“I believe in an America always moving toward the future.”
– Hillary Clinton, June 21
WASHINGTON – This was not the most important line in Clinton’s Ohio economic policy speech, only the most amazing. Surely there cannot be a more vacuous, meaningless piece of political rhetoric. Every terrestrial entity from nematode to the United States of America moves forward into the future quite on its own, thank you. Where else is there to go?
To be fair, however, spouting emptiness is tempting when you have the impossible task of running as the de facto incumbent in a ragingly “change” year. Clinton is trapped by circumstance. She’s the status quo candidate, Barack Obama’s heir, running essentially on more of the same when, after two terms and glaring failures both at home and abroad, Americans are hardly clamoring for four more years.
Historically speaking, they almost invariably do not. Which is why for the last 60 years, with only one exception, whenever one party has held the White House for two terms, it’s been unceremoniously turfed out. (The one exception: 1988, when Ronald Reagan was rewarded with a third term to be served by George H.W. Bush.)