Hillary Clinton’s unlucky year
By Richard Cohen, WashPost, Published: December 30
It is incumbent on me as a columnist to do one of those year-end things — the 10 best of this, the 10 worst of that or, as you will see, who had the worst year in politics. That distinction goes, with some reluctance on my part, to Hillary Rodham Clinton. As has sometimes happened in her life, events got away from her.
A good politician, as Napoleon once said about military men, has to have luck — and this has not been a lucky year for Clinton. If she’s the next Democratic presidential candidate, she will have to follow a Democratic president whose approval ratings — once as high as 76 percent — are now scraping 40. As a former member of Barack Obama’s Cabinet, she has to defend the indefensible, kiss the ugly baby of Obamacare and smile for the cameras. She can do it — no one soldiers on better — but ugly is ugly, and the rollout of Obamacare has been just that.
Maybe time will prove Obamacare a success, which I suspect will be the case. But until that distant day, it will remain emblematic of governmental overreach and (supposedly arrogant) liberalism run amok. The catastrophic rollout has been followed by even more bad news — higher-than-expected premiums, lower-than-expected coverage or, worse, no coverage at all.
Things will get better, especially if more young people sign up, but the program has left an indelible impression of ineptitude and dishonesty. In short, it has become a vindication of everything conservatives say of liberal programs. Even liberals are wondering if the government can make such an extensive contraption work, and at a reasonable cost.
(More here.)
It is incumbent on me as a columnist to do one of those year-end things — the 10 best of this, the 10 worst of that or, as you will see, who had the worst year in politics. That distinction goes, with some reluctance on my part, to Hillary Rodham Clinton. As has sometimes happened in her life, events got away from her.
A good politician, as Napoleon once said about military men, has to have luck — and this has not been a lucky year for Clinton. If she’s the next Democratic presidential candidate, she will have to follow a Democratic president whose approval ratings — once as high as 76 percent — are now scraping 40. As a former member of Barack Obama’s Cabinet, she has to defend the indefensible, kiss the ugly baby of Obamacare and smile for the cameras. She can do it — no one soldiers on better — but ugly is ugly, and the rollout of Obamacare has been just that.
Maybe time will prove Obamacare a success, which I suspect will be the case. But until that distant day, it will remain emblematic of governmental overreach and (supposedly arrogant) liberalism run amok. The catastrophic rollout has been followed by even more bad news — higher-than-expected premiums, lower-than-expected coverage or, worse, no coverage at all.
Things will get better, especially if more young people sign up, but the program has left an indelible impression of ineptitude and dishonesty. In short, it has become a vindication of everything conservatives say of liberal programs. Even liberals are wondering if the government can make such an extensive contraption work, and at a reasonable cost.
(More here.)
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