5 sentences that explain American politics in 2015

Here's a sentence that captures official Washington's anxiety about a President Hillary Clinton, as well as its hope for a fresh approach to politics:

That's Ron Fournier referring to the revelation, by The New York Times, that Clinton used a private e-mail address for her State Department correspondence. In doing so, the e-mails weren't automatically archived, and instead had to be provided to the State Department by Clinton's staff.

Hillary Clinton is probably the most examined female public figure in recent American history, and her insistence on having a private life, and a zone within which she can deliberate privately, has created the impression that there are two distinct Clintons. 1990s-style politics, per Fournier, is secretive, humdrum, anodyne, and ethically dubious. (It was also, he has noted elsewhere, quite effective at fixing problems.)

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One reason why Fournier and others believe that the republic is ready for something new is the thick screen between the president and the media.

I would add that mutual suspicion between the president and the press is on par with the Nixon administration, although, of course, the stakes are quite different. The press correctly believes that Obama is indifferent to them; Nixon was actively hostile.

Obama main complaint is that he thinks the press has undersold the epochal transformation of Congress during his tenure. Steve Benen writes that after 2010,

During the 2014 campaign, the Republicans promised to govern. But that hasn't worked out, says Scott Wong at The Hill.

Obama has gotten the better of the deal, to the astonishment of the GOP base. But there is no end in sight for these hostage crises, because, as Ron Brownstein has been quoted as saying: