‘She’s not sure whether she is running for president. But she is certain that the time is right for a woman to try. Maybe Hillary Clinton thinks that Nancy Pelosi should be the Democratic candidate. OK, Hillary is not a candid person. This time–actually, the day that I write–she was not candid on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” Yesterday, it was on another platform. Tomorrow, she won’t be candid on still another one. So, what else is new? We’ve accommodated to her trying to figure all the angles. Hillary has been scheming for the presidency since the day her husband entered the White House, which is why she didn’t much take to Al Gore. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she conspired with James Baker–or is that just me?
‘One of the problems about figuring all the angles is that you can’t. And, believe me, Hillary tried. She has had an apparatus in place for just that chore for years. Not long enough ago to include Harold Ickes’s father, the other Harold Ickes, who schemed for FDR. But this Harold Ickes (who ran Eugene McCarthy’s campaign in New York), and Mandy Grunwald and John Podesta and Mark Penn and Tony Podesta and Susan Thomases, unless any of these have been unceremoniously pushed off the ship, much like Marian Wright Edelman–Hillary’s closest sister and ideological soulmate–was pushed, never to be let on board again. In its youth, the team was a band of idealists, self-styled. Now it’s made up of hardened cynics, no pretense otherwise. But the same folk.’
