Anonymous Thinks the Hillary Campaign Would Be a Disaster

Joe Klein, who wrote, under the penname "Anonymous", the book Primary Colors about the 1992 Clinton campaign, has some thoughts in Time Magazine about a future Hillary campaign:

I also think that a Clinton presidential candidacy in 2008 would be a disaster on many levels.

It would doubtless be a circus, a revisitation of the carnival ugliness that infested public life in the 1990s. Already there are blogs, websites and fund-raising campaigns dedicated to denigrating her. According to the New York Observer last week, these sites aren't getting much traffic—yet. But they will. I remember several conversations with Senator Clinton after her health-care plan was killed 10 years ago, and she was clearly pained—nonplussed by the quality of anger, the sheer hatred, directed against her. That experience would be a walk in the park compared to the vitriol if she ran for President.

He's got that absolutely right. He goes on to talk a little about the man who would be the First Bubba:

And then there is her husband, a one-man supermarket tabloid. A few weeks ago, the New York Post ran a photo of Bill Clinton leaving a local restaurant with an attractive woman, and the political-elite gossip hounds went berserk. Prominent Democrats—friends of the Clintons—were wringing their hands. "Do we really want to go through all that again?" one asked me. I don't know—should the sins of the husband be visited upon the wife? Absent any evidence, the former President should be considered guilty until proved really guilty. But there is another problem: What role would the big guy play in a Hillary Clinton Administration? Would he reform health care? Does anyone believe that a man with such a huge personality would have a less active role in her Administration than she had in his?

"You mean she can't run just because her husband was President?" a Hillary supporter yelled at me. "That is the most incredibly sexist thing I've ever heard." Yes and no. My guess is that Hillary Clinton would roll into Iowa with an incredible, Howard Dean-like head of steam in January 2008, and then the folks—yes, even the Democratic base—would give her a very close look and conclude that a Hillary presidency would be slightly dodgy. The Clinton line in 1992 was, Buy one, get one free. We've already had that co-presidency—for its full, constitutional eight years. What's more, I suspect there would be innate and appropriate populist resistance to this slouch toward monarchial democracy. There is something fundamentally un-American—and very European—about the Clintons and the Bushes trading the office every eight years, with stale, familiar corps of retainers, supporters and enemies. Bill Clinton was a good President. Hillary Clinton is a good Senator. But enough already. (And that goes for you too, Jeb.)

Joe's no conservative. He's love nothing more than to see the right wing completely marginalized. But at least he's realistic about the outcome of a Hillary candidacy.