Fred Hiatt is the editorial page editor of The Washington Post, and this afternoon posted an opinion piece titled The myth that Hillary Clinton is just lucky, debunked. What he challenges is the notion that any other Republican, had s/he been nominated, would have defeated Clinton.
I am not going to go through part by part of the column. It is relatively short, and quite clear.
There is a paragraph in the middle of the column that takes on the notion of other candidates:
At some point, though, you have to look at actual performance. Rubio wilted under interrogation by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Kasich failed to connect, and not a single candidate in that supposedly awesome lineup managed to do what Clinton did, which is stand up to Trump in debate. They performed miserably in their primary campaigns; why would we assume that Jeb Bush or any of the others would have done better in the general?
That question is one that too often is not considered — and I can say most clearly never by the hosts of Morning Joe, for example.
But it is the next, brief paragraph that really caught my attention:
Clinton, meanwhile, has shown a political adeptness that few give her credit for because, well, because we just know she is an inept politician.
Allow me to leave the column for a moment and express myself on this.
We have heard comments about her voice, her physical movements, how she dresses, the content of what she says, the volume at which she speaks. Beyond the fact of the obvious sexism in applying these to her and to none of her male competitors in either the primary or now the general, there is something else that is annoying.
Clinton makes no pretense at being as skilled an orator as either her husband — exceedingly good — or the President — absolutely superb. She is still a far more effective public speaker than almost all of the Republican contenders and her primary opponents, none of whom is in my opinion all that superb.
She is held to a higher standard of expectation than any presidential nominee in my memory — and that memory is clear back through 1956.
She is warm, connects well with people in small groups, listens exceedingly well, and is in terms of sheer brain power the equal of anyone who has ever run for the Presidency, including both her husband and the brilliant gentleman currently occupying the Oval Office.
But she is also a very good campaigner this time around. People underestimate her at their own risk.
Returning to Hiatt’s piece, the paragraph after the short one I last quoted is this:
In fact: She managed to carve out her own identity without repudiating President Obama. She tacked left to beat back a primary challenge without (with one glaring exception, trade) compromising on basic positions. She embraced the possibility of becoming America’s first female president without claiming that as a defining argument. In the debates, she projected competence without coming across as a know-it-all.
She has as a figure long associated with the establishment (which I will explain is more than a little unfair) managed to succeed in a cycle where there was a strong longing for change (although I suspect if interviewers dug further the frustration at the lack of progress was more directed at the Congress than at the Presidency).
With all that has been thrown at her in this campaign, including that courtesy of the Russians and Julian Assange, as Hiatt rightly notes
Clinton and her team have remained focused and disciplined.
I am going to push fair use a bit because I want to explore each of the final two paragraphs. First, the penultimate:
As for a mandate — well, check out the issues page of her campaign website. I count 41 position papers, though I might have missed a couple, ranging from autism to voting rights, each with a half-dozen bullet points. Should Trump’s lack of interest in debating these count against her? Should her comprehensiveness? Was “hope and change” more of a mandate eight years ago? Clinton has been clear about priorities including immigration reform, taxing the rich and slowing climate change.
I ask you to think back for a moment of how much into policy ANY of the Republican contenders were during the primary, how much detail they were willing to offer. Why would you expect that to be different during a general? Also consider how they debated. Do you think Chris Christie’s bluster or Ted Cruz’s smarminess would have been any more effective against Clinton’s quite competence than Trump’s obnoxiousness? Do you not think she and her campaign would have been as prepared to debate any of them as she was to debate Trump?
Yes, there might have been more competence and less foot in mouth, but then none of them would have started with a strongly committed a base as did Trump, so there is a trade-off.
Then when it comes to issues on which they have spoken, well, there are tons of vulnerabilities there. I could write several thousand words, whether it is attacks on Planned Parenthood, Terry Schiavo, forced birtherism, not understanding what carpet-bombing is, or in the case of John Kasich trying to claim credit for the balanced budgets under Bill Clinton when he voted against the economic plan that made them possible.
But let me return to Hiatt, and offer his final paragraph:
The campaigns this year have given voters a pretty good understanding of what the candidates stand for and how each differs from the other. If Clinton wins, it will be after laying out not only her tax returns and campaign bundlers but, over the course of a grueling year and a half, her principles, personality and platform, too. Let’s not pre-shrink her presidency.
Let’s remember, Trump’s opponents could not find a way of opposing him in the primary, They could not figure out how to challenge him. None of them really was able to build a strong appeal across even a majority of the Republican primary electorate. Clinton started with the strong commitment of the African-American and Latino communities, and a very strong record with labor. She started even in a contested primary with a far stronger base than was available to any Republican contender.
Further, despite a somewhat at times heated primary context, she and her campaign were skilled enough to bring together her party, and find a way to find strong common ground with her principle opponent. The Republicans could not even cooperate to find a way to stop Trump. What makes people think they could have cooperated after a primary in which they were attacking one another?
I felt in late 2015 that Clinton would be the next President. There is nothing I have seen since to convince me otherwise.
What Trump has given her is something she might not have had against SOME of the other Republicans, the chance to recapture both the Senate and the House. Those are both arguable.
What is not in my opinion, nor apparently in the opinion of Fred Hiatt, is the final outcome of the Presidential contest. Hillary Rodham Clinton would still have been elected against any Republican nominee from the field that ran against her.