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Vail Daily column: We’ve seen this movie before

Don Rogers
My View
Don Rogers
Laura Mahaffy/lmahaffy@theunion.com | The Union

Now Hillary Clinton is a sweet grandma ready and remade for her next run at the presidency.

The tough gal who banished her Bubba to the sidelines and lost to that kid, Obama, now “mixes easily” in social settings and has lost the tightly scripted aloofness that took her from irresistible force to loser in 2008. Now it’s tightly scripted friendliness and empathy. (Either way, she’ll take as few questions from pesky reporters as possible, the regular playbook now.)

The most lauded secretary of state with the least tangible achievements again is the putative Democratic candidate for president.



What a weird wacky political world we live in. You’d think the Democrats would run almost anyone else. I mean the Republicans weren’t dumb enough to run McCain or Romney again. Sure Mitt flirted, but wiser heads in the party helped him rethink.

The answer to Hillary, of course, is Jeb.

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As in Bush.

If the Democrats really lack candidates and imagination to the degree they seem to, well, the Republicans can return fire with fire, dynasty for dynasty. So far it’s Bush 2 and Clinton 0. Why not go for the hat trick?

Indeed, why not? Jeb is lauded as the brightest Bush of his generation. OK, maybe that’s not the highest bar. But his zest for wonk apparently is on par with Bill Clinton’s, if not his penchant for going a little long on the stump.

I’d think he should be the GOP dream candidate, politically speaking. Hispanic wife — not Cuban, I’ll add — and he has sway in Florida, a key swing state.

Clinton has New York? Well, any Dem with a pulse and who’s not currently incarcerated has New York. And maybe they don’t even need a pulse to take the state, if you get my drift. Oh, wait. That would be Chicago.

Hillary looks pretty much ordained — about the same as before at this stage of her last campaign for the presidency. Jeb will have to battle through a scrum to get there, although the smart, or at least conventional bet, is with him amid a pile of zealots, nobodies and goofballs. Of course, the Clinton who won the presidency began as a nobody goofball in a large field.

I do believe both candidates are brighter than their namesakes who served in the White House before, each carrying the requisite baggage, too.

The GOP failure to tar Hillary with Benghazi could lead to the best policy and most intelligent debates of any presidential race in at least the television age.

That alone would edify America and stun the thinking world. Voters might have to think about issues instead of frankly silly reasoning to vote for a black man or a woman in all our still-full-blown biases. Or the more heinous reverse of that.

The job is too important to leave to superficialities. Surely the voters have figured this out by now.

OK, maybe not. Maybe the woman card would be evened out by the only Republican means of grabbing more Hispanic votes with a legitimate candidate — the ethnic card by marriage.

Still, if these two prevail to the general election, we’ll have a principled and rational conservative candidate running against a principled and rational liberal candidate.

Yes, I declare this understanding the scandals that partisans are trying to brew with little success so far.

Clinton-Bush. Maybe remakes are not just for movies.

Publisher Don Rogers can be reached at drogers@vaildaily.com and 970-748-2920.


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