The Wisdom Of Hillary
As readers of my website will readily attest, I don’t often credit Hillary Clinton with deep or profound thinking. As I have remarked in the past, Ms. Clinton’s intellectual modus operandi usually involves doing polling research to determine where potential voters stand on a given subject and then crafting policy statements to that end. This has lead to some surprising paradoxes, exemplified readily during the last presidential campaign. Paradoxes such as wanting to increase taxes on the struggling Obama economy. Or wanting to deal with an epidemic of police/perpetrator violence by… releasing more criminals from prison!Or wanting to deal with a immigration infrastructure struggling to humanely treat a massive influx of migrants by… admitting MORE of them!
These logical non sequiturs are obvious evidence of a vacuous and duplicitous mind. So, as a result, I don’t often credit Ms. Clinton with any degree of perspicacity. None-the-less, she has recently hit one issue on the proverbial head.
Writing in her masterpiece of denial, “What Happened?”, Ms. Clinton provided us with a laundry list of every conceivable reason why she lost to Donald Trump in 2016. Every conceivable reason except the way she ran her own campaign. In the laundry list, however, one explanation does ring true: She claims, rightly, that it’s “almost impossible” for a Democratic presidential candidate to win the presidency following a two term Democratic incumbent. It turns out that, on this point, she is… correct! The record shows that no Democrat presidential candidate has run successfully following a two term Democrat incumbent since… Martin Van Buren won… in 1836!
In contradistinction, Republicans have been much more successful in stringing together three or more consecutive terms, accomplishing the feat four times since the party’s founding 162 years ago.
So, the question naturally arises: why is this? If you search this topic on the internet you’ll find many complicated analyses (such as “Why Can’t Democrats Win Three Consecutive Terms?” by Bill Scher, November 21, 2016, in RealClearPolitics.com). These explanations, to my mind, remain unconvincing. The most basic answer, plainly staring every one in the face, is simple: The Democrats SCREW UP! That’s it! It’s that simple! They get into the White House with grandiose promises and cleverly deceptive arguments. Once IN the White House they then proceed to mess everything up, and by the end of the second term, America has had enough. Then, despite their excuses and abject entreaties, they are summarily dismissed, to their perpetual amazement and consternation.
So, in this one case, it looks like Hillary hit the nail on the head. Her analysis, in this one case, WAS correct. Just not for the reason she’d like to contemplate.