Hillary Clinton and history
I'm glad my paranoid musings about Hillary Clinton running as a third-party candidate have been proven wrong by her (finally) graceful withdrawal from the race and ringing endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for president.
I suspect the ill will that she and Bill Clinton generated during the campaign will rapidly vanish. That's how politics is. Yesterday's bitter opponent tends to become tomorrow's valued statesman or stateswoman.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, who ran against incumbent President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980, fatally weakened Carter for the fall election against Ronald Reagan, who won. But Kennedy went on to a long and distinguished career in the Senate, now most likely in its last days because of the brain tumor discovered last month.
Sen Barack Obama is no Jimmy Carter, no matter what story line his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, may be pushing at the moment. Obama is likely to win in November. As I side note, I suspect Jimmy Carter's days as a punching bag are coming to an end. If Ronald Reagan hadn't dismantled Carter's alternative energy programs (even to removing solar panels from the White House roof), we might not be facing quite as bad an energy crisis today. There is much that was good in the Carter Administration apart from the Iran fiasco, just as we should value President Lyndon B. Johnson for his wonderful domestic anti-poverty programs apart from the Vietnam War.
When the smoke clears and the dust settles, Bill and Hillary Clinton will be remembered by history for eight years of peace and prosperity, and even more importantly, for standing firm against the Republican right wing minority's push to destroy the Democratic Party and liberal democracy. They went through hell so you didn't have to. While they were unable to prevent the rise of the country's worst and most disastrous President, George W. Bush, and bear a share of responsibility for that because of his indiscrete personal conduct, I blame Al Gore and his advisers, too. They kept President Clinton at arm's length during the 2000 fall campaign, even though he was enormously popular with a majority of Americans and might have been able to bring over the one more state Gore needed to win the Presidency. Let's not forget that had Bill Clinton been able to run for a third term, he likely would have won. But by then, as the recent HBO film "Recount" tells so well, a significant part of the Democratic Party was in full defeatist mode and ready to surrender to Bush's stealing of the election.
But that is behind us now. We have the best Democratic candidate since John F. Kennedy, possibly since Franklin Roosevelt. If there is anyone who can lead America out of the wasteland, it is Barack Obama.