What sports tell us about Hillary Clinton
The “electability” argument officially reached the lowest common denominator this week when America Online’s dimwitted homepage polled users on whether Hillary Clinton can win the White House, and Parade magazine’s celebrity gossip column weighed in on how Democratic gains in Congress affect the senator’s shot at the presidential nomination.
Worse than the thought of citizens counting on AOL and Walter Scott’s Personality Parade for political wisdom is the spread of “electability” talk whoever’s doing it.
In sports, after an unpredictable result, we like to remind ourselves, “That’s why they play the game” (or “run the race”). UCLA stops USC in football. That’s why they play the game.
Not that political types and voters need a sportswriter to tell them. Campaign history is full of surprises. Pretty much any president you can name was unelectable until … he got elected (see: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan). Pretty much every four years there’s a white-knight candidate who can’t miss until … he puts the entire populations of Iowa and New Hampshire to sleep (John Glenn, Bill Bradley). Scouting a senator’s or governor’s potential at the presidential-campaign level turns out to be tougher than pegging a Lancaster JetHawk’s chances of hitting .300 in the major leagues.
On C-SPAN, I was watching Evan Bayh deliver a speech in Concord, N.H., in such a monotonous sing-song that I instantly decided the Indiana senator will be the first 2008 candidate to drop out. Then I remembered, the first balloting of the primary and caucus season is 400 days away. As a fellow sportswriter put it to me, Bayh is in the spring training phase, breaking the rhetorical adhesions. Until a decade or two ago, before cameras followed candidates everywhere, appearances like Bayh’s would have amounted to closed practices. You don’t cut a player because of an 0-for-4 in an intra-squad game at Vero Beach.
Yet all over America these days, people are playing the parlor game of “Is Hillary Electable?” “Can She Win?” “Should She Run?” – even in places, like AOL and Parade, that have no parlors. Before most people have ever heard her deliver a speech on her own behalf, or debate an opponent, or respond to a setback. Before most people even know where exactly she stands on Iraq.
Whether these people are rank-and-file voters or professional political journalists, all they’re proving is that they know the word “electable.”
Political talk is so dominated by who-will-win (the so-called horse race, a phrase often insulting to racehorses) instead of who-should-win (oh yeah, we’re not picking a Super Bowl winner, we’re electing a Leader of the Free World) that you wonder if this nation of 300 million political analysts has room left for actual voters.
Here’s a suggestion from the bleachers: Play the game. Run the race. Hold the election.
Some people who love Clinton will end up hating what they see and hear. Some people who hate her will end up liking her. Same for Bayh, John McCain, Barack Obama, whoever you want – or think you want.
Should Hillary run? Of course she should. They all should run. Who can win? Who knows?
That’s why they play the campaign.