http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotian/836559.htmlHILLARY Clinton’s appearance at John Hay High School in Cleveland earlier this month was a study in political professionalism. Students warmed up the crowd with renditions of great American speeches and songs from Guys and Dolls. Democratic dignitaries delivered paeans of praise for school reform.
When Clinton at last appeared she put on a perfectly choreographed performance — speaking without notes, displaying a remarkable knowledge of the school’s achievements, and bringing a touch of glamour to a dull Ohio afternoon with her pearls and perfectly coiffed blonde hair.
Clinton praised the school as an example of public-sector reform at its finest (the school has broken itself up into three smaller schools, introduced longer school days and longer school years, and done all this with the co-operation of the teachers’ unions).
She talked about what America’s cities could achieve if only they had a partner in Washington. And, unlike many of her Democratic opponents, she went out of her way to praise the president’s No Child Left Behind Act, claiming that the problems stemmed from shortage of funds rather than the principle of accountability.
Yet, for all that, there was something missing. The school hall was only three-quarters full. The audience consisted mostly of middle-aged or elderly ladies. There was little buzz. The place came to life only when a phalanx of local Democratic dignitaries, led by Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the congresswoman for the 11th congressional district, marched into the hall moments before Clinton arrived.
Joseph Grassy, a local Democrat who arrived late but nevertheless found a seat near the front, pronounced the event a damp squib compared with a recent Obama happening. Barack Obama had attracted thousands of people — so many that an overflow crowd watched his performance on video screens. The atmosphere was electric.
Clinton’s desultory numbers were padded out with operatives who owed their careers to the Democratic Party. But it is Clinton who is comfortably ahead of her main rival, with (say most polls) a double-digit lead.
Clinton is the most puzzling of the current crop of presidential candidates. Her front-runner status for the Democratic nomination, in a year in which the Republicans are in turmoil, not to say meltdown, reflects impressive strengths. These start with experience.
She spent eight years in the White House in what Bill Clinton once called a "two-for-the-price-of-one" presidency. She is a popular and successful senator for the country’s third-biggest state by population, re-elected last year with a thumpingly increased vote.
She also controls one of the two great political machines in American politics (the other belongs to the Bush dynasty): a machine that can boast everything from brilliant strategists, like Mark Penn, to excoriating critics of her enemies, like Sidney Blumenthal.
Yet she also has striking weaknesses. A leading Republican strategist describes her as strong but brittle. She comes with more political baggage than any senior Democrat who is not named Kennedy. Her husband has a long record of suicidally risky sexual dalliances.
Clinton is the one candidate who could transform the presidential election from an unloseable referendum on Republican failure into a vote on a Democratic candidate about whom almost everyone has strong feelings, many of them intensely hostile.
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