Millard Grimes: Hillary dominates Dem field
Hillary Rodham was always the brightest girl in her class. She grew up in an upscale suburb of Chicago in the boom years just after World War II. Her mother was loving and attentive, her father was domineering and aloof. They expected and got the best grades and unquestioning obedience from Hillary and her two younger brothers. Hillary also played ping-pong avidly, took music and ballet lessons, and in high school was a member of a group called the Goldwater Girls, who worked for Sen. Barry Goldwater in his losing race for the presidency in 1964.
According to biographer Roger Morris, she had little social life outside of extracurricular activities. She seemed to seek out intellectual boys and then compete with them, one friend remembered.
Hillary wanted to attend a prestigious college in the East and chose Wellesley in Massachusetts, near Harvard. Although she didn't consider herself especially popular with the other students, she ran for president of the student government and was surprised to be elected. She was also the student speaker at Commencement and her speech Included an impromptu criticism of the featured speaker, Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, whom she accused of being out of touch with the students. Some parents recalled her "just rude."
Most prophetic, she wrote her senior thesis on President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, as she had moved her alliance from her Goldwater Girl days to Democratic policies.
After Wellesley, Hillary Rodham enrolled in Yale Law School and famously met fellow student Bill Clinton, who was from a completely different background. But they immediately bonded, intellectually and then romantically. She proudly told her family that her boyfriend was going to be president of the United States.
Clinton was ambitious and in a hurry. He was elected governor of Arkansas in 1978, the youngest governor in the nation, and Hillary Rodham became the youngest state First Lady. Always independent, she insisted on keeping her maiden name, which became a political issue when Bill ran for reelection in 1980 and was defeated.
Hillary changed her name to Clinton for the next election, which Bill won, going on to be elected governor for a record eight times and then U.S. president for two terms.
Hillary had gotten a really good look at the dark side of it the presidency when she was a junior lawyer on the 1973 Watergate Committee investigating President Richard Nixon. One of her jobs was listening to some of the many tapes of conversations recorded in the Oval Office, which finally produced the so-called "smoking gun" that clinched the case for Nixon's resignation.
The current search through Hillary's e-mail messages is undoubtedly an effort by Republicans to find the statement that might become a "smoking gun" against Hillary.
What puzzles me is how she had time to send thousands of messages while serving secretary of state. Didn't she ever just to make a telephone call, or have a conversation?
For sure, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been investigated and interrogated more than any U.S. presidential candidate in history and she has proven resolute and convincing, if not always forthcoming.
The Republicans have gotten most of the attention in this year's early politicking and the Democrats very little, mostly because Hillary dominated the early polling and it seemed to be a non-competitive race. It probably still is unless Vice President Joe Biden announces.
After 35 years in the political arena - as governor's wife, president's wife, U.S. senator from New York, and Secretary of State - Hillary Clinton has had an unprecedented view of what being a president involves. She is tough and smart and her instincts are reliably on the liberal side
Clinton does have some vulnerabilities, of course. As Obama devastatingly remarked in a 2008 New Hampshire Primary debate, "You're likable enough, HIllary." But the image persists that Hillary is too staged, too artificial, too driven to be really likable.
But that's who Hillary is. She's been looking ahead to this role since high school. She knows the lines, and also the challenges, which is both a strength and weakness.
Her chief competitor for the nomination is Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who would have to breach more precedents than Hillary. First, he is an admitted socialist, who has usually run on an Independent ticket. He caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate but has not worked actively in the party. Secondly, at 73, Sanders is the oldest presidential candidate in U.S. history and he would also be the first Jewish president. He's a useful voice on the national stage and has drawn surprisingly large crowds, but his nomination is virtually unimaginable.
The other announced candidates for the Democratic nomination hardly scratch in the polls. Biden would become the main challenger to Hillary Clinton, should he announce, but there are compelling reasons he won't run. Probably most important, Biden sees the current national scene from a unique vantage point and recognizes that it needs stability more than anything.
His entry into the Democratic race would add another uncertainty and possibly damage the eventual Democratic candidate's chances of election 2016. That is not an eventuality Biden can view with detachment. I think he would run only if Hillary chose to drop out for some reason.
My own favorite candidate remains Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but she has declined to run for much the same reasons Biden has.
So, despite the clamor for "outsiders" and change, the most likely competitors on Election Day will be the familiar names of Clinton (Hillary) and Bush (Jeb), two names that have been on seven of the last nine presidential ballots since 1976, missing only the 2008 and 2012 elections.
Millard Grimes, editor of the Columbus Enquirer from 1961-69 and founder of the Phenix Citizen. is author of "The Last Linotype: The Story of Georgia and Its Newspapers Since World War II."
This story was originally published October 4, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Millard Grimes: Hillary dominates Dem field ."