Read The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era" Online

Authors: Hugh Hewitt

Tags: #Political Science / American Government / Executive Branch, #Political Science / Political Process / Campaigns & Elections

The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era" (7 page)

BOOK: The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era"
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We are in revolutionary times when social media can be manipulated to first encourage and then bless any innovation, especially one as popular as “daughter power” meets the ultimate Tiger Mom. No, the problem is not the plausibility of Chelsea as senator and beyond, but the reliability of your first selection in keeping the commitment made, one three-on-one meeting between yourself, Bill, Chelsea and the nominee that will have to be conducted in absolute secrecy, recorded only by you, and reduced to writing, and sequestered away in a vault with keys available only to the family. An interesting meeting that will be. You and Bill can choreograph it, of course. Not even heavy lifting. But, oh, to watch it.)

You have three choices really, and only one upon close examination.

On the surface, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is qualified to be president, and the old woman/young woman ticket is the only way to generate real energy for your candidacy among anyone other
than your purple-hat gang dying to see one of the original feminist cadre be first to close the door on an all-girls meeting with the president. But the problem is she will want to be president and not be replaced down the road by Chelsea. She would refuse the conditioned nomination. She might even go rogue. She has ambition too, and smarts, and she doesn’t need you to catapult past obstacles. Too untrustworthy. She could leave the meeting and announce your demand. She really could. She can afford to play a longer game for the biggest prize. No, you need someone who can be relied upon to agree to the deal and keep it secret should you collapse at your desk, even as American constitutionalism collapses around you.

There is young Julian Castro, and clearly Obama was pointing you there when he named the former mayor of San Antonio to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The nerve. (But you do have to consider the opportunity he created for you, and put aside the spite that, at least for a time, people would say you owed your ticket to his careful management of the succession via the elevation and credentialing of a Latino who otherwise didn’t exist in 2013 as a ticket energizer in 2016.)

But what deals has Obama struck with Castro, deals as secret as the one you propose to offer your nominee? Think on that a long time. Press him hard, again and again in the interview process. Put him under oath. Perhaps even flutter him. Fluttering a potential nominee has never been done. But tell them it is routinely done, but has been kept secret to protect the reputations of Biden and Ryan, and has been required ever since Palin was the vice presidential nominee. She did not disclose her daughter’s pregnancy in McCain’s slapdash circus. How will your potential running mates know? They can refuse and go rogue, but eyebrows will go up if they decline, not because you asked.

Even if there is no secret deal, the problem with Castro is he is a lightweight and we all know it: the mayor of San Antonio plus three years at HUD. There is a Palin factor here. No crises. No achievements. No hard interviews. Just all sparkle. He appears hardly curious at all
and he has wasted his time at HUD thus far, and anyone who has struggled to buy or refinance a home in the past few years can be persuaded to blame him in the general election. Plus there is that name, “Castro.” Say goodbye to Florida, no matter how many Univision and Telemundo ads you run that say “Not that Castro.” And besides, the GOP is poised to nominate Bush, Walker, Rubio or Cruz though some of the second tier could make the jump as circumstances swirl—but every plausible GOP nominee—will have a short list of three potential Veeps: Romney, Rubio or Cruz. Romney would be the safest choice for the young senators should they win the ring, or underfunded dark horses. In the end, Bush or Walker will pick Rubio or Cruz. Your selecting a Latino VP will be cancelled out by a Latino GOP presidential nominee or a number two who is a Latino. Your ties to Latino voters will have to be forged by the specific promises you make on the campaign trail, bound up with the fence (with the very wide gate), and worked over and over again by the SEIU with the promise of a “livable minimum wage.”

No—your only real choice for Veep is my Harvard classmate, former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. To the question: “Will he stay bought?” We have to answer: “Yes.” He will be 60 when he enters the Observatory. He will live the career capper. He can make a fortune for two years at 64 or 68 when he exits en route to becoming president of Harvard (and yes, put that on the table when you talk). It is easy to arrange. It can be all but formalized by your pal Drew Gilpin Faust before you begin the serious campaigning and vetting. His backstory is tricky, but can be managed to great acclaim when generally known. He is a winner. And he will stay bought. Plus he brings Mephistopheles himself, Axelrod, back to the team and in full genius mode, a Gatling gun of phrasing and himself eager to settle scores with Valerie.

Should you topple over and Vice President Patrick suddenly becomes President Patrick, he will name Chelsea immediately if your demise comes late enough to have gotten her to the Senate. The only risk will be if you exit before Breyer steps down to clear the way for a Gillibrand appointment, and Chelsea’s succession. But there is risk in
every plan. More StairMaster please if you are going to worry about death or disability in year one. Besides, Bill can go all Edith Wilson if need be, though a full
Weekend at Bernie’s
is beyond even his considerable talents at deception. No 25th Amendment maneuvers for your number 2, not with Bill having your back and Rahm looming behind the Chief of Staff’s desk again, free of the anchor that was Valerie Jarrett driving him to distraction every day.

Does Deval take the deal? What else can he do? Otherwise he is done. He may think Harvard is coming his way, but you can disabuse him of that. Harvard won’t go where a president with all the government’s contracts won’t allow it to go. And if Deval says no, there goes the office in Harvard Hall, which is his North Star. He can’t be the first black president. But he can be the world’s greatest university’s first black president. Use the leverage and get the deal.

