CaseyJones
12-31-2013, 12:37 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-hillary-clintons-unlucky-year/2013/12/30/5c93ab06-7180-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html
It is incumbent on me as a columnist to do one of those year-end things — the 10 best of this, the 10 worst of that or, as you will see, who had the worst year in politics. That distinction goes, with some reluctance on my part, to Hillary Rodham Clinton. As has sometimes happened in her life, events got away from her.
A good politician, as Napoleon once said about military men, has to have luck — and this has not been a lucky year for Clinton. If she’s the next Democratic presidential candidate, she will have to follow a Democratic president whose approval ratings — once as high as 76 percent — are now scraping 40. As a former member of Barack Obama’s Cabinet, she has to defend the indefensible, kiss the ugly baby of Obamacare and smile for the cameras. She can do it — no one soldiers on better — but ugly is ugly, and the rollout of Obamacare has been just that.
It is incumbent on me as a columnist to do one of those year-end things — the 10 best of this, the 10 worst of that or, as you will see, who had the worst year in politics. That distinction goes, with some reluctance on my part, to Hillary Rodham Clinton. As has sometimes happened in her life, events got away from her.
A good politician, as Napoleon once said about military men, has to have luck — and this has not been a lucky year for Clinton. If she’s the next Democratic presidential candidate, she will have to follow a Democratic president whose approval ratings — once as high as 76 percent — are now scraping 40. As a former member of Barack Obama’s Cabinet, she has to defend the indefensible, kiss the ugly baby of Obamacare and smile for the cameras. She can do it — no one soldiers on better — but ugly is ugly, and the rollout of Obamacare has been just that.