Because what Hillary Clinton really needs is a running mate who resigned in disgrace over an affair with a much younger woman, a.k.a. a constant reminder of the darkest time in her public and private life. If that sounds like the dream scenario of a desperate neocon who would like to drudge up that ugliness over and over again in columns for months come election time, that’s because it is!
Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol credits his “savvy friend” with the prediction in a bizarre parenthetical in his weekly email newsletter that promises “timely observations and reflections.”
Earlier in the note, Kristol writes, “Every poll shows the American public, by about two to one, thinks the nation is on the wrong track. That’s the track of contemporary liberalism. It’s the track Hillary Clinton has diligently chugged along for her entire adult life. As president, she’d be a dutiful chaperone of further American decline. The American people deserve better.”
He goes on:
I know populism has a problematic history and remains something of a mixed bag, and a few friends and allies have expressed surprise to me in recent months at the kinds words I’ve had for populism, at least populism rightly understood. But then you read an article like this in the New York Times, and you think about how to frame a 2016 race against Hillary Clinton (by the way, a savvy friend is absolutely convinced her running mate in 2016 will be David Petraeus—something worth thinking about, perhaps). And I think you’ve got to conclude that the way to defeat “the first woman president” (but also an elitist and dynastic one) is with a candidate from Middle America who speaks for Middle America in ways understandable to Middle America.
In related news: Bill Kristol is always wrong.
