. Something about their star power, their affect, their way of handling bad news, and the way the media treats them, that makes them immune to the general nastiness of modern politics. Obama is the poster child for the Teflon phenomenon, while Clinton might be more accurately known as the Velcro Senator.
And in case the electorate is looking for someone more experienced, someone who has decades of experience in the highest echelons of American politics, vast foreign policy experience, and lots of star power, there is one potential candidate who fits that description exactly. And if you’re a candidate being coy with the media, what better time to kick off a campaign than at the same time you’re picking up an Academy Award? Want tens of millions of dollars of free media coverage in this era of everything is about how much money you can spend? Then you couldn’t ask for a better scenario than to pick up a Nobel Prize two months before the New Hampshire primary. Al Gore, winner of the popular vote in 2000, disputed winner of the electoral vote, his movie An Inconvenient Truth nominated for an Academy Award, recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, benefeciary of the hugely energizing we was wronged sentiment among Democrats, and multimillionaire with lots of deep-pocket connections is a hugely popular potential candidate.
Consider the following scenarios of possible presidential tickets for 2008, using the current front runner as the presidential candidate and the runner up as the vice presidential candidate: McCain/Guiliani vs. Clinton/Obama. The former sounds like a center-leaning and star-powered electoral landslide in the making, the latter the penultimate in left-wing pandering and an electoral disaster not seen since Walter Mondale. But now consider McCain/Guiliani (or McCain/Romney or Romney/Guiliani or any similar combination) vs Gore/Obama. More of the same Old Guard Nonsense from the Repubs vs. Star Power from the Dems. A Gore/Obama ticket would be a media frenzy (a huge force-multiplier in campaign dollars) and a good balance of old experience and new thinking. Plus, wouldn’t it be nice to have a viable candidate for 2008 and lay the groundwork for a future viable candidate?
To take a closer look at which Democratic ticket might have the best chance of winning in 2008, look at the electoral map from recent elections: In 2004 Kerry won the Northeast including New Hampshire, the Eastern states Pennsylvania and Maryland and the midwestern states Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the West Coast, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia, for a total of 252 electoral votes. Aside from New Hampshire’s 4 electoral votes, let’s call this voting block Solidly Blue, and Guiliani, McCain or any other centrist is unlikely to peel away any of these states. (Guiliani is not going to win New York nor Romney Massachusetts because they are not well-liked in their home states.) In 2000, Gore won all the Solidly Blue states, plus Iowa and New Mexico, winning 266 electoral votes. (Yes, we know he won Florida also, but the supreme court took it away, no use crying over spilt milk.) Had he won New Hampshire he would have won the election with it, but changes in the electoral map since 2000 mean that Gore 2000 states plus New Hampshire does not equal victory. In 1992, locked into a three-way race with an incumbent president and fiery billionaire, Clinton won Solidy Blue, plus New Hampshire, as well as Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, West Virginia and Arizona. In 1996, he added Nevada and Florida to that list but lost Montana. Those middle and southern states that Clinton won in 1992 and 1996 are reddish, but subject to change if they are particularly unhappy, say for example if they were tired of a particular party’s blind support of an unpopular war.
To go from the 252 Solidly Blue electoral votes to victory requires 17 more votes. Perennial battleground states Florida (27) and Ohio (20) are slam dunks. Without either of these, a combination of weakly red western or southern states is needed, such as Tennessee (11), Iowa (7), and New Mexico (5). Bill Clinton proved that some states in the South are willing to vote for a Dem if they feel he is one of them, and some Western states, including Iowa, New Mexico, even Colorado, might be up for grabs to the right centrist, and Virginia did just vote in a Democrat for governor in 2005 and senator in 2006. Looking at these numbers, can anyone explain where Hillary Clinton is going to come up with 17 more electoral votes, assuming she can get the 252? Appealing to moderates is not likely to garner her enough votes, because so many people have already made up their minds about her. She can appeal to women, but unless she can appeal to southern and western women she may as well stay in New York. Bottom line, she has very little chance in Florida, a slight chance in Ohio, and very little chance of coming up with 17 votes from the weakly red South and West. Now consider a Gore/Obama ticket: Florida and Ohio are both in reach, there’s appeal to moderates, appeal to the South, and suddenly the weakly red states all come into play.
So who has the better odds of taking back the White House in 2008? I’m placing my bet on Obama or Gore, or better yet, a Gore/Obama ticket. Maybe I should have some bumper stickers made.
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Hillary Clinton may be leading in the polls, but with negative ratings of over 40%, her poor resonance with independents, her flipflop vote on the Iraq war, and a general wariness among Democrats that she is unelectable in the general election, her race to the nomination is anything but assured. The best indicator that her front-runner status is on shaky ground is that fact that most of the buzz about other possible candidates centers not on other “heavyweights” like Senators John Kerry (gone) and Joe Biden (going), both of whom have terminal cases of foot-in-mouth disease, but rather it is all about two surprise candidates; the first, surprising because he’s brand new, the other because he isn’t running at all. But that’s not stopping millions from looking forward to a President Obama or a President Gore.
Senatorial heavyweights have a long-history of presidential aspirations but there are a very short list of success stories. The last person elected to the presidency who had served as a senator was Richard Nixon. He had also served in congress and as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower. The last sitting senator to be elected president was John F. Kennedy. In fact, the only other sitting US Senator to be elected to the presidency was Warren G. Harding, who served for two short years before dying in 1923 of complications of pneumonia, his administration mired in scandal. In all, 15 of our 43 presidents have served in the US Senate. One out of three might sound like reasonable odds (most of the rest were governors), but in considering the actual success rate, take into account that there have been 55 elections for the presidency, and more than twice that number of major-party candidates.
