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Hillary Clinton has a new guru, a corporate communications consultant named John Kao, who preaches a creative process he calls "jamming" or "getting to cool." Of course if cool is her destination, this Clinton has a long journey ahead. The jazz Kao uses as his metaphor to get clients to an improvisational state of "relaxed knowingness" is more often associated with a certain easy-listening senator from Illinois.
Hillary is strong. Hillary is smart. Hillary is not cool. Even the effort to rebrand her as softer, more heartfelt and more in touch with working-class women may prove impossible. That's because after two decades in national life, the brand is set. We know her—and him. Or think we do. The threshold question for voters is less about putting the first woman in the White House than the second Clinton.
The obsession with polls, consultants, money—even positions on the issues—obscures the fundamental dynamic of the Democratic primary race: Restoration vs. Inspiration. A Clinton victory would offer the hope of restoring the 1990s, a fat and relatively happy time in America. The sexual politics of the Clinton years were a luxury afforded by peace and prosperity. Voters might be exhausted by the present and ready to recapture the past with more Clintonism. By this logic, the worse President Bush does, the better the Clintons look.
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Conversely, for all of Bill Clinton's popularity, the public could end up tired of the whole bunch of 'em and eager for the shock of the new with Barack Obama, John Edwards (who emphasizes his freshness by all but denying he ever served in the Senate or ran for vice president) or someone else. When Obama refers seven or eight times in his stump speech to "turning the page," he's talking about moving forward to the next chapter, not re-reading the last one. It works.
Themes of dynasty and restoration have long provoked ambivalent feelings among Americans. George Washington, appalled by the idea of monarchy, made a revolutionary point by leaving office on his own accord after eight years. But soon the Adams family produced father-and-son presidents, and the Roosevelts, though only fifth cousins, dominated the presidency for two decades in the first half of the 20th century. After FDR, antiroyalists amended the Constitution to prevent presidents from serving more than two terms. But dynastic dreams endured. If he had not been assassinated in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy may well have been the first sibling president; Camelot did not die until Ted Kennedy's loss in the primaries in 1980.
In the 27 years since, each presidential election has featured a Bush or a Clinton on the ticket. Were Hillary to serve two terms and Jeb Bush to return to politics (even now, he is arguably the most popular Republican in the country) and serve eight years, a two-family dominance of American democracy would have lasted uninterrupted for more than four decades. At a minimum, Hillary's election would mean BushClintonBushClinton, a line I'm increasingly hearing from voters in a pejorative context.
But family restoration (and vindication) remains a powerful narrative in most societies. In fact, family—even a dysfunctional family—often trumps gender, as the election of wives and daughters as heads of state in highly patriarchal countries like India, Pakistan, Argentina, Indonesia and the Philippines attests.
Unsure of the applicability of that thinking in the United States, Clinton aides are leery of dynastic or restorationist appeals. While they don't want to make Al Gore's mistake and underplay the achievements of the Clinton presidency, they know that most elections here are only secondarily about the past and are primarily fights about competing visions of the future. So to make her look fresh, they are emphasizing her credentials as a caring woman. This is risky. There is little or no indication in state and local elections that women vote disproportionately for women. And men sometimes vote disproportionately against them. In fact, Rahm Emanuel fears that several female Democratic candidates lost close House races in 2006 because of hidden gender bias.
A presidential primary could be different, in part because Hillary is tough, experienced and may evoke a pride among women voters that no congressional candidate could. Or maybe she won't. The impact of gender is as much of a wild card for Clinton as our dynastic ambivalence, which is why the analysts who continue to say that she is a sure winner or sure loser for the nomination may be jamming, but they're also blowing smoke.
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