aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, July 15, 2005

Hillary for President Supreme Court

In other Hillary news, the cover of the July/August issue of The Washington Monthly is a debate between Carl Cannon (pro) and Amy Sullivan (con) on Hillary’s presidential chances in 2008.

In a Kevin Drum comment on the debate focusing on Hillary’s improved media persona ("one thing that’s struck me during the past few years is that she’s gotten way better at dealing with the press") he notes that Carl and Amy agree on many points:

They agree that Hillary’s poll numbers are pretty decent. They agree that she can win the Democratic nomination but it’s the general election that will give her trouble. They agree that the big unknown is whether she can appeal to married white women. And they agree that there’s a big chunk of the electorate that won’t vote for her no matter what.

DafyDD doesn’t agree. Joe Gandelman pointed to Daffy’s Captain’s Quarters take on why Hillary Will Never Be The Presidential Nominee.

Daffy thinks Hillary’s “a mediocre hack who grandstanded [her] way through the decades, lurching from one outrageous statement to another, and never actually running anything.” He believes her victory in New York, “a state she had never lived in her life,” was “procurred for her by her hubby’s election team.”

I haven’t seen evidence that upstate New Yorkers are feeling bamboozled. More, I think, Amy gets it right:

One of the unexpected benefits of being demonized and attacked by conservatives for more than a decade turns out to be that voters are surprised and relieved when she doesn’t fly into town on a broomstick… many voters-weaned on a diet of conservative talking points during the 1990s-expected Clinton to be a liberal of the bluest sort, to the left of Ted Kennedy and unable to understand their concerns. What they found was that her positions on welfare, crime, and foreign policy, among other issues, were far more centrist than liberal. In addition, while most professional political observers dismissed her “Listening Tour” as a stunt, Clinton actually used it to query New Yorkers about their problems and obsessively study up on local issues.

But Daffy’s swipes at Hillary are not the point. What Daffy says that makes much sense is, “Bluntly put, senators are simply not elected president” becuase “A senator is...not single-handedly responsible for “governing” any large governmental organization” and “a senator is a deal-maker… that is, a compromiser. They do not decide, they debate; they do not govern, they negotiate, they cut deals, they sacrifice one principle for another.”

I agree.

Which brings me to Norman Orenstien’s argument for more politicians on the Supreme Court. I think it’s a good one. (James Joyner is considerably more ambivalent).

So how about this? Hillary Clinton for the Supreme Court!

I bet the Captain’s Quarters crowd would consider that idea, well, Daffy.