CHANNELING NIXON
In his life, President Richard Nixon was an expert at reinventing himself and presenting various "new Nixons."
With an uncanny appreciation for the fact that politics in the media age had devolved in large part to brand management, and that consumers can always be persuaded to attach new meaning to old brands, Nixon regularly performed the political equivalent. In forty or so years, his personna moved from anti-Communist truth teller putting Alger Hiss behind bars; to domestic watchdog pointing out "pink ladies" as an inveterate red baiter; to press hater in 1962 leaving the scene with a contemptible "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference"; to calm statesmen promising to "bring us together" in 1968 with a secret plan to end the war; to the last liberal President, creating the EPA and OSHA, and proposing what today would easily pass for national health insurance but which then was not good enough for the Democrats in Congress; to lawbreaker covering-up the 1972 bugging of the opposition party and then resigning for it; to unapologetic ex-President marooned on the Elba he called Casa Pacifica (his San Clemente, California home, to which he recurred following his ignominious resignation); to slightly apologetic ex-President ("I screwed up," as he told the Oxford Union some years after his 1974 resignation); to elder statesmen writing books on foreign policy in the '80s and '90s and offering sage advice to political suitors who made the trek to Saddle River, NJ, his last home.
In his life, there were many Nixons. And in his death, we have been blessed (or cursed as the case may be) with another.
Her name is Hillary Clinton.
More than anyone else in politics these days, Hillary Clinton is the new Nixon. The reality is paradoxical -- her first job after law school was working as an aide in Congress to those who were trying to impeach old tricky Dick, earnest in her bell bottoms and granny glasses as the authentic representative of lefty baby boomers coming of age. But the reality is also undeniable. Her Presidential campaign has marched out different versions of HRC at a rate that not even Nixon could manage in the space of a lifetime. Indeed, by my count, we have at least six to date.
Here they are:
1. Inevitable Hillary. Her campaign began with the premise that no one could beat her. She was a financial and political juggernaut, heir to what Democrats (especially those who vote in primaries) think of as the halcyon days of her husband's presidency, collector of the IOUs on favors she and Bill had handed out with abandon in three decades of workaholic political glad handing (and of the one gigantic IOU she gets from him as he does penance for his peccadilloes).
And it was all working.
Until Iowa.
2. Experienced Hillary. When Inevitable Hillary tanked, we got experienced Hillary. She was the co-President consulted on "all major decisions" made by Bill, a sort of uber-First Lady who didn't let the ribbon cutting and library tours interfere with involvement in the heavy lifting of policy formation, an expert on health care cut up by those killer Harry and Louise ads but who knows where the bodies are buried and won't fail twice, the co-author of Clintonian success never responsible for any of its failures.
This wasn't working in the week after Iowa.
So we got . . .
3. Emotional Hillary. Faced with defeat in New Hampshire, the iron lady of American politics momentarily shed her Lady Thatcher visage and. . . cried. Well, she didn't quite cry, but she choked up a lot. Crying on the eve of the New Hampshire primary is a mixed blessing. When voters thought Ed Muskie did it (he really didn't, it was just melting snow, but political brand management then wasn't what it is now), they skewered him. So Hillary's wasn't an all out tear jerker, not even close. Just the welling up of emotion as she professed her consuming passion for the issues and the notion that the Presidency really matters (which W more or less proves by negative inference).
Some say this won her New Hampshire.
But it couldn't get her through Super Tuesday, which was a draw. Nor could it re-fill her political bank account, which by then was tapped.
So we got . . .
4. Ruthless Hillary. Close cousin to her Thatcheresque twin, Ruthless Hillary does what is necessary to win. She cans Patti Solis Doyle, her loyal campaign manager of umpteen years, and brings back Maggie Williams, who doesn't lose. She lets Bill demean Barack's win in South Carolina, as he becomes the first "black" President to. . . race bait. She tells us that the votes in Florida and Michigan should count after all, and after she previously said they couldn't and wouldn't. She tells us caucuses don't really count (actually, she more or less tells us that anyplace she loses doesn't count, and then gets the media to buy into this fantasy by making her "win states" Barack's "must win" states). She lends herself $5 million "of my money". Well, it's really hers and Bill's together, a part of the dowry we give ex-Presidents to, I guess, make up for the below market salaries we pay them, without worrying about conflicts of interest as the ex takes lots of cash from those who use to listen for free and others who claim with a straight face that he knows something about business.
