Print
Email
Share
Hillary Clinton has a pretty good life. Sure, she's not president, but neither are most people. What she is is New York Senator for Life, heir to an illustrious tradition that runs from Aaron Burr to Robert Wagner to Daniel Patrick Moynihan. She's already just about the most powerful person in the senate, and if she wants to formalize that status and become majority leader one of these years, she has an excellent chance. Who knows: She might even make it back to the White House. After all, Barack Obama's meteoric rise is the exception: Most politicians-Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I-need to lose a presidential bid or two before they finally win. Hillary still has time. In eight years, she'll be younger than Reagan was when he entered the White House, and younger than McCain is now. (Something that can't be said for, say, Joe Biden).
Solving the Kashmir crisis might win you the Nobel Prize. But it won't win many votes in Portsmouth.
All of which raises a question: Why on earth would she want to be secretary of state? First of all, the job is an awful launching pad for the White House. It's true: long-serving senators don't have a great track record of winning the presidency, but they're practically shoo-ins compared to secretaries of state. The last former secretary of state to even seek the presidency was Alexander Haig in 1988, and his candidacy was a joke. To find a former secretary of state who actually won you have to go back 150 years, to James Buchanan. There are reasons for this. The job of secretary of state offers little opportunity to till the fields of American politics: to go to Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners in Sioux City or slip a little campaign money to the guy running for state senate in New Hampshire. It forces you to turn your energies away from domestic issues, which is what Americans usually vote on, and towards international questions that many find exotic and obscure. Solving the Kashmir crisis might win you the Nobel Prize. But it won't win many votes in Portsmouth.