Later today, the worst kept secret in US politics will be unveiled: Hillary Rodham Clinton, former First Lady, former Senator, former Secretary of State, will once more seek the Democratic Party’s nomination to be President of the United States.
She has been here before, of course. In 2007 she was most peoples’ expected nominee and therefore, choice to be president. Who had ever heard of this upstart from Chicago? Barack who? Never heard of him….
Some 7 years later and things are looking interesting once more for the former Goldwater Girl. She stands at a tantalizing place in her own life and in the history of her country. Unlike 7 years ago, this is undeniably her last roll of the dice. At 67, and now a grandmother, there are no more roles to play, no more election cycles to wait out in the hope of another crack at the golden ring. This is it, which is why when I have been asked repeatedly over the last 4 years, ‘Will Hillary run?’ my response has been: ‘She is already running, and why wouldn’t she? She has no where else to go, and no time to waste.’
Hillary’s opportunity in 2015 is to present the 2016 election as an opportunity to do for gender politics what Obama did for racial politics in 2008. She must make this about an opportunity to elect the first women president, not the third Bush president. In doing so, it will be fascinating to see how Hillary presents herself to the electorate. In previous campaigns she has sought to outdo her male colleagues in terms of appearance and posture: All pantsuits and policy. There are signs this may be changing. Her appearance has altered in recent weeks, and her family are currently gracing the covers of Elle and Town and Country. This is no coincidence. If Hillary campaigns as a woman, not as a politician, it will be fascinating to see if this makes her more accessible to the electorate, which was always her biggest challenge. She has the brains, but her husband has all the charm. She needs to channel as much of this as possible over the next 18 months.
Hillary’s challenge will be to overcome the mistakes of her last campaign. She was caught flat-footed by Obama’s early candidacy and by his reputation for generating a fortune from grassroots supporters (notwithstanding the far larger fortune he quietly secured from corporate America). She is clearly seeking to get out the traps early and hit the ground running in Iowa, where she will file her papers shortly. However, she must not rely upon last cycle’s technology to win next year’s election. The suggestion that she will announce her candidacy on-line, in a tweet and perhaps a video plays into the hands of those who portray her as aloof, removed from the electorate and far too much of a presumptive nominee. Retail politics is king in the primaries. If she is perceived as being the electronic candidate she will struggle and provide an opportunity for a home-grown, done-to-earth, flesh and blood candidate to emerge and inflict grave damage on her campaign. A little like happened in 1992 with a smooth, charming, ah-shucks governor from Arkansas. Who’d have thought it?
Indeed the contrast with her husband’s run in 1992 is striking. As I detail in Clinton’s Grand Strategy, Bill Clinton didn’t announce his campaign until October 1991, only a matter of months before the first votes were cast in Iowa and New Hampshire. Now, his wife is announcing her candidacy in the sun and the spring of 2015, 10 months before the polls open in the snow and ice of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Hillary’s announcement, the Tweet that Will be Heard Around The World, is her last, best shot at securing a real place in history in her own right. Not as her husbands’ wife, not as a junior senator from New York, not as Obama’s Secretary of State, but as the first Woman President of the United States. That must surely be her place in the lexicon of American politics and the journey to that auspicious place in history begins anew today….