And get one good cut in on Obama at the same time. His rival, elevated. All of President Obama’s unspoken insecurities unloosed at once: That he’s David Axelrod’s favorite client, the genuinely deeply talented one, the one who really came from nothing. A real lawyer, like Michelle, one who actually practiced law and could find a courtroom. A genuine executive and genuine achiever, a real Harvard man—from the College not a grad school—and one who will reopen all of the president’s deepest insecurities about having been an affirmative action admit at Occidental, a “transfer” to Columbia and a reach even for HLS at the height of its “outreach,” the affirmative action selection for “president” of the law review, and all of the worries about his real grades and “achievements” exposed as fodder for future biographers of the worst president ever. On the surface it will be all smiles and backslaps, but oh the dagger will be sharp. Vice President Patrick will also of course energize the African-American vote to compensate for the otherwise inevitable fall off that will come with the retirement of Barack Obama. The announcement will enrage the president, though of course he will have to keep a pyramid’s silence—forever. Wonderful that. Payback is hell.

Obama set out to transform America. He never knew he was transforming it into a Clinton dynasty that will last and last. How long can Chelsea go? As long as she wants, of course, within the forms, until a grandchild—whichever one makes sense—all thanks to that amendment and the platform you built around it. An America without a Clinton to lead it? Unthinkable by 2030, because of that new amendment. To which we turn now.

CHAPTER 7

“Let the People Decide”:
PART 1

The Secondary Plank That Is the Centerpiece

All great campaigns require a slogan, and the slogan needs a platform on which to rest.

“Hope and change” was as vacuous as they come. But the panic of 2008 was all that Obama really needed, and Sandy, Candy and ORCA’s collapse on Election Day gave him 2012. Slogans didn’t really matter. Everyone knew he was a “first,” and everyone knows you will be as well.

But your two amendments—abolishing the Electoral College and repealing the 22nd Amendment—will need a unifying elevator pitch, and the obvious will serve: “Let the People Decide.”

The appeal of demolishing the College is self-evident, and I deal with it in the next chapter. But repealing the 22nd is tricky, because it is so self-serving, and thus you will have to take it on transparently, and acknowledge as much. Indeed, the key to winning is to ride your ambitions like a war horse of old. The 22nd is straightforward and so too will be its repeal:

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.

The “Wikipedia history” of the 22nd (as of the writing of this book) is adequate to the stump:

Historians point to George Washington’s decision not to seek a third term as evidence that the founders saw a two-term limit as a bulwark against a monarchy, although his Farewell Address suggests that he was not seeking re-election because of his age. Thomas Jefferson also contributed to the convention of a two-term limit when he wrote in 1807, “If some termination to the services of the chief Magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution, or supplied by practice, his office, nominally four years, will in fact become for life.” Jefferson’s immediate successors, James Madison and James Monroe, adhered to the two-term principle as well. In a new political atmosphere several years later, Andrew Jackson continued the precedent.
Prior to Franklin D. Roosevelt, few Presidents attempted to serve for more than two terms. Ulysses S. Grant sought a third term in 1880 after serving from 1869 to 1877, but narrowly lost his party’s nomination to James Garfield. Grover Cleveland tried to serve a third term (and second consecutive term) in 1896, but did not have enough support in the wake of the Panic of 1893. Cleveland lost support to the Silverites led by William Jennings Bryan, and declined to head the Gold Democrat ticket, though he did endorse the Gold Democrats. Theodore Roosevelt succeeded to the presidency upon William McKinley’s assassination and was himself elected in 1904 to a full term, serving from 1901 to 1909. He sought to be elected to a (non-consecutive) term in 1912 but lost to Woodrow Wilson. Wilson himself tried to get a third term in 1920 by deadlocking the convention. Wilson deliberately blocked the nomination of his Secretary of the Treasury and son-in-law, William Gibbs McAdoo. However, Wilson was too unpopular even within his own party at the time, and James M. Cox was nominated. In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the only president to be elected to a third term; supporters cited the war in Europe as a reason for breaking with precedent.
In the 1944 election, during World War II, Roosevelt won a fourth term but suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died in office the following year. Thus, Franklin Roosevelt was the only President to have served more than two terms. Near the end of the 1944 campaign, Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York, announced support of an amendment that would limit future presidents to two terms. According to Dewey, “Four terms, or sixteen years, is the most dangerous threat to our freedom ever proposed.”
The Republican-controlled 80th Congress approved a 22nd Amendment in March 1947; it was signed by Speaker of the House Joseph W. Martin and acting President pro tempore of the Senate William F. Knowland. Nearly four years later, in February 1951, enough states ratified the amendment for its adoption. While excluded from the amendment’s restrictions, then-President Harry S. Truman ultimately decided not to seek another term in 1952.

Not so simple as it has been presented for years, eh? Sure, FDR was the only man to succeed in his ambitions, but others wanted to. And Jefferson was a nut about some things. The simple truth is that FDR provoked the 22nd Amendment, and his death cleared the way for it. The Framers knew what they were doing. A term limit limits the power of the presidency in the second term, and that cripples the presidency from almost the moment the second term begins and almost absolutely in years seven and eight of a two-termer. The president can only act constitutionally if he has both the House and Senate under the control of his own party with him and then only haltingly. President Obama’s adventures in extra-constitutional governance have hurt you every
day and will tarnish his already sorry reputation, but he was a desperate lame duck with nothing to show for all his hope and change so he strained and strained to find anything, to his ultimate derision by historians and to your advantage in framing the argument for change. No president with the prospect of a third term needs to act as unconstitutionally as President Obama has as a lame duck.

You will be proposing to end that second-term “lame duck” status, and you will be wonderfully able to harness the Obama supporters to their man’s potential return as well as run against Bush again, citing how your husband would have far exceeded the miserable Gore campaign in 2000, and how he would have anticipated and prevented al Qaeda’s attacks, avoided Florida 2000 with a clear cut win, and avoided the horrors of the Roberts Court’s assault on campaign finance reform.

BOOK: The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era"
4.3Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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