Meanwhile, in lighter news…

Hug it out? Not a chance.

Despite widespread predictions that Hillary Clinton and President Obama would kiss and make up when they sat down at a friend’s birthday party on Martha’s Vineyard last week, sources inside the Clinton camp tell me that instead of a hug-a-thon the meeting turned into a tense, awkward freeze-a-thon.

I think that we can all concede something at this point: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama simply do not like each other.  They have never particularly liked each other; their campaigns were mutually nasty as all get-out*; and the two were painfully correct and polite in their dealings during Clinton’s entire term as Secretary of State. If Barack Obama wasn’t President of the United States – and, more importantly, still in control of the DNC – Hillary Clinton wouldn’t give him the time of day.  And if Hillary Clinton wasn’t the best of a bad lot to replace him***, Barack Obama wouldn’t even ask her for it.

Mind, the article goes on to suggest that Bill Clinton has this marvelous plan to somehow detach Hillary Clinton from Barack Obama’s galloping disaster of a Presidency, despite the fact that Secretary of State is one of the two Cabinet positions that is always associated with the President of the United States in the public mind (the other being Secretary of Defense).  This plan might have even worked, too.  If Hillary hadn’t been involved as Secretary of State.  And if foreign affairs since 2009 hadn’t hosted some of the worst absolute PR disasters to befall this Presidency.  And, truthfully: if Bill Clinton was the beneficiary, and not Hillary Clinton.  She is simply not that charismatic as a candidate, and I am surprised that her husband doesn’t recognize it****.

So, anyway: expect a certain amount of dancing.  With the fireworks to start in earnest in 2015, once everybody starts admitting that Barack Obama is a lame duck…

Moe Lane

*Interestingly, it’s been credibly reported that Hillary Clinton and John McCain did like each other, not least because the latter went out of his way to make the former feel welcome in the Senate. And the Clintons are a part of the culture of This Town in a way that Barack Obama never will be**.

**It’s one of the man’s few good points.

***You are in a special political Hell on Earth when your A, and I use the letter with no small amount of amusement, -List of possible replacements has Joe Biden and Martin O’Malley at the top of it.

****I don’t know why Bill Clinton isn’t thinking clearly on that issue, either.  Heck, maybe it’s love.