http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-clinton-bush-and-the-2016-presidential-election.html?ref=opinion&_r=0Are Two Dynasties Our Destiny?
Clinton, Bush and the 2016 Presidential Election
JAN. 3, 2015
JEB and Hillary. Hillary and Jeb. It’s getting to the point where a mention of one yields a reference to the other, where they’re semantically inseparable, presidentially conjoined. Should we just go the extra step, save ourselves some syllables and keystrokes? The 2016 matchup as envisioned by many: Jebary. Or, more economically still, Heb.
The fascination with this pair as possible rivals for the White House makes perfect sense, because it defies belief. We’re talking about tomorrow while trafficking in yesterday. We’re saying we need to turn the page by going back to a previous chapter.
We’re a country of self-invention (that’s the myth, at least) in thrall to legacies and in the grip of dynasties, riveted by the mightiest surname in modern Democratic politics and its Republican analogue, imagining not just a clash of the titans but a scrum of the successors.
It would be a replay of the 1992 race, but with the wife of the victor against a son of the loser. It would also call to mind the 2000 race, when that victor’s heir apparent, Al Gore, squared off against another of that loser’s sons, George W. Bush. That too was a Clinton-Bush contest, because Bush campaigned against the incumbent president, repeatedly suggesting that his conduct with a White House intern had brought dishonor to the office.
And then, years later, they all somehow got chummy. In an interview with C-Span that aired last January, Barbara Bush revealed that Bill Clinton had developed the habit of dropping by her family’s Kennebunkport, Me., compound every summer for a visit.
“I love Bill Clinton,” she said, explaining that he and her husband, the 42nd and 41st presidents, had formed a special bond. “Bill’s father wasn’t around, and I think that he thinks of George a little bit like the father he didn’t have.” If he’s an adopted son of sorts, then Jebary would be incestuous in addition to operatic.
How irresistible.
But how unlikely, despite all the current speculation following Jeb Bush’s maneuvers to prime a candidacy: the release of emails from his years as governor of Florida; the announcement last week that he’d resigned his positions on the boards of corporations and nonprofit organizations.
There’s no doubt that he and Hillary Clinton enjoy enormous structural advantages — in terms of name recognition, fund-raising and ready-made support networks — over other potential aspirants for their parties’ nominations.
But they also have significant external problems and internal flaws, and there are serious open questions about each. Factor those in and it’s a reach, as a sheer matter of probability, that they wind up as the final two.
One of them? Sure. Both? Too much could go wrong.
A successful campaign isn’t just coffers and endorsements, though those matter. It’s narrative and emotion. It’s a speech-by-speech, handshake-by-handshake seduction, and on this score it’s unclear that Clinton and Bush are especially well positioned or masters of the game. They’re formidable candidates, yes. But are they good ones?
What I’ve previously noted about her is true as well of him: They’re not fresh and unfamiliar enough for all that many voters to discover them, the way they did Barack Obama in 2008 and to some extent George W. Bush in 2000, and develop that kind of political crush.
They’re not naturals on the stump. Clinton came into the 2008 campaign with extensive experience in the spotlight; still she struggled to warm up to audiences (and vice versa) and find the looseness and air of intimacy that many voters crave. Her “Hard Choices” book tour last year was rocky, with awkward moments that she created or should have been able to avoid.
And it’s impossible to predict how Bush would fare on the trail, because he hasn’t waged a campaign since his re-election as governor of Florida in 2002. That’s significant, and it’s getting less attention than it should.
His bid for the Republican nomination, if he formalizes it, would be his first. And while his brother succeeded on his maiden voyage, the subsequent two nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney, were making second tries. Practice helps.
EVEN Bush’s most ardent admirers don’t sell him as a rousing orator. Last April I happened to hear him give an education reform speech, at an event where Chris Christie had been the headliner the previous year, and the contrast was stark. Christie had come across as impassioned, unscripted. He filled and held the room. Bush was a phlegmatic blur. Afterward his supporters talked about and fretted over it.
Both he and Hillary Clinton may be too awash in money. More so than other Democrats and Republicans who’ve signaled interest in the presidency, they’ve existed for many years now at a financial altitude far, far above that of ordinary Americans.
And reporters digging into their affairs would provide voters with constant reminders of that, revisiting the Clintons’ speaking fees and examining Jeb Bush’s adventures in private equity, which a Bloomberg Politics story from December described under this headline: “Jeb Bush Has a Mitt Romney Problem.”
It’s hard to fathom that at this of all junctures, when there’s growing concern about income inequality and the attainability of the American dream, voters in both parties would choose nominees of such economically regal bearing.
Clinton would at least hold the promise of history in the making — a first female president — and her candidacy would wring excitement from that. But to seal the deal, she’d probably have to tamp down excessive talk of inevitability, forge a less combative relationship with the news media and find a nimbleness that has often eluded her.
As Peter Beinart observed in a National Journal appraisal last year, “She’s terrific at developing and executing a well-defined plan. She’s less adept at realizing that a well-defined plan is not working and improvising something new.” He was previewing a Clinton presidency, but his assessment is equally germane to a Clinton candidacy.
And Clinton and Bush together have more baggage than the cargo hold of a 747. That’s the flip side of all of those family tentacles, all that political history, all those privileged inside glimpses of the process. They make you putty in the hands of the right opposition researcher.
We’re nearly two years away from November 2016. So are Clinton and Bush. They remain abstractions.
But they won’t get to campaign that way, and we won’t know some of the most important stuff about them until they’re actually in the arena, showing us their fettle and whether it fits the mood of the moment.
Maybe Jebary really is who we are and where we’re headed. I suspect a different destination.
