The View from the Couch: Our Time is Now

I know too much about the Clintons, mostly because I wrote a book about the 1996 presidential campaign. A long book. Last Saturday I was three feet from the senator at the minor league baseball stadium in South Bend, but we didn't exchange words. I went as a spectator, not a reporter. All of American life has turned into airport security; we're in a TSA world. I wasn't allowed to take a one inch pocket knife into the stadium. Out of line, back to the car, return to line. I have thrown too many pocket knives away since 9/11. Here's the one inch version of the Saturday rally: Sen. Clinton looks, not tired, but determined, resigned to her fate, but prepared to be surprised. It's hard to have gone from the long ago front runner to the recently manufactured underdog. It creates a curious sort of whiplash for a national figure. The crowd was almost all white. There wasn't one African-American local (or national) political figure on site. I have only been to two presidential aspirant political rallies in my life; the other involved Hillary's husband. I shook his hand; she I just waved at. OK, why vote for Hillary Clinton? Here's one reason, not a frivolous one. On the legendary Day One, rather than open the football and fire off our rockets, she can fire every political appointee in the Bush II administration. And, and this is the important part, she can replace them all with competent people. This is no small accomplishment. In fact, it was an accomplishment that took her husband a number of years to be accomplished. One thing about not being from Washington, DC, is that you don't know enough people who can do the job. Jimmy Carter brought his small crowd of slow talking Georgians with him and he was one term and out. When Bill Clinton came to Washington, he brought his Arkansas buddies and gals and it got him impeached. The most troubling display was the lack of a decent attorney general nominee. Remember Zoe Baird and the other good looking woman with nanny problems? Which is why the country ended up with Janet Reno and the Branch Davidian fiasco. One problem at the time is that the Clintons, both Yale-trained lawyers, didn't want to put anyone smarter and more powerful than themselves in the position. Bill Clinton wasn't going to name his half brother to the post. And don't forget Travelgate. But, this time around, after eight years of the presidency and Hillary's time as senator, they know whom to appoint. Barack Obama doesn't; look at his advisors now. It's the same small local circle and two "national" figures who have been in the news, Austan Gollsbee and Samantha Power, are the sort a novice has around. It would be the Carter administration redux. So, remember Day One. Let someone get rid of the Bushies who knows who to put in their place. I know it's not much, but it's something.