Hillary's Legacy

June is only a few short days away and, by most accounts, will be the final month of Hillary Clinton's campaign for the White House (barring any VP nod). However, while she hasn't yet pulled out of the race for the top slot, pundits and commentators have already started to assess her campaign's legacy. Here are two of the most interesting I've come across. One is fairly positive, while the other is...not so much.

"The Highest Road" (Anna Quindlen in Newsweek, May 26, 2008): "Senator Clinton is the most prominent woman in America. She needs to think outside the hermetically sealed bubble of her campaign and begin to develop a strategy now for the way in which she wants to use that: to unify the party, to galvanize her base of voters, to make certain the Democrats prevail in November and perhaps to play a powerful leadership role in government in the years to come."

"Clinton has run her campaign the same way Bush has run the country" (Gary Younge in the Guardian (UK), May 26, 2008): "As the primary season draws to a close it has become increasingly apparent that Hillary Clinton has run her campaign with the same contempt for intelligence, decency and democracy that Bush has run the country. Like the Bush administration, her campaign has been sustained by cynicism, divisiveness and fear-mongering, leaving a toxic and rancorous rift in its wake. Like the White House, her aim has been to win at all costs. And like the White House, it has produced the same result. Failure." [Thanks Joe for the link]

It is important to remember that while there are so many unpredictable components to an election, the candidates can control one thing - their tactics, behavior, and character during the contest. Let's hope that the "better angels" are in play for the general election - it's what America deserves.