Republicans must heed the voters to beat Hillary

Washington

After almost a year of the candidates manoeuvring for position in the national and state polls, one aspect of the 2008 presidential election campaign remains as constant as the North Star: Hillary Clinton is the favourite. She is backed by most party regulars, supported by a national machine, advised by the most brilliant politician of her generation and perched on a consistent lead in the national opinion polls. Almost the only thing that could lose her the election is her personality.

Behind their hands, observers compare her to Richard Nixon in 1968. Like Nixon, Clinton has a withdrawn, cool and calculating personality. The comparison does not end there. Both had apparently been forced to surrender hope of high national office previously — Nixon when he lost the California gubernatorial election in 1962, Hillary when she left the White House amid controversy over dodgy pardons and official gifts. Both reinvented themselves. Nixon became ‘the new Nixon’ (that kind of thing was newer then), Hillary a centrist Senate Democrat popular in upstate rural conservative New York as well as in the state’s urban liberal heart. Both succeeded, entering the primary season as favourites.

The comparison is not exact. Nixon emerges from it as the warmer and more vulnerable personality. But then we know more about him as a result of memoirs that cover his near-breakdown over Watergate; Hillary has yet to reveal any similar private anguish (though sorely provoked). Nixon was also the more intelligent of the two — in part because he has a claim to be the most intelligent president of the 20th century, overshadowing Reagan and Kennedy in that regard. But his superiority also reflects Clinton’s intellectual limitations.