Oy. By the time the Bushes and Clintons are finished, they are going to make the Tudors and the Plantagenets look like pikers.
Before these two families release their death grip on the U.S. electoral system, we're going to have to watch Chelsea's granddaughter try to knock off George P.'s grandson, Prescott Walker Bush II. Barack Obama, who once dreamed of being a transformational president, will turn out to be a mere hiccup in history, the interim guy who provided a tepid respite while Hillary and Jeb geared up to go at it.
Elections for president are supposed to make us feel young and excited, as if we're getting a fresh start. That's the way it was with JFK and Obama and, even though he was turning 70 when he got inaugurated, Ronald Reagan.
But, as the Clinton library tardily disgorged 3,546 pages of official papers recently - dredging up memories of a presidency that was eight years of turbulence held steady by a roaring economy and an incompetent opposition, a reign roiled by Hillarycare, Vince Foster, Whitewater, Webb Hubbell, Travelgate, Monica, impeachment, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Marc Rich - the looming prospect of another Clinton-Bush race makes us feel fatigued.
Our meritocratic society seems increasingly nepotistic and dynastic. There was a Bush or a Clinton in the White House and Cabinet for 32 years straight. We're Bill Murray stuck at 6 a.m. in Harold Ramis' comic masterpiece, "Groundhog Day." As Time's Michael Crowley wrote in a Twitter post, "Who else is looking forward to potentially ten more years of obsessing about Hillary Clinton's past, present and future?"
The Clintons don't get defeated. They get postponed.
Just as Hillary clears the Democratic field if she is healthy and runs, a major Romney donor told the Washington Post that "if Jeb Bush is in the race, he clears the field." Jeb acknowledged in Long Island recently - referring to his mom's tart comment that "if we can't find more than two or three families to run for higher office, that's silly" - that "it's an issue for sure." He added, "It's something that, if I run, I would have to overcome that. And so will Hillary, by the way. Let's keep the same standards for everybody."
We've arrived at the brave new world of 21st-century technology where robots are on track to be smarter than humans. Yet, politically, we keep traveling into the past. It won't be long before we'll turn on the TV and see Lanny Davis defending President Clinton (the next one) on some mishegoss or other.
When the Clintons lost to Obama, they simply turned Obama's presidency into their runway. Jim Messina, Obama's 2012 campaign manager, and a passel of other former Obama aides are now helping Hillary. And Bill is out being the campaigner-in-chief, keeping the Clinton allure on display in 2014.
The new cache of Clinton papers is benign - the press seems more enamored of speechwriters' doodles than substance - but just reading through them is draining. There are reams of advice on how to steer health care, which must have filled the briefing binders Hillary famously carried. But did she absorb the lessons, given that health care failed because she refused to be flexible and make the sensible compromises suggested by her husband and allies? She's always on listening tours, but is she hearing? As one White House health care aide advised in the new document dump, "We need to be seen as listening."
Just as in the reminiscences compiled by Hillary's late friend, Diane Blair, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas - some of which were printed in the Washington Free Beacon last month - the new papers reflect how entangled the Clintons' public and private lives were in the White House.
In a 1995 memo, Lisa Caputo, the first lady's press secretary, sees an opportunity for the upcoming re-election campaign by "throwing a big party" for the Clintons' 20th wedding anniversary.
"We could give a wonderful photo spread to People magazine of photos from the party coupled with old photos of their honeymoon and of special moments for them over the past 20 years," Caputo wrote, adding that they could turn it into "a nice mail piece later on."
Both sets of papers are revealing on the never-ending herculean struggle about how to present Hillary to the world, how to turn her shifting hairstyles and personas into one authentic image.
"Be careful to 'be real,'" media adviser Mandy Grunwald wrote to her before the launch of her listening tour at Daniel Patrick Moynihan's farm in upstate New York. "You did this well in the Rather interview where you acknowledged that of course last year was rough. Once you agree with the audience's/reporters' reality like that, it gives you a lot of latitude to then say whatever you want."
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