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http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/hillary-clinton-2016-elections-113281.html?hp=rc2_4

Hillary should stop dithering


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Blessed art they who are ready for Hillary, for they have the patience of saints.

Each day, they gather money and names and deep data to lay at her feet in preparation for her presidential announcement.

Each day, they chant, “We think she will, we think she will, we know she will, we know she will!”

And each day, they are rewarded with silence.

Not since Hamlet first strode upon the stage circa 1599 and dithered over “To be, or not to be” have so many held their collective breath for an answer.

(Also on POLITICO: Delay of a game)

Will Hillary Clinton run? Well, yes, of course, she will run. But the official line — to call it a strategy would be to give it more credit than it deserves — is that she is torn between her duty to her country and love for her family. One of her possible staff members (their numbers are legion) tried to convince me recently that she might not run in order to spend time with her new grandchild.

But if she runs and wins, I pointed out, not only could she be a helicopter grandparent, but a helicopter grandparent with the full use of Marine One.

Yet, these are her wilderness months. She received a mere $14 million as a book advance. And she remains haunted by memories of coming “out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt,” a memory in the same category of her undergoing sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996, which is to say sincerely remembered but actually fictional.

But now she must force herself to take private jets around the country to deliver $300,000 speeches, where, according to her printed requests, she must have lemon wedges, water at room temperature, diet ginger ale and “a platter of crudité and hummus in the green room.”

Many of her devoted followers are depending on her to announce her presidential bid no later than January of next year and go out and campaign already. Legally, she could continue to give speeches for huge bucks while she pursues the presidency, but that might not sit well with the public.

So far, Hillary’s non-campaign campaign is based on three things: She is the inevitable Democratic nominee. She deserves the presidency. And there is nobody who can beat her.

All are arguable. All are insufficient. Americans want to hear what you intend to achieve and how you intend achieve it. They want to know where you will take the country and the world. They want from Hillary what Hillary doesn’t want to give them: the “vision” thing that she finds all soft and gooey and embarrassing.

But the hard fact is that Hillary Clinton’s non-campaigning campaign is not going well for her. She is not achieving the other essential she needs to win in 2016: likability. As I have written before, in modern presidential politics, the more likable candidate almost always wins.

Hillary, it is said, will soon begin a “listening tour,” the same shopworn stunt she used in 1999 when running for the U.S. Senate from New York. Listening tours can be effective only if the public thinks you are really listening. But is there anything Hillary really, truly, believes she can learn from actual people?

What she has learned so far has moved her to silence. Look at the recent coverage in this publication alone:

David Nather and Katie Glueck in POLITICO on Nov. 26: “One by one, potential 2016 candidates are starting to weigh in on this week’s events in Ferguson — carefully … And Hillary Clinton? She’s stayed silent, and her aides are giving no sign that that’s about to change.”

Headline on Maggie Haberman’s story in POLITICO this Monday: “Hillary Clinton avoids Keystone at conservation group event.”

Harry Enten, a senior political writer and analyst for FiveThirtyEight.com ran a chart Monday labeled: “Hillary Clinton’s Popularity Continues to Drop.” He wrote that Hillary’s net favorable rating has continued to fall since she left the Cabinet and in the most recent YouGov poll reached an all-time low, a result echoed, he said, by recent NBC/Wall Street Journal and Quinnipiac University polls.

She is also continuing to drop when matched against potential Republican rivals. “Any lead Clinton does have is almost entirely attributable to being better known,” Enten wrote.

Enten admitted such polls “are not very predictive” at this stage of the game, but concluded that Hillary “no longer looks like such a juggernaut.”

Hillary has the clout to scare off some Democratic primary opponents, but not Republican opponents. True, she might be lucky enough to face off in a general election against some wacko Republican extremist who will virtually hand the election to her.

But depending on your enemy to do the right thing is a dangerous way to begin any battle.

Hillary needs to announce for the presidency. Soon. The media have moved from Hillary fatigue to Hillary exhaustion, and this is not helping her.

She needs to make her announcement speech in front of a live audience, not on videotape like last time or even on IMAX 3D. She must continue to make many more speeches for many more months — all for free.

And she needs to present not just competence and vision but a likable personality that her friends insist represents the true her.

This is called campaigning, and while it doesn’t always come with hummus and crudités, it might just make her president.

Roger Simon is POLITICO’s chief political columnist.

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