In Britain's Sunday papers, two of Washington's leading journalists pen very different obituaries for the Clintons. Michael Crowley, an editor at The New Republic and frequent blogger, fills the Observer with a long, intimate portrait of Bill and Hillary's rise and fall. The emphasis is on their resilience, and though Crowley says that the nomination may have slipped out of Hillary's hands, he concedes that the "impossible" will never be far beyond the reach of the Clintons.
In stark contrast, Andrew Sullivan sweeps the Clintons aside in his Sunday Times column. The Atlantic editor and blogger can't wait to move on to the upcoming clash between Barack Obama and John McCain:
As the Clintons fade ungraciously away, the emergence of these two from the dust of an astonishingly vivid and endless primary campaign comes to me, at least, as a massive relief. These two men are easily the best each party has to offer, the two most capable of talking to the other side: serious, decent, principled figures with, of course, their fair share of political shading.
Which is to say, "out with the old and in with the new." Hillary Clinton's downfall lies not her first name - her gender - but her last, laden with history - alternately triumphant and thorny perhaps, but history nonetheless. Her critics suggest she is not as equipped to remake the US in the 21st century as Obama is. The skulking tactics of much of her campaign reaffirm the impression that she is a politician as familiar with the mud as with the sun. Efforts to tar Obama by association (to Wright, Ayers, etc) will probably prove futile. Most Democrats want to look forward to a less blemished America of Obama rather than remember the America, and the politics, of the Clintons.
