Now is the time for pollsters to ask potential voters, "Do you want to have Bill Clinton back in the White House as 'First Husband?'"
Regardless what Hillary's latest nuanced Iraq position is; regardless of how many semi-stiff, self deprecatory laugh lines she's delivered to demonstrate she's not a triangulated, pre-packaged Politician; regardless of how "acceptable" Sen. Clinton makes herself appear as a front-runner for the Democratic nomination -- I believe if THAT question was asked of 2008 voters, the resounding answer would be, "Not on your life!"
I know that Terry McAuliffe has convinced the Conventional Wisdom that "Bill is an incredible asset" to Hillary and the Democratic Party. The MSM is drooling for another whack at Bubba. But, I believe, if you asked actual voters out there, the CW would prove wrong once again. Ask that question, and all those echoes of the politics of personal destruction, of paralyzing polarization, would come flooding back, and folks would be forced to look ahead and contemplate what kind of year-long Presidential Election season they'd be in for -- not to mention the chaos that a garrulous, opinionated First Husband would bring to the White House -- and they'd reject it.
It's not fair. Hillary doesn't deserve it. She's probably the more ethical and ideologically grounded of the two, and she's certainly not intellectually inferior to her husband. But, it is the bed she's made. I hope we will not have to sleep in it again.
This Presidential Election cycle front-loads the decisive races. We'll have our candidate by February 5th of next year. Does it have to be repeated here that this means that (s)he who has the most money by June, and the most active ground organization by August, will win the nomination? And, that means that "long-shot" or "dark horse" candidates -- ANYONE but Clinton, Edwards, and Obama -- haven't got a chance?
The Primary process is no longer a multi-phased -- or even a "February beauty pageant, then a March Super Tuesday" -- vetting of candidates. That process of Elections Past allowed the electorate to take a breather and to examine the implications of February's front-runners for a General Election run. It allowed campaigns some time to re-position and for winning coalitions to be shaped as the also-rans shook out.
No more. Now it's 'winner-take-all' in a ridiculously abbreviated paroxysm of state-by-state, throw-in-all-the-major-media-markets balloting.
That means that early Big Money buys the Democratic nomination this time around. And, of course, given the Clinton's fundraising head start, that means we're going to be saddled with trying to convince America that we ought to put Bill Clinton -- and all his enemies -- back into the White House.
And that's a losing proposition.
It's time -- as long as there still IS TME -- for pollsters and journalists start asking about Candidate Clinton's First Husband problem.