Our Hillary Problem

From The New Yorker:

“Hello again,” Hillary Clinton said last week. “It’s so good to see you again. And my husband sends you his very best regards.” She was talking to the King of Thailand, on what was meant to be one of her final trips as Secretary of State, after which she will make some gesture toward retirement. But one wonders if the whole American electorate might, before too long, be treated to the same sort of greeting the King got. Hillary Clinton may be leaving the State Department, but is she really leaving the stage? The idea of her running for President in 2016 may seem fanciful, based on her denials and a dozen other barriers, or unavoidable, given the number of people who seem to think that she’s better positioned than any other Democrat. But if not the New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucus, then where? Do Clintons ever truly go away?

Some of the contradictions in Hillary Clinton’s career can be seen in the talk of, or rather hysteria about, who her successor at the State Department might be. One of the candidates is Susan Rice, who is now the United Nations Ambassador (another is John Kerry). Rice has been browbeaten and vilified in the past couple of weeks in a way that seems completely out of proportion. Rice went on Sunday-morning talk shows four days after the attack and repeated talking points, cleared by the intelligence community, that turned out to be off (although even on that point the gray area may be larger than the Republicans have presented it). For this, she has been talked about as something close to a criminal. After Rice met privately with Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Kelly Ayotte yesterday, the three came out looking and sounding like they’d just been listening to hours of crude and vicious mob wiretaps.

More here.