The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era" (31 page)

CT:
Well, I mean, you know, I’d like to think it was putting some more pieces together. I mean, look, I think that there was, there has been, I think there is more attempts at assuming conspiracy, and I think it was not a conspiracy. I think there were just mistakes made in the heat of the moment.

HH: Oh, I agree with that. I think it shows that she broke. They sent her home at 1:00, according to Jon Allen, and I think that the 3:00 AM phone call ad from 2008, which you talk about in
The Stranger
, is going to come back around to the Secretary of State when she runs for president, if she runs. Do you think she’s going?

CT:
I can’t imagine she doesn’t. I, you know, look, I think she is really, though, in a weird box, because she’s getting advice that says if you’re going to run, run early, because you need to put up an infrastructure, because frankly, you know, the Republicans are ready to go. They want to, there is going to be a concerted effort to not let her have a free ride. If she’s not going to have a competitive primary, and if Republicans are going to be busy beating each other up in a primary, somebody’s going to focus their fire on her. And that’s certainly, I think the RNC has made it clear that that’s what they view their job in 2015.

HH: Has the White House’s political operation, which you detail so well, polling, polling, polling, has that disbanded now? Or is being shifted over to Team Hillary?

CT:
There’s not, I mean, I was just going to say if they have a political operation, it’s not a very thorough one anymore. I mean, basically, once Plouffe left, so went the political operation, for what it’s worth.

CHAPTER 39

Interview with
The New Yorker
’s Ryan Lizza, November 11, 2014

HH: I begin today with Ryan Lizza. Ryan is the chief Washington correspondent for
The New Yorker
, the cover of which is this rampaging elephant. I love the cover. But Ryan’s article is actually about Hillary Clinton and her inevitability problem. Ryan Lizza, welcome to the
Hugh Hewitt Show
.

RL:
Hey, thanks for having me. I thought you’d like that cover.

HH: I love that cover. In fact, I think I’m going to frame that cover. But I loved your article as well, because if Hillary Clinton has an inevitability problem, the Republicans have got a shot at winning the White House.

RL:
I think so. Now you know, I’m sure the people in the Hillary camp would say well, we’d rather have the inevitability problem than not have it, right? But yeah, I’d say look, it’s really hard. Republicans have a shot to win this in 2016. It’s hard to win a third term in politics. We all know that, and you know, you look at all these forecasting models that look at the fundamentals, and they always, you know, they give a few points off for the party that’s been, if you’ve been in power for two terms. Historically, it’s hard to pull a three-peat off, right?

HH: Now your piece, Ryan Lizza, begins by talking about Hillary being next to Jeanne Shaheen, one of the few Democratic victories on November the 4th. But Hillary’s record of delivering the goods was not very good in 2014. She was in Kentucky and [Bill was in] Arkansas on the last weekend campaigning for Alison Lundergan Grimes, and Mark Pryor, respectively. The former lost by 15 points, the latter by 18 points. And that’s Hillary’s second home state. [Bill Clinton in fact campaigned for Pryor in Arkansas three times in the last month of the campaign.]

RL:
Well look, let’s be forthright about this. No Democratic surrogate was good at helping any other Democrat anywhere in the country, right? I mean, you can’t really point to anyone who was out on the stump and made a difference for Democrats. So you know, Martin O’Malley, one of the people I focus on, he’s campaigned all over the country, and he didn’t win any races, either. But you know, the one that I happened to go to, the one event that I happened to go to in New Hampshire is where you know, the two statewide Democrats did win, right? So Maggie Hassan, the governor, she got reelected, and Jeanne Shaheen, the Senator, beat Scott Brown, one of the few bright spots in the whole country. So I think you know, if you’re Clinton, you probably take a little bit of solace from that, because obviously, New Hampshire’s always been good to the Clintons. And the two female candidates won there that she stumped for. But you’re right. There was no magic in the Clinton’s surrogacy this campaign.

HH: More than no magic. Going to Arkansas, and Mark Pryor’s a storied name down there.

RL:
Yup.

HH: He’s a legacy candidate, Tom Cotton, a freshman Republican Congressman, and yes, a war hero and a Harvard Law, Harvard undergraduate. But Hillary manages to, what she’d go? Did she drive Pryor down? 18 points is the worst loss.

RL:
You know, you probably disagree with me on this, but Hugh, I basically see the Senate races, I think the gubernatorial elections are much, much, different story on the gubernatorial side. But the Senate races, I basically see as a hardening of the red and blue divide, with the obviously important exceptions of Iowa and Colorado, and you know, arguably North Carolina. Basically at the federal level, we are turning into two countries, right? And the Senate is looking a lot more like the presidential divide. And it’ll bounce back depending on who’s up every two years. It’ll bounce back and forth, excuse me.

HH: Does Hillary have a glass jaw?

RL:
You know, I don’t think she does. I mean, she’s been in politics for a quarter century. And you know, everything’s been thrown at her. She’s still
surviving. She’s the overwhelming frontrunner for the Democrats. I don’t know. I mean, what’s the evidence that she has a glass jaw?

HH: That she cannot help these candidates when she is supposedly the prohibitive frontrunner, and she goes into Arkansas. This is, to me, the most telling race about Hillary’s lack of appeal.

RL:
Yeah.

HH: She lived there for 15 years.

RL:
Yeah, and I think you know, it’s an open question of whether she’s actually on the ballot in a general election, could she and her husband actually win Arkansas. And you know, I think that’s an open question. I haven’t looked at any polling about her down there. But you know, but Hugh, you’ve been around long enough to know that no surrogate can pull a weak candidate in a bad period for his party over the finish line, right?

