Hillary: The accidental president?
By: Amanda Carpenter | October 26, 2016
In a normal election, Hillary Clinton's dismal honest and trustworthiness poll numbers, the parade of ethics scandals, and lack of natural charisma would have sunk her presidential candidacy.
She, however, was fortunate enough to run against Donald Trump, who by all measures is running a campaign severely lacking in message, policy, and operations, and appears well on her path to win the White House.
So, what happens next? How does a president govern when she has no significant mandate? Clinton could find herself in a very odd predicament where she wins the election handily, yet, has no deep form of support from the American people.
She could be our first accidental president.
To be sure, her career is decades in the making, and many experienced operatives have spent their lifetimes working toward this ultimate goal, but due to the wild nature of her opponent, she has also done things very untraditionally.
Press conferences? What are those? Clinton has been criticized far and wide for not being accessible enough to the press and the public. As Trump dominated media airwaves and took pressure off her to appear for interviews, she became even more withdrawn.
A steady stream of stories that could have potentially sunk any other presidential candidate — ranging from Obamacare premium increases, new details about the off-the-books email server she used for official work, to revelations about secretive statements she’s made about various policy positions — never broke through the din created by Trump day-to-day.
[ This is why manipulating Trump into running was Bill Clinton's most masterful political act. I think Trump was manipulated, not recruited. ]
She and her surrogates have largely campaigned against Trump, rather than for Clinton’s platform. Sure, Clinton can tick list endless policy proposals, and yes, they are all available on her website for the wonks who want to look. But those have not been the primary focus of her candidacy.
Beating Trump has been the Democrats’ cause. Clinton’s candidacy is sort of an afterthought to that, it seems.
So, what will happen once Trump is gone, and Clinton has no one to position herself against? Almost anyone can seem angelic standing next to Trump, but once the villain is gone, it will be much harder for Clinton to come off as a hero.
She, alone, will have to deal with everything she rarely had to confront directly in the election.
And, the Republicans who remain standing — there will be plenty — after the election will be able to use the material to hobble Clinton as president that Trump couldn’t use to stop her from becoming president.
Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, which has spent decades investigating the Clintons, told NBC News that “impeachment is something that’s relevant.”
While any form of pre-emptive impeachment is far-fetched, Fitton’s comments do predict something very likely: The unstable political circumstances that lead to her presidency will make her presidency quite unstable, too.
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/10/hillary-the-accidental-president |
