By RICH SHUMATE
Chickenfriedpolitics.com/July 7, 2014
(Note: This piece, which originally ran on Chickenfriedpolitics.com, was also accepted as an Op-Ed submission by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.)

Among the least attractive characteristics of the Clintons (both she and he) is what may be charitably described as their chronic disingenuousness.

To wit, they resort to spin and subterfuge that’s too clever by half, even when the truth would do them no harm. The meaning of ‘is’ always seems to depend on what the meaning of ‘is’ is, at any given moment in time. Just like her Arkansas accent comes and goes.

Which brings us to Hillary’s recent magical mystery tour, replete with an orgy of copious, self-serving publicity that would make a Kardashian blush. The centerpiece of this effort has been her repeated insistence, that, by gosh, she just hasn’t decided yet if she’s going to run for president.

But of course she’s running for president. Would Bonnie and Clyde walk by a bank without at least attempting to rob it? Of course not.

If she’s not running for president, her recent behavior makes absolutely no sense.

She doesn’t need to make money by hawking a book. After all, she and Bill now have more dough than they or Chelsea could spend in five lifetimes, no matter how many houses (note the plural) they buy.

She certainly doesn’t need a book tour to bolster her celebrity. And it’s rather doubtful that she has any realistic ambition to win a Pulitzer prize with her weighty tome.

So that brings us to the inevitable conclusion that all of this is but a prelude to 2016.

The Ready for Hillary crowd might say, so what? Why should she telegraph her intentions now and become a target for the vast right-wing conspiracy? As Hillary might put it (with a hearty thump on the desk), at this point, what difference does it make?

Well, for one thing, her coy routine isn’t going to keep her from being fired upon by conservatives. They’ve never stopped. However, what it does do is remind many voters how allergic the Clintons are to candor.

So six months or a year from now, when Hillary finally admits that, well, by golly, she is going to run for president after all, many people will realize that, once again, they have been taken in by Clintonian double-speak.

Of course, that last statement presupposes that anyone in America actually believes that Hillary Clinton isn’t running for president. Perhaps that depends on what the meaning of ‘isn’t’ is.

Meanwhile, refusing to admit what voters already know just reminds them that, for the Clintons, the truth is always a movable feast.

By RICH SHUMATE
Chickenfriedpolitics.com
(Note: This piece, which originally ran on Chickenfriedpolitics.com, was also accepted as an Op-Ed submission by both the Gainesville (Fla.) Sun and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.)

If Hillary Clinton wins the White House in 2016, at age 69, she will be the second oldest person ever elected to the presidency, just behind Ronald Reagan and just ahead of the ill-fated William Henry Harrison, who perished after just a month in office back in 1841.

And if she wins, Clinton will have overcome a fundamental feature in modern American presidential politics — namely, that the younger presidential nominee is usually victorious.

In the thirteen presidential elections since 1960, the younger candidate has won seven times. However, in two other elections — Johnson vs. Goldwater in 1964 and George W. Bush vs. Al Gore in 2000 — the candidates were roughly the same age. (Johnson had just a year on Goldwater; Bush had two on Gore.)

So, in only four of the 13 elections did the candidate who was appreciably older pull off a victory. Two of those were won by Reagan, and, in all four, the age gap was substantially less than what Clinton may face in 2016. (The other two were George H.W. Bush in 1988 and Richard Nixon in 1972.)

Now 67, Clinton is more than 20 years older than four of the likely Republican prospects — U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Governors Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal. Indeed, Rubio and Jindal are both 43 — a whopping 24 years younger than Clinton.

To put it another way, Clinton was already studying law at Yale when Rubio and Jindal were still in diapers.

Reagan was the oldest man ever elected to the presidency when he beat Jimmy Carter in 1980, but he was just 13 years older. In contrast, the average age of the 10 leading Republican prospects in 2016 is 52 — 15 years younger than Clinton.

In fact, only two of the likely candidates — former Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush – even share the same decade as Clinton. Perry is 65; Bush, 62.

So, if history is prologue here, Republicans might do themselves some good by nominating someone who can present a generational contrast with Clinton. Bush would seem to be the candidate least able to do this, given his age and pedigree as the son and brother of presidents. But Rubio and Walker are both well positioned to make such a generational case.

Of course, it should be noted that Democrats tried, and failed, to make Reagan’s age a salient issue in both the 1980 and 1984 campaigns. Clearly, history can be defied. But if Democrats decide to nominate the oldest candidate in the field, save for longshot Democrat Bernie Sanders, they will be taking a generational and historical gamble.