HH: Well, I agree with that, but an 18 point loss isn’t pulling them over the fishing line.

RL:
Maybe he would have lost by 25 without her.

HH: It’s impossible. It’s actually impossible to lose worse than Mark Pryor did. I think Hillary was an anvil, that they threw Mark Pryor an anvil in the form of Hillary, and that…

RL:
You know, I’m not convinced. I think surrogates are overrated. People don’t vote on whether someone comes down and says, you know, and campaigns for someone.

HH: Okay, let me put it this way then. Is Hillary Clinton too old? And I mean not just chronologically, but in terms of DC sell-by date? She’s been there.

RL:
I think that is the number one most important question, and that is her biggest vulnerability. You know, as Howard Dean told me in this piece, and Howard Dean, this is a person who is already saying if she runs, he will support her. He made the point that we rarely go back a generation in presidential politics, which I thought was very interesting. And he pointed…

HH: Thought he was quick to say but I’m not talking about you, Hillary.

RL:
He was very quick to clarify that you know, he still thinks she can pull
it off, because he thinks that the Republicans will nominate someone too far to the right. But I think it’s a good point. You know, that being around in politics, a public official at 25 years in an age where everyone is very excited about something that’s new and shiny is something that she’s going to have to overcome.

HH: She doesn’t strike me as particularly supple.

RL:
Yeah.

HH: We’re going to get to the competitors here.

RL:
Yeah.

HH: When it comes to new media, she doesn’t get it, in fact.

RL:
No, I don’t think so. And you know, I don’t know this for sure, but the sort of conventional wisdom is that none of that matters in the Democratic primary, that there’s no Barack Obama on the horizon, and sure, she will have some kind of testing by someone, but basically could run the same campaign she ran last time, and she’ll win it.

HH: Ryan Lizza, let me begin by asking you what is she going to run on? She had a horrific four years at State.

RL:
I don’t think we know. I don’t think we know. I think on foreign policy, I think you’ll probably have some, look, she doesn’t know what she’s going to run on, because she doesn’t know who she’s running against, both in the primary and in the general election. And let’s be honest. Candidates don’t like to figure out their exact campaign agenda until they know what the contrast is going to be with the other side. And so she has some idea that the challenge in the primaries is going to come from the left as it always does if you’re the establishment candidate, and she has some idea what the general election Republican might look like. But there’s no incentive for her to lay out anything until she sort of has a clear sense of the battlefield.

HH: So her campaign until then will be as boring as her memoir from State?

RL:
(laughing) You know, I don’t know if I agree with you about the memoir. I thought there were some moments in there that I found interesting. But I think so. I think it’s going to be very, very vapid, and not a lot of detail until she absolutely has to fill it in. And she’s not going to listen to us in the press who pressure her into filling in those details before she’s ready.

HH: She’s been around forever, and still new stuff pops up. The
Washington Free Beacon
found her Alinsky letters.

RL:
Yeah.

HH: And they found her files down at the University of Arkansas. And I thought there wouldn’t be…

RL:
Yeah, I wasn’t really impressed with the Alinsky letters are far as, like, you know, proving that she was at the heart of some crazy, left-wing conspiracy, to be honest. But it was a very interesting reportorial find.

HH: Yeah, but it’s just that something can show up this late in the game. I mean, maybe we’ll find…

RL:
Well, fair enough, and it’s a bad, it’s a statement about the press, frankly, that it’s been sitting around and nobody found it before now.

HH: The Whitewater files may show up again. Who knows what we’ll find with her? But is she, is in fact the fact that we won’t find anything make her boring?

RL:
I think it’s part of it. I think you know, the communications consultants, the political consultants always say it’s, the views of someone who’s been around a long time are set in stone, right? So there’s not a whole lot of new information that I can tell you, Hugh, about Hillary Clinton that’s going to get you to change your mind about her, and there’s not a whole lot of new information that you can tell about her to get some unpersuaded voted to change his or her mind. And that’s sort of her burden, but it’s also, it might be what, you know, an advantage, depending on who she’s running against.

HH: Well, some people buy day-old bread to save money, Ryan Lizza.

RL:
But if she’s running against someone who’s got, from a reporter’s perspective, an interesting history and a lot to uncover and learn about, that can be an advantage going against someone who’s been around so long that nobody cares about anything in her history.

HH: Absolutely true. What about Benghazi? Will it matter at all?

RL:
I thought we were going to get through 15 minutes without Benghazi?

HH: Never, and that’s one of her problems, right?

RL:
You know, my view of Benghazi is, and I don’t know what this says about the press, but it’s one of those issues that is almost completely now seen through a partisan filter. And the right will view it one way forever, and the left will view it one way for another, and there are almost no facts that can come up, the new facts that’ll change people’s minds about it. I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal, Hugh, to be honest. I think in a Democratic primary, nobody will care about it, and in a general election, people will care more about what is she going to do about troop levels in the world, how’s she going to handle Iran, how’s she going to handle North Korea.

HH: I’m going to talk about the three people profiled along with Hillary in Ryan Lizza’s brand new
New Yorker
story. And one of them will bring up Benghazi.

In that piece are profiled the three candidates who are thinking about running in the Democratic primaries for president in 2016, 2015 and 2016, one of whom will almost certainly bring up Benghazi, Ryan Lizza. Which one do you think I’m talking about?

RL:
Webb will bring it up.

HH: Webb will bring it up. James Webb, and the reason, do you know that he wrote
Rules of Engagement
, the screenplay, for that movie?