Buyer’s Remorse: Odes to Bill and Hillary All Over the News as Journalists Regret Obama Support

The same people who sunk Hillary Clinton’s historic, brave, and relentless pursuit of the Democratic nomination are now shedding tears that she and her husband are not in executive power, though they retain as much political and media clout as ever. All over news, journalists are missing the prosperity and competence of the Clinton years and lamenting that the current crop of political players — Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and the impotent Pelosi-Reid Congeress — don’t have what it takes to get the nation on the right track.

Hillary’s masterful performance on Sunday’s Meet the Press — along with Obama’s plummeting poll numbers in the wake of his disastrous health care press conference last Wednesday — seems to have broken the dam:

In their vivid twin performances Sunday — Hillary on “Meet the Press” in Washington and Sarah at her farewell picnic in Fairbanks — two of the most celebrated and polarizing women in American political history offered a fascinating contrast.

Hillary, who so often in the past came across as aggrieved, paranoid and press-loathing, was confident and comfortable in her role as top diplomat, discussing the world with mastery and shrugging off suggestions that she has been disappeared by her former rival, the president…

Hillary’s radiant robustness, on the other hand, even with a sore elbow, makes the dictators in Iran and North Korea we’re so worried about seem like frail, little creatures.

Obama advisers say privately that the president truly respects the woman he ran against, and that they have a good relationship, so good it has even surprised Hillary…In this White House, Barack Obama is the pretty thing who is taken with Hillary’s serious, smartest-girl-at-Wellesley aura.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Sarah Grabs the Grievance Grab Bag From Hillary – NYTimes.com.

Dowd is justifiably being raked over the coals in the comments section of the Times for her role in unfairly denigrating Mrs. Clinton during last year’s primary contest. Nevertheless it’s about time she came around. Elsewhere, Bill Clinton is getting his due:

While Obama kicks back…his health-care plan is falling apart. Maybe he should invite the original triangulator, Bill Clinton, to the Hill to save the day…

Surely it’s the former president who got it wrong once who has spent the most time and lost the most sleep thinking over how he would do it again. More important, wouldn’t Bubba do a better job than the professorial Obama at sweet-talking, arm wrestling, hugging, and head locking…?

It looks like Obama would rather live on cheeseburgers than let Clinton get into the act on health care—or on anything else, for that matter. Maybe he thinks there’s no stage big enough for both these two Mount Rushmore megastars and never will be. Despite surface cordiality and self-restraint for Hillary’s sake, the former president’s wounds from the harsh charge of racism on the campaign, a falsehood on which Obama created his “post-racialism” campaign, remain deep, and they are not assuaged by the coolly minimal lip service a still mistrustful Obama pays to Bill’s presidential wisdom. “Sure, he calls me every few weeks,” the former president told a person I know. “But it feels as if, you know, he’s just checking a box.”

via Obama Needs Bubba – The Daily Beast.

Obama is much too arrogant to call in the Clinton he smeared as a “racist” for advice he should heed. And Brown is not the only one wondering when Obama is going to channel the most successful Democratic president in the past forty years:

What the Obama team failed to realize about Clinton’s setback was that details and deadlines were merely tactical setbacks rooted in a larger strategic deficiency: the failure to produce a reform package that would unite the Democratic majorities in Congress and attract some measure of Republican support. As a result, the White House is repeating Clinton’s mistake of holding fast to a plan that unites the opposition while fracturing the majority. They are presently failing coalition-building 101…

Will he, ala Bill Clinton, opt for ideological reinvention and a rapprochement with America’s broad middle? Or will he, like Jimmy Carter, believe that his moral superiority is too sacrosanct to be compromised by the exigencies of the political system that he signed on to lead? If he chooses the first route, he’ll be able to hold the Democratic Party together. If the latter … well, he should give Jimmy Carter a call.

via RealClearPolitics – Obama Threatens to Break the Democratic Coalition.

In other words: is Obama a Carter Democrat or a new and improved Clinton Democrat? I think we all know the answer to that one, but the question is why didn’t the stoopordelegates choose a real Clinton when they had the chance?

Reports are that they will have a chance to right that wrong in 2016: Hillary’s campaign machinery has not been completely dismantled. In fact, it is out of debt, fat with cast, and lying in wait according to today’s much talked-about Drudge link:

Hillary Clinton says running for office isn’t on her “radar,” but she still has an eight-person political team and sports two overflowing campaign war chests.

Her team transformed the former Democratic White House contender’s massive campaign debts into a $3 million mountain of political cash…

Clinton’s failed presidential bid is now $1 million in the black, and her old Senate campaign committee has $2.1 million in the bank…Clinton’s campaign Web site continues to accept contributions.

Democratic operatives were surprised at the size of the operation. “She’s got eight?” said one Democrat. “Can I get a job there?”

Clinton is adamant she’s not running for anything…she told ABC News on Sunday, “I’m out of politics.”

But analysts said as long as Clinton has a campaign committee with millions of dollars…she has weight in the political world…

A former Clinton senior campaign aide told the Daily News that her current job running the State Department would position her perfectly for a White House campaign redux.

“It answers the last question about her: can she run something?” the aide said. “And it’s a huge platform.”

via No political race in sight, but Hillary Clinton’s camp is election-ready.

The tongues are gossiping about this, but if Hillary decides to run in 2016, she should. After all, her approval ratings are sky-high compared to Obama’s, and that places her among the most respected and popular political figures in the country.

I’ll be happy to vote for her (again). And after the Bush-Obama messes, I’m sure everybody else will too!