The Last Clinton Election

Bill and Hillary Clinton have been running for office since 1974. Thirty-four years later, it's possible that Tuesday's West Virginia primary could be the last Clinton election. Ever.

It's not at all clear to me that she'll run for president again. After all, Barack Obama could win in November, and challenging a sitting president in her own party is virtually impossible. And there's no guarantee that come 2012, when Hillary will be 65, she'll choose to run for a third term in the U.S. Senate or seek the presidency again.

After all, if the Democrats lose to John McCain this fall, it's possible, but not likely, that they'll flock to the Clintons for salvation. And the talk of Hillary becoming Senate Majority Leader seems far-flung now. Lots of Senate allies abandoned her. Think of Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democratic senator who carried her health-care package in 1993. When notes from Clinton's White House years were released by the National Archives earlier this year, they showed more than 100 meetings between the then-first lady and Rockefeller. He abandoned her to support Obama—and his state isn't at all likely to vote for Obama, so it's not like politics drove him to his decision. In that kind of atmosphere, it's really hard to see Hillary becoming the top Democrat in the Senate.

And so this is, quite possibly, the last Clinton election—Chelsea doesn't look like she's ready for the family business. One hesitates to say something like this, but it's worth contemplating.

If you take the Clinton brand out of politics, it's worth asking how the Clintons changed the marketing and branding of politics. Bill Clinton's sheer charisma is one of their most memorable legacies, yes. But the Clintons gave techniques to their successors. Among them:

The War Room. The culture of the "war room" is something that was bound to be invented in an age of cable and the internet. The idea of rapid and immediate response was an inevitable consequence of the changing way we communicate, just as the traffic signal was a logical invention following the development of the automobile. Before 1992, the idea of fighting back against the most minor accusation with brute force was unthinkable. But the war room cut through the bureaucratic layers of a campaign by putting the top people in the same room all the time and giving them the capacity to respond.

Alternative Media. When Bill Clinton went on the Arsenio Hall Show in 1992 and played the saxophone, it was a way of reintroducing himself to the public. The Clintons knew that in a modern age there was no reason to deal only with the political press. And so they opened themselves up to the morning TV shows and People magazine, paving the way for politicians to appear on The View and The Daily Show.

Attack, attack, attack. The Clintons pounced on weaknesses in their opponents. Of course, that's the nature of politics, but the Clintons did it to such a degree that it represented a difference in kind. They clobbered Paul Tsongas on entitlements, and they pummeled little Rick Lazio in the 2000 Senate race in New York for his statements about the upstate economy being good. In many ways, the reason why Obama prevails is that you can't attack him with the same vigor. The first African American with a real chance of becoming president was, by definition, going to be a guarded, if not sainted, figure in the hearts of blacks, as well as white liberals, so the Clintons needed a new, more gentle needling technique. They couldn't find one.

Ready for Reagan, not Kos. If you were a liberal who came to Arkansas in 1974 to run for office, you'd learn a few things. You'd learn how not to offend sensibilities about guns and religion. You'd learn to navigate a conservative culture. You'd wind up heading the Democratic Leadership Council because you knew traditional liberalism was toxic in the South. The Clintons understood how liberals could navigate in the age of Ronald Reagan, and it made them the logical candidates of the '80s and '90s. By the time Hillary ran for president, when liberal blogs like the Daily Kos helped set the agenda, the tide had shifted dramatically in the party—liberals were no longer defensive. In that atmosphere, Hillary's prowar vote on Iraq was deadly unless it was followed by some degree of contrition. But she came from an era when you didn't admit to a mistake lest the Republicans pummel you with it, and so she was stuck with her war vote and the prevaricating that followed. It burdened her throughout the campaign, and it cut to the quick her argument for her experience. Obama could justifiably question whether experience trumped judgment.

The Clintons brought other qualities to politics, including an ability to make policy sexy. Bill Clinton won in '92 on the strength of being the best-prepared and most knowledgeable candidate about policy. Even as he goes on to beat Clinton, Obama's the inheritor of much of the Clinton style and approach to politics.

PHOTO: Hillary Clinton attends a campaign event in Council Bluffs, Iowa, August 14, 2007. (Eric Thayer/PhotoShelter)