If the objective of presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is now and always has been to elect a woman president — herself — then actual governance along the way may have been approached as an afterthought. That would explain Benghazi, the disaster of the Arab Spring, the tenacious email controversy and the private server, the endless family and professional scandals, the fateful invasion of Libya which has caused an advance of refugees to Europe — with members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) reportedly among them — and threatens now the very existence of the European Union, her fateful Senate vote to support the Iraq invasion, and her opposition to the Iraq surge for political reasons. All of these collectively call to question her judgment and moral character.
Is this the price to pay when the singular goal is the White House?
But there is talk today of bringing in Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) as Clinton’s vice president running mate. I can’t think of a better choice. Warren stands alone. She came to where she is today by hard work, self-determination and the rugged individualism that comes with a hardscrabble heartland upbringing.
{mosads}Most importantly, does she pass the NASCAR test? Would her presence in a campaign stop at a NASCAR race seem forced and condescending? Not for Oklahoma-born and-reared Warren. Nor would it Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.). Both speak to the country as they do the city. Somehow, Sanders and Warren belong together and only a twist of fate has kept them apart.
The Democratic Party today, and the Republican Party as well, are both fatefully locked in with past generations that won’t let go. With the emergence of the anti-politics of presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, the Republicans may actually have the advantage. They first have broken away from the old families, even if they have no idea where they are going next. But individual lives are like that as well.
The Democrats, on the other hand, do seem to know where they are going. Warren first held the candle to lead the way and Sanders followed, pulled into the mainstream by surprising and sudden overwhelming support from rising generations when he entered the race for the Democratic nomination. They like Warren as well. But while the Republicans have jettisoned the Bushes, the Democrats still haven’t just yet gotten rid of the old family that anchors them to the wrong century.
The vitality, energy, intelligence and professionalism that Warren brings to tasks seems almost unprecedented in today’s Senate.
“Who’s afraid of Elizabeth Warren?” read the cover of TIME magazine when she burst onto the political scene in 2015: “She’s hounding Obama, haunting Hillary, and paving the way for Bernie Sanders. How she’ll shape the 2016 race,” read the tagline.
Had she come to public view a little earlier and been able to enter into the presidential race, she may well have been at the head of the ticket and able to form and fulfill the rising generation’s yearnings.
Until Sanders seemed to slip under the sea after the California primary, Warren was cited as a possible match for Sanders if he could take the nomination, and as Camille Paglia called it, a Vice President Joe Biden/Warren matchup would likely occur in the event of a hostile takeover at the convention. Apparently the seas have quieted. But then in this unprecedented season of strange days, anything could happen. If an FBI indictment suddenly befalls Clinton in the email server mischief, we could well be back again to the beginning. If indeed an indictment suddenly appears, the Clinton era could suddenly collapse overnight.
My own thought has been if Biden, then Secretary of State John Kerry. President Obama seems to like his vice president and a Biden presidency would be the appropriate denouement to the immensely successful Obama presidency, as George H.W. Bush’s single term was the appropriate denouement to the immensely successful presidency of Ronald Reagan. But Kerry is prepared to be president. He postures for it in his speeches. He has always wanted to be president and he ran a solid campaign for president in 2004. If Biden was sent in, Kerry would suddenly appear as well.
But Kerry, like Clinton, like Biden, all belong to the past; they are the internal furnishings of the “Kennedy half-century” as commentator and analyst Larry Sabato has so correctly labeled it. But key to the times, key to both parties today, is time: It is time to leave the past behind and that should be the first order of politics for both parties. Forget Reagan. Forget the Bushes. Forget Kennedy, Kerry, Biden and the Clintons. The world began again on 9/11. The century must be visualized as rising from that moment in 2001, for that is how history will remember us.
Successfully selling Hillary Clinton to a rising generation is not going to happen. A Fox News poll this past week has independents supporting Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson 23 percent to Clinton’s 22 percent. Younger voters are beginning to turn to Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, and his enormously interesting running mate, William Weld, possibly the most popular Republican governor in Massachusett history. Weld says he offers a “Libertarian alternative” and calls himself and Johnson “classical Jeffersonian liberals”” The phrase speaks volumes to the Hamiltonian liberals of the Democratic Party and Hamiltonian conservatives of the Republican Party.
For any Republican inexplicably taken by Trump’s recent suggestion, “You gotta be cool,” heed instead the dictum of millennial avatar Kurt Cobain, “I’d rather be dead than cool.” There’s the unprecedented endorsement from Krist Novoselic, bandmate of Cobain in Nirvana, who declares that “this election is like Nirvana in 1991. The Johnson/Weld ticket can capture imaginations to bolt to the top.” They are not be be ruled out, as the under-30-and-over crowd looks elsewhere now that Sanders is suddenly out of the running.
Clinton and Trump have the highest disapproval ratings of any candidates in modern times.
“These are people who don’t just like or dislike the candidates, they really like or dislike them,” writes Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight. “No past candidate comes close to Clinton, and especially Trump, in terms of engendering strong dislike a little more than six months before the election.”
We, the people, have brought it to this; brought ourselves to this end of days with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump our only options for America’s future. The problem may be deep, the cure long and painful. Possibly we have become a horde mesmerized by the medium, as Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously predicted more than 50 years ago. Maybe we have become consumers rather than citizens, dilettante “apprentices” instead of self-reliant masters. But the products offered have been faulty as well.
The important thing now is to start again at the beginning. Democrats can do so with Elizabeth Warren. Bernie Sanders can help.
Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.