But not even ruthless was enough. Barack trotted out that string of eleven straight victories.
So we got. . .
5. Combat Hillary. This is the Hillary who braved sniper fire in Bosnia, the Commander in Chief who'll be able to take that 3 am phone call and calm the waters of this turbulent world as we all sleep the sleep of the well protected relieved that we did not entrust such awesome responsibility to the skinny guy with a silk tongue; the only one who can go mano a mano with the war hero as voters compare her "experience" to his and not just to some well crafted oration for God's sake.
Alas, Combat Hillary was not enough either, mostly because all the other Hillarys together still have left her behind the skinny guy in the delegate count. So we get . . .
6. Boilermaker Hillary. This is the Hillary who downs the shot and a beer with gusto in a working class bar in Pennsylvania, the "I'm on your side and he's not" girl with guts (and a much better bowling score), ready to junk NAFTA (this is one of Bill's ideas she won't take credit for) while the other guy sends his surrogates to Canada to tell them he doesn't really mean it, the regular gal (never mind the $100 plus million over the last eight years) who would never admit to eating arugula (or to counting calories in a chocolate factory), the candidate who, with a straight face (this is critical in brand management), tells us that Obama should have disowned his nutty pastor sooner because, while we "don't get to choose our families" (apparently husbands don't count, but who's noticing), we do "get to choose our preachers".
Nixon was never this creative. He usually stuck to one persona for every half decade or so. But he also lost two campaigns, the Presidency in 1960 (to the then "orator du jour" JFK) and the California gubernatorial election in 1962. Maybe he just wasn't in Hillary's league.
It's no wonder Barack can't beat her yet.
So far, he's had to run against two Clintons and six Hillarys.
Nixon would be proud.
In his life, President Richard Nixon was an expert at reinventing himself and presenting various "new Nixons."
With an uncanny appreciation for the fact that politics in the media age had devolved in large part to brand management, and that consumers can always be persuaded to attach new meaning to old brands, Nixon regularly performed the political equivalent. In forty or so years, his personna moved from anti-Communist truth teller putting Alger Hiss behind bars; to domestic watchdog pointing out "pink ladies" as an inveterate red baiter; to press hater in 1962 leaving the scene with a contemptible "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference"; to calm statesmen promising to "bring us together" in 1968 with a secret plan to end the war; to the last liberal President, creating the EPA and OSHA, and proposing what today would easily pass for national health insurance but which then was not good enough for the Democrats in Congress; to lawbreaker covering-up the 1972 bugging of the opposition party and then resigning for it; to unapologetic ex-President marooned on the Elba he called Casa Pacifica (his San Clemente, California home, to which he recurred following his ignominious resignation); to slightly apologetic ex-President ("I screwed up," as he told the Oxford Union some years after his 1974 resignation); to elder statesmen writing books on foreign policy in the '80s and '90s and offering sage advice to political suitors who made the trek to Saddle River, NJ, his last home.
In his life, there were many Nixons. And in his death, we have been blessed (or cursed as the case may be) with another.
Her name is Hillary Clinton.
More than anyone else in politics these days, Hillary Clinton is the new Nixon. The reality is paradoxical -- her first job after law school was working as an aide in Congress to those who were trying to impeach old tricky Dick, earnest in her bell bottoms and granny glasses as the authentic representative of lefty baby boomers coming of age. But the reality is also undeniable. Her Presidential campaign has marched out different versions of HRC at a rate that not even Nixon could manage in the space of a lifetime. Indeed, by my count, we have at least six to date.
Here they are:
1. Inevitable Hillary. Her campaign began with the premise that no one could beat her. She was a financial and political juggernaut, heir to what Democrats (especially those who vote in primaries) think of as the halcyon days of her husband's presidency, collector of the IOUs on favors she and Bill had handed out with abandon in three decades of workaholic political glad handing (and of the one gigantic IOU she gets from him as he does penance for his peccadilloes).
