Nixon’s back! Nixon’s back!

Forty years ago, something interesting happened in the world of American politics. A nation boiling over with angst over issues foreign and domestic found itself with few potential leaders who truly “got” what most Americans were concerned about. RFK arguably “got it.” As did MLK. But both found themselves publicly slaughtered, leaving the country at the mercy of disconnected politicians helplessly mired in ideological cocoons. First there was Hubert Humphrey, an ultimately reasonable New Deal Democrat seeking to lead the New Deal coalition that Lyndon Baines Johnson had torn asunder. Humphrey couldn’t repudiate Johnson’s endless war and perpetual growth of government to the extent that he needed in order to convince either the pacifists on the Democratic Left or the Reagan Democrats on the Right to support his bid for the White House. That left the everyman with a choice between what most Americans viewed as a series of fringe candidates. There was George Wallace, the racist-populist demagogue from Alabama. Sure, most Americans were opposed to the disintegration of federalism and the elevation of the Court as a political institution, but everyone knew what “states’ rights” was code for in Wallace’s world. Meanwhile, on the Right, an interesting young governor emerged from California, but his foreign policy hawkishness and seeming economic extremism just didn’t play in a nation that had four years earlier rejected Barry Goldwater. And the Democratic Left couldn’t offer much help for the American everyman. Like the Left, the everyman opposed the war in Vietnam. But to hear leftist radicals chant, “Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minh will win!” was a bit much for the patriotic majority of Americans who opposed the war but supported the troops, and the country. The result: the silent majority of Americans, who hated Johnson but were still New Dealers at heart, and who hated the war but loved their country, fell into the arms of the only candidate for president speaking their language. And Richard Nixon was elected president.

After watching the performance of Hillary Rodham on Bill O’Reilly’s The Factor this past week, I am more convinced than ever that it is Mrs. Clinton who would best be able to assemble a silent majority of Americans behind her candidacy this year. Because of her present status as a quasi-independent candidate, with any path to the nomination dependent on the Democratic Right in states like Kentucky and West Virginia combined with the support of superdelegates, Hillary has been able to transform herself into the champion of today’s silent majority that is mad as hell at President Bush, at the war, at the economy, and at members of both parties who are living inside the Beltway cocoon.

A former Goldwater Girl with a Republican father from Illinois, Hillary has the soul of a cloth coat Midwestern Republican. Non-ideological, sensible, and rational, she is more concerned with bean-counting than with leading a crusade. Toughness describes both her persona and her leadership style, and she understands that leading America means fighting for America’s interests, not engaging in the Obama-style relativism that is a luxury of the Academy. Hillary’s suggestion, for example, that the U.S. use its leverage with the WTO to take on OPEC and force the oil nations to loosen their grip on the world’s standard of living was something that would make the silent majority of Americans cheer. This was something that Barack Obama could never propose. After all, cheaper fuel is bad for the environment, and besides, hasn’t the U.S. pushed the rest of the world around enough? Or at least that’s what Obama’s leftist base would say.

The silent majority can’t channel its anger into Barack Obama because, ultimately, Obama isn’t anywhere near the pulse of the American everyman. Obama’s life of privilege, during which he was sheltered in the ivory towers of the Academy and spiritually schooled by Jeremiah Wright, is one that tends not to produce men with the same instincts, political or otherwise, as the everyman. And the more Americans see of Obama, the less support he receives from Caucasians. Obama is not the candidate of the silent majority.

John McCain could be the candidate of the everyman. In fact, he has been the voice of the silent majority on many occasions over the past eight years. But the senator’s campaign has always been a tricky exercise, as the Arizonan finds himself stuck between an unpopular GOP president and a base that hates him and a general electorate that hates the GOP president and base. The result is an attempt to please everybody with a variety of policies that don’t always seem philosophically coherent. One day we’ll hear about McCain and Hagee, the next day we’ll learn that McCain is reaching out to the Log Cabin Republicans. One day it’s McCain railing against Bear Stearns, while the next concerns his plans to cut taxes on corporations. And then of course there’s the war, which McCain refuses to budge on, and which Americans continue to oppose at majority levels. What McCain needs to do is resurrect the old John McCain that won New Hampshire in 2000. That’s the McCain who speaks for the everyman.

In a race where John McCain seems unable to escape his president and his party, and where Barack Obama is diving headfirst into his extremist base, where does the everyman turn? Why, to Ms. Rodham, of course. Like Richard Nixon in 1968, the Hillary of 2008 is a natural conduit for the anger of America’s silent majority. She is the candidate who is saying what most Americans are thinking. Most Americans want a foreign policy that serves America’s interests, but are against the war in Iraq and want to end the war as soon as possible. Most Americans are culturally conservative personally, but don’t want the state to enforce anyone’s values on anyone else. Hillary checks these boxes too as a woman who goes to church, fires a gun, and takes shots but who doesn’t vote to outlaw abortion nor beat up on gays. As for the economy, the silent majority wants a president who understands the plight of the American middle class, which is watching the cost of education, health care, and even utilities and food skyrocket as wages stagnate or disappear altogether due to job losses. Americans don’t care about ideology when it comes to the economy, they just want the government to do what works. Hillary can speak to the middle class with inventive, practical, proactive government solutions that John McCain dare not offer, lest he rouse his laissez faire base, and that Barack will not offer, because his voters are affluent latte-sippers who have few real economic problems and who just want a candidate who ushers in “a different kind of politics.” What Obama doesn’t realize is that you can’t butter bread with charisma and idealism. But the silent majority does realize that. And so does Hillary.

If Hillary Rodham Clinton does somehow manage to wrest the nomination of the Democratic Party from Barack Obama, she will be a very, very formidable opponent in the fall. And one that could very well be Madame President.