John Rapley - Foreign Focus TO GREAT fanfare in the United States of America, New York's junior senator and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton launched her memoirs this week. As a business venture, it may succeed. Only one in twenty Americans have said they are eager to read the book, but if even half of those end up buying it, the publisher will recoup the massive advance it paid to Mrs. Clinton.
Yet it is as a political venture that the book launch has captivated America. Notwithstanding Mrs. Clinton's denials, the book and its accompanying publicity campaign are widely seen as the first salvo in what will be her long campaign to re-enter the White House.
PRESIDENTIAL DREAMS
Having been elected to the Senate only three years ago, Mrs. Clinton is understandably postponing her presidential dreams past the 2004 election. However, within the Democratic party, she is widely touted as the run-away favourite for the 2008 nomination (assuming the eventual Democratic nominee loses next year's election). Many people believed that she had to close the book on her husband's presidential years, and most particularly on its scandals, in order to launch her own ambitions with a clean slate.
Reviews of the book and media commentary on the television appearances suggest that while the book makes for a reasonably good read, it offers little that is new. In other words, little has been done to alter the opinions Americans hold of Mrs. Clinton. Both those who adore her and those who despise her (as well as her husband, since with the Clintons it is usually a package deal) will alike find their opinions confirmed.
This, I suspect, will not help her. Along with her husband, Mrs. Clinton has a huge following in the Democratic Party. The couple are its most effective fund-raisers, and exert a great deal of influence over candidate-selection and the direction of policy. If Mrs. Clinton decides to run for the 2008 nomination, it will be hard for anyone to stop her.
Yet this degree of enthusiasm is not matched in the wider society. Mrs. Clinton suffers from a high percentage of "negatives", which is to speak of her approval ratings. Those who love her are offset by a group, roughly double their numbers, who dislike her with equal intensity. Overall, slightly more Americans have an unfavourable than favourable opinion of her.
Her supporters say not to worry, that as she did in her campaign for New York's vacant seat in the Senate, she will win people over with her hard work and commitment. No doubt she will. Yet as political pundits constantly remind us, New York is not America. Mrs. Clinton faced a much less sceptical audience in her adopted state than she will in Florida or Texas.
Besides, she also suffers from the very asset which has propelled her to the upper ranks of the Democratic Party: her celebrity-status. There is scarcely an American who does not have an opinion of Hillary Clinton, and few Americans are better known than her. Moreover, the long-term trend in her approval ratings indicates that as Americans have got to know her better, their opinion of her has worsened.
Thus, my sense was that this book launch was her last chance to have a sympathetic media spotlight all to herself, in which she could soften the attitudes of her critics. In particular, I believed, she needed to make her peace with the family-values crowd who found her husband's behaviour most galling.
REPUBLICANS' SECRET WEAPON
There was little of this. Instead, Mrs. Clinton essentially stuck to her guns, indicting her husband but blaming his woes on his political opponents. This, I suspect, leaves the Clintons in the role they currently play, namely, the Republicans' secret weapon. They galvanise the Republican right and demobilise the Democratic left (which has been demoralised by their party's move to the right in the Clintonian period).
Hillary Clinton now overshadows the Democratic presidential campaign, and it is likely the 2004 nominee will be what might be called a Clinton Democrat. This will divide the party and alienate some of its core voters, quite possibly leaving George W. Bush in the White House.
Hillary Clinton may then take up the nomination in 2008, with the same effect. I reckon that this means the Republicans have a good chance of holding the White House until at least 2012.
John Rapley is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
