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TwitThisIs America ready for another Clinton?
Senator Clinton faces other historical hurdles. The United States has never had a female commander in chief. None of the other candidates is married to a former President who was impeached on perjury charges relating to a sexual affair.
And none of the others has a disapproval rating among potential voters of 43 percent. “The ‘Hillary hostility’ factor is constant,” says Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
In the parlance of political professionals, these are “high negatives,” and such poll numbers would once have doomed a national candidate. Not anymore. The nation is so polarized that Bush won reelection in 2004 with similar negatives. In other words, Hillary Clinton’s high disapproval ratings stem as much as anything else from her near-total name recognition among voters—and name identification is the holy grail of politicians.
Senator Clinton has other advantages as well. As the stalemate in Iraq has taken its toll on President Bush’s popularity, a majority of Americans now tell pollsters they “miss” Bill Clinton. Taking advantage of this, the Clintons opened the post-Labor Day 2007 campaign season by appearing on the stump together.
The Clinton-era scandals have been so rehashed that there is little the Senator’s opponents can throw at her that will strike voters as new. In addition, the ethics scandals of the Bush era have made it more difficult for Republicans to throw mud at the former First Lady—or any Democrat.
But last August, it was déjà vu all over again when one of Hillary’s biggest fund-raisers, Norman Hsu, was exposed as a shadowy Hong Kong-born fugitive wanted for fraud in California, whose cover story of being a successful businessman was apparently fiction.
The Senator’s campaign quickly returned contributions raised by Hsu, but it was all eerily similar to the Clinton fund-raising scandals of the 1996 campaign—something that did not go unnoticed by John Edwards, who is also running for President. He told an audience in New Hampshire that the American people deserve to know that “the Lincoln Bedroom is not for rent.” It was Edwards’s way of urging Americans to turn the page, once and for all, past the Bushes and the Clintons.
Finally, for those who wonder whether America is ready for a female chief executive, a recent poll asked people if they would vote for a qualified woman nominated by their political party—and fully 86 percent of Americans answered yes.
To be sure, there are those who doubt that America will elect a woman commander in chief at a time of war. But as the 2008 primary season approaches, Hillary Clinton remains well ahead of her Democratic rivals in the polls. So while many wonder if America is ready for a woman President, the better question may be, Is America ready for another Clinton?
Perhaps that will give voters pause. Or maybe, as Clinton herself asserts, the American people will take a fresh look at a familiar face—and like what they see. “I have a lot of trust in the American people, and I feel very optimistic that people will judge me for who I am, not who they heard I was or some sort of cartoon of me,” she told The Digest. “And at the end of the day, I have a very deep and abiding faith in this country and a real sense of the confidence and optimism I want to see evidenced again. And I think that will be attractive to voters in this election. So that’s what I’m trying to do every day—just present myself.”
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