Hillary Clinton

last updated 8 January 2015

The years of coy demurrals are over, said Ian Bishop and Maggie Haberman in the New York Post. Hillary Clinton is running for president. It's not yet official, but by the elaborate code by which these things are "telegraphed," this week's events marked a clear statement of intent. Clinton hired more campaign staff, placed a few friendly calls to Democratic power brokers in the early-primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, and then told one New York lawmaker, "I'm really going to go for this!" There's no mystery as to what prompted this flurry of activity, said Adam Nagourney in The New York Times: the mounting public excitement around Barack Obama, the charismatic young senator from Illinois. Clinton suddenly finds herself in a dogfight for a nomination she once thought was hers by default. As a possible first black president, Obama has an "arresting political story line" equal to Clinton's, and he has charisma and political skill in abundance not seen since '¦ well, since Clinton's husband.

Obama has one other asset Hillary doesn't, said Rich Lowry in National Review Online. Forty percent of Americans don't already hate his guts. Hillary carries decades of political baggage, and most Americans are sick of the "putrid partisanship and malicious monomania that have characterized the 14, going on 16, years of the Clinton-Bush era." With his soothing, hopeful message, Obama appeals to a broad swath of the electorate'”and because he represents a clean break from the past, "he is the only presidential candidate from either party about whom there is a palpable excitement." Obama is also the only Democrat who can talk about religious faith without seeming like a total fraud, said Tim Grieve in Salon.com. He turned in a more than credible performance last week at Rick Warren's influential Saddleback Church, preaching to'”and connecting with'”a congregation of evangelicals. Clinton and her party have spent two years saying they need to do a better job of talking about faith. "In Obama, they could have a presidential candidate who can actually do it."