The reason that US Senators have done so poorly is that, just like Hillary, they come with lots of baggage: a long history of public scrutiny, controversial votes, and for a sitting senator, the perception of stealing time away from the “day job,” as in: Why are you spending all your time fundraising when you’re supposed to be doing your job in the Senate? As far as public scrutiny, anyone remember Whitewater? You’ll be hearing a whole lot more about that and every other scandal that came out in the 90s as Hillary gets further into the campaign. And as far as controversial votes, being a “flip-flopper” on the Iraq war did a lot better job of sinking John Kerry’s presidential ship than the Swift Boaters ever could have hoped to. Know any other prominent senators with presidential aspirations out there who also flip-flopped on Iraq? The junior senator from New York will have a lot of explaining to do.
The success story behind the last sitting US Senator to be elected the White House had to do with one very simple phenomenon: star power. JFK had his medals of honor for rescuing fellow crew members during World War II, his humility about his war service, his Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage, and that first-ever nationally televised debate, in which JFK looks cool and calm and Nixon looks like a sweaty child molester. Plus JFK was darn handsome. Unfair though it may be, looks and star power count for a lot in presidential politics.
If any of this is starting to sound familiar, it should: Obama has two best-selling books, he is articulate, calm, reflective and humble. And darn good looking. Obama also has the Teflon factor going for him. It’s a rare thing among politicians, the last person who comes to mind being Ronald Reagan. Something about their star power, their affect, their way of handling bad news, and the way the media treats them, that makes them immune to the general nastiness of modern politics. Obama is the poster child for the Teflon phenomenon, while Clinton might be more accurately known as the Velcro Senator.
And in case the electorate is looking for someone more experienced, someone who has decades of experience in the highest echelons of American politics, vast foreign policy experience, and lots of star power, there is one potential candidate who fits that description exactly. And if you’re a candidate being coy with the media, what better time to kick off a campaign than at the same time you’re picking up an Academy Award? Want tens of millions of dollars of free media coverage in this era of everything is about how much money you can spend? Then you couldn’t ask for a better scenario than to pick up a Nobel Prize two months before the New Hampshire primary. Al Gore, winner of the popular vote in 2000, disputed winner of the electoral vote, his movie An Inconvenient Truth nominated for an Academy Award, recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, benefeciary of the hugely energizing we was wronged sentiment among Democrats, and multimillionaire with lots of deep-pocket connections is a hugely popular potential candidate.
Consider the following scenarios of possible presidential tickets for 2008, using the current front runner as the presidential candidate and the runner up as the vice presidential candidate: McCain/Guiliani vs. Clinton/Obama. The former sounds like a center-leaning and star-powered electoral landslide in the making, the latter the penultimate in left-wing pandering and an electoral disaster not seen since Walter Mondale. But now consider McCain/Guiliani (or McCain/Romney or Romney/Guiliani or any similar combination) vs Gore/Obama. More of the same Old Guard Nonsense from the Repubs vs. Star Power from the Dems. A Gore/Obama ticket would be a media frenzy (a huge force-multiplier in campaign dollars) and a good balance of old experience and new thinking. Plus, wouldn’t it be nice to have a viable candidate for 2008 and lay the groundwork for a future viable candidate?
To take a closer look at which Democratic ticket might have the best chance of winning in 2008, look at the electoral map from recent elections: In 2004 Kerry won the Northeast including New Hampshire, the Eastern states Pennsylvania and Maryland and the midwestern states Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the West Coast, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia, for a total of 252 electoral votes. Aside from New Hampshire’s 4 electoral votes, let’s call this voting block Solidly Blue, and Guiliani, McCain or any other centrist is unlikely to peel away any of these states. (Guiliani is not going to win New York nor Romney Massachusetts because they are not well-liked in their home states.) In 2000, Gore won all the Solidly Blue states, plus Iowa and New Mexico, winning 266 electoral votes. (Yes, we know he won Florida also, but the supreme court took it away, no use crying over spilt milk.) Had he won New Hampshire he would have won the election with it, but changes in the electoral map since 2000 mean that Gore 2000 states plus New Hampshire does not equal victory. In 1992, locked into a three-way race with an incumbent president and fiery billionaire, Clinton won Solidy Blue, plus New Hampshire, as well as Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, West Virginia and Arizona. In 1996, he added Nevada and Florida to that list but lost Montana. Those middle and southern states that Clinton won in 1992 and 1996 are reddish, but subject to change if they are particularly unhappy, say for example if they were tired of a particular party’s blind support of an unpopular war.
To go from the 252 Solidly Blue electoral votes to victory requires 17 more votes. Perennial battleground states Florida (27) and Ohio (20) are slam dunks. Without either of these, a combination of weakly red western or southern states is needed, such as Tennessee (11), Iowa (7), and New Mexico (5). Bill Clinton proved that some states in the South are willing to vote for a Dem if they feel he is one of them, and some Western states, including Iowa, New Mexico, even Colorado, might be up for grabs to the right centrist, and Virginia did just vote in a Democrat for governor in 2005 and senator in 2006. Looking at these numbers, can anyone explain where Hillary Clinton is going to come up with 17 more electoral votes, assuming she can get the 252? Appealing to moderates is not likely to garner her enough votes, because so many people have already made up their minds about her. She can appeal to women, but unless she can appeal to southern and western women she may as well stay in New York. Bottom line, she has very little chance in Florida, a slight chance in Ohio, and very little chance of coming up with 17 votes from the weakly red South and West. Now consider a Gore/Obama ticket: Florida and Ohio are both in reach, there’s appeal to moderates, appeal to the South, and suddenly the weakly red states all come into play.
So who has the better odds of taking back the White House in 2008? I’m placing my bet on Obama or Gore, or better yet, a Gore/Obama ticket. Maybe I should have some bumper stickers made.
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