Depending on how deep the recession is a year from now, we could easily wind up with Hillary Clinton as America’s first Social Democrat president. With hard times bearing down on us, she’d be able to drop her phony centrist pose and openly embrace FDR, if not yet Karl Marx, as her life’s inspiration. How could any Republican hope to beat her if real estate prices have sunk by another 15 percent and unemployment grown by half?  Hillary could promise the kind of relief that Republicans would never be comfortable even talking about -- i.e., mortgage forgiveness for the entire middle class; jobless benefits extended till who-knows-when; a $12 minimum wage; free government day-care in the big cities; punitive new taxes on the rich. Etcetera.

Of course, America’s geopolitical troubles will remain a wild card, and if the situation worsens in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or both, John McCain would instantly become a front-runner. Not that he hasn’t been a contender all along – only that that the news media have conspired to cause us to believe that money alone makes the candidate. Try and tell that to McCain. Although his principled stand on any number of issues evidently has rendered him invisible to a press corps that acknowledges only champions of the status quo, he is still a hero to many, and they are going to turn out in droves to vote for him in the primaries regardless of how much his advance men have spent.

Delusional Media

If a lack of campaign funds has not killed off McCain, neither has a mountain of cash done much for Obama. Although he has tapped into Oprah’s Rolodex to raise more money, even, than Clinton, he is still no closer to getting the Democratic nod than when he announced his candidacy. Could it be because the media are just as mistaken about him as they are about McCain?  Obama may be the dream candidate of most newspaper editors and reporters, but the rest of us understand very clearly why, at this time in America’s history, a man educated in a madrassa, as Obama was, could not possibly get elected President.

Meanwhile, the millions, or perhaps scores of millions, of Americans who despise Hillary can console themselves by imagining that she will bring to the job the kind of big-hearted socialism that has always fared better in democracies than under dictatorships. Her first order of business, as we imagine it, would be to find a way to ameliorate the pain of 50 million Americans who by then will owe more on their homes than they are worth. Also, because Hillary Rodham is indisputably one very tough broad, she is likely to be as straightforward in dealing with our enemies as McCain – assuming, that is, she understands that the likes of Iran and Syria really are our enemies.

She's No Mediocrity

Hillary was the girl who in grade school got perfect scores on tests that most of her classmates flunked and on which even the fairly smart kids got C’s. You can bet she’ll come to the job more determined than any candidate in recent history to be the Best Darned President Ever. Say what you will about her, a mediocrity Hillary is not. If she survives an almost certain trial-by-fire to run for a second term, it could only be because America’s prospects have brightened both at home and abroad.