Eight years ago Barrack Obama was
the right candidate at the right time to lead the country. This year, Hillary Clinton will be that
candidate.
It is difficult for a President to
be transformational from both a policy and an identity prospective. Abraham
Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and perhaps Ronald Reagan were
major policy transformers. John Kennedy
(Catholic), Obama (African American) and hopefully Clinton (Female) will be
primarily remembered as identity transformers.
In recent memory, only British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was
both.
So, what is the basis for my thesis
that Obama has demonstrated and Clinton will produce “the right stuff?” I will begin with President Obama. I believe
that history will come to view him as the “black Kennedy.” (or maybe Kennedy should become identified as
the white Obama) Like Kennedy, his strongest attributes are charisma, oratory,
a noble presence on the world stage and a beautiful family with fairy tale
charm.
Like Kennedy, Obama has never been an
ideologue. He is practical, careful, and
more moderate than people give him credit for.
The fact that the firebrand activist Cornel West has labeled Obama: “a
Rockefeller Republican in blackface” helps prove my point. Many progressives fault him for not moving
enthusiastically to the left, which was never in the President’s political DNA.
Had John Kennedy lived to serve a
second term, he could have only hoped for the scandal free four years,
improving economy and rising approval rating (56%) that Obama now enjoys. More likely, Vietnam and Kennedy’s
misadventures both political and private would have brought Camelot crashing
down around him. Few have stopped to
consider how rare it is to serve eight years in a White House, where the new
media makes every molehill into a mountain, and to emerge as unscathed and
popular as President Obama.
But the Obama presidency has been
about more than simply surviving. By
being the nation’s first African American president, a beaten down minority,
forged out of slavery, came into its own with dignity. The pride and
encouragement Obama engenders among African Americans is beyond expectations. Consider that black students in middle school
have only known a black President.
Moreover Obama did exactly the
right thing with the economy, in shambles when his first term began. He provided stimulus and then let the economy
take the time needed to heal. He knew
the wealthy would spring back faster than the average American; they always do.
Now that the healing is complete, rational social engineering to address the
growing inequality can take place, just not on his watch.
In foreign policy, Obama has been
careful not to commit to new initiatives best left for his successor. Over the last eight years, the world has
become more complex than Game of Thrones and
even without dragons, twice as dangerous.
We have discovered that the bipolar cold war was easier to manage than a
multi polar landscape stoked by rampant tribalism in the third world and
populism in the west. Obama has moved forward in this new environment with
caution. His replacement will contend with numerous hot spots but no out of
control fires.
Turning to Hillary Clinton, she has
the right stuff to replace Obama and serve as President for a number of
reasons. First, Clinton is the most accomplished woman candidate in our
nation’s history and it is well past time to elect a woman to our highest
office. In this election year, once the
politics are removed and the facts examined; she was far and away the most
qualified of any of the announced candidates.
Second, I believe history will come
to label her presidency as the “Female Bill Clinton.” I am not inferring that
her Husband will have undue influence over her time in office. To the contrary, she has always been fully
committed to her Husband’s sound beliefs which brought moderate politics,
liberal social views and constrained fiscal policy to the White House. If elected, Hillary Clinton will no more move
the country sharply left than her Husband or Obama. The concessions to Bernie Sanders on party
platform issues, designed to unite the party, will not affect her moderate
governance, once in office. She will
work around the edges to encourage increased equality, mostly by providing more
opportunities to earn it. Hand outs and
free programs will not be part of her legislative agenda. It is not the Clinton way.
Third, Clinton’s many years of
public service have provided her with the knowledge and background to serve.
While her long career has provided her detractors with political baggage to
gleefully attack her, in fact, rational voters who weigh the evidence will
discover a stellar record. She was the
hardest working and most traveled Secretary of State in our history. The highly
politicized Benghazi episode does not dampen the positive results of her steady
hand in advancing Obama’s foreign policy.
The often reviled Clinton
Foundation is hardly a villain in this presidential election. It is an
apolitical and well respected nonprofit that has raised and distributed almost
2 billion dollars in humanitarian resources around the world.
Ms. Clinton has admitted making a
mistake in following her predecessors in the State Department by opening and
supporting a private email account. In
truth, she no doubt considered email delivery as a non issue when becoming
Secretary of State. However republicans
have demanded their pound of flesh, years of unprecedented investigation have taken
place and the results have revealed neither criminality nor any harm to
national security.
Hillary Clinton as President will
continue to build on the Obama legacy of inclusive, fair and open
government. She will forge her own
identity that women worldwide will come to admire. Under her leadership more Americans will
begin to participate in the new economy.
Calls for protectionism from the left and the right will fade. There will be no misplaced effort to return
workers to the old rust belt industries and coal mines which are no longer
viable. Voters will quickly learn they
elected the candidate with the right stuff.