And it was all working.
Until Iowa.
2. Experienced Hillary. When Inevitable Hillary tanked, we got experienced Hillary. She was the co-President consulted on "all major decisions" made by Bill, a sort of uber-First Lady who didn't let the ribbon cutting and library tours interfere with involvement in the heavy lifting of policy formation, an expert on health care cut up by those killer Harry and Louise ads but who knows where the bodies are buried and won't fail twice, the co-author of Clintonian success never responsible for any of its failures.
This wasn't working in the week after Iowa.
So we got . . .
3. Emotional Hillary. Faced with defeat in New Hampshire, the iron lady of American politics momentarily shed her Lady Thatcher visage and. . . cried. Well, she didn't quite cry, but she choked up a lot. Crying on the eve of the New Hampshire primary is a mixed blessing. When voters thought Ed Muskie did it (he really didn't, it was just melting snow, but political brand management then wasn't what it is now), they skewered him. So Hillary's wasn't an all out tear jerker, not even close. Just the welling up of emotion as she professed her consuming passion for the issues and the notion that the Presidency really matters (which W more or less proves by negative inference).
Some say this won her New Hampshire.
But it couldn't get her through Super Tuesday, which was a draw. Nor could it re-fill her political bank account, which by then was tapped.
So we got . . .
4. Ruthless Hillary. Close cousin to her Thatcheresque twin, Ruthless Hillary does what is necessary to win. She cans Patti Solis Doyle, her loyal campaign manager of umpteen years, and brings back Maggie Williams, who doesn't lose. She lets Bill demean Barack's win in South Carolina, as he becomes the first "black" President to. . . race bait. She tells us that the votes in Florida and Michigan should count after all, and after she previously said they couldn't and wouldn't. She tells us caucuses don't really count (actually, she more or less tells us that anyplace she loses doesn't count, and then gets the media to buy into this fantasy by making her "win states" Barack's "must win" states). She lends herself $5 million "of my money". Well, it's really hers and Bill's together, a part of the dowry we give ex-Presidents to, I guess, make up for the below market salaries we pay them, without worrying about conflicts of interest as the ex takes lots of cash from those who use to listen for free and others who claim with a straight face that he knows something about business.
But not even ruthless was enough. Barack trotted out that string of eleven straight victories.
So we got. . .
5. Combat Hillary. This is the Hillary who braved sniper fire in Bosnia, the Commander in Chief who'll be able to take that 3 am phone call and calm the waters of this turbulent world as we all sleep the sleep of the well protected relieved that we did not entrust such awesome responsibility to the skinny guy with a silk tongue; the only one who can go mano a mano with the war hero as voters compare her "experience" to his and not just to some well crafted oration for God's sake.
Alas, Combat Hillary was not enough either, mostly because all the other Hillarys together still have left her behind the skinny guy in the delegate count. So we get . . .
6. Boilermaker Hillary. This is the Hillary who downs the shot and a beer with gusto in a working class bar in Pennsylvania, the "I'm on your side and he's not" girl with guts (and a much better bowling score), ready to junk NAFTA (this is one of Bill's ideas she won't take credit for) while the other guy sends his surrogates to Canada to tell them he doesn't really mean it, the regular gal (never mind the $100 plus million over the last eight years) who would never admit to eating arugula (or to counting calories in a chocolate factory), the candidate who, with a straight face (this is critical in brand management), tells us that Obama should have disowned his nutty pastor sooner because, while we "don't get to choose our families" (apparently husbands don't count, but who's noticing), we do "get to choose our preachers".
Nixon was never this creative. He usually stuck to one persona for every half decade or so. But he also lost two campaigns, the Presidency in 1960 (to the then "orator du jour" JFK) and the California gubernatorial election in 1962. Maybe he just wasn't in Hillary's league.
It's no wonder Barack can't beat her yet.
So far, he's had to run against two Clintons and six Hillarys.
Nixon would be proud.
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