Welcome to "Making the Case," an occasional series of conversations in which we ask prominent thinkers to sell us on their 2008 presidential candidates of choice. You hear plenty from the politicians themselves about why they're best suited for the office. That's their job. But it's also propaganda. Instead, we here at Stumper headquarters thought it'd be interesting to round up the smartest folks we could find--none of whom are on the campaign payrolls--and hear why they're backing who they're backing. We hope you find the cases they make surprising, confusing, infuriating, convincing--and maybe even helpful. Because in the end, this election isn't about predictions, or punditry, or even politics itself. It's about picking a president.

First up is leading American historian Sean Wilentz, professor at Princeton University, author of the Pulitzer-Prize-nominated "The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln" (2005) and a "dyed-in-the-wool Democrat"--as if his 2006 Rolling Stone cover story "The Worst President in History?," about President George W. Bush, didn't give him away. Full disclosure: I studied under Wilentz in college. But I didn't call him out of convenience. As a longtime Clinton supporter (he "came out" for Hillary on Wednesday) who's also a fiercely intellectual scholar of American politics, Wilentz, I thought, would be uniquely qualified to make a dynamic historical case for Hillary's candidacy. He didn't disappoint. I hope you find his argument about the importance of Hillary's "Politics of Politics" as interesting as I do.

And remember, this is just one man's opinion. If you disagree--and I'm sure you will--the comments are all yours.

 
So why Hillary?
I think Hillary is important because the election really is the culmination of what's been a 40 year struggle for the Democrats to rediscover who they are. A 40-year struggle against what we'll call Nixon-slash-Reaganism. And, simply put, she's in the best position to be a president. Which is to say, she understands how American politics works. She understands the trajectory of American political history for the last 40 years because she's lived it in a way that the others haven't, really. She's seen it at all levels, from Arkansas to Capitol Hill. The country needs someone who can take us beyond this struggle--this long, long fight we've been having.

You seem to be saying that only Hillary can take us beyond Baby Boomer politics because only she's lived through it. But Obama's argument is that he represents a post-Baby Boomer politics, and that he's not bogged down, like Hillary, in those old conflicts.
I think the whole idea of Baby Boomer politics is the problem. That concept. I'm very disappointed in that. There's no such thing. You cannot enter this moment and make a new departure unless you understand what you're departing from. And that's what she understands. She's not proposing some sort of vaporous, virtuous new thing that she's going to conjure out of thin air. American political life doesn't work that way. She's not going to go "presto, change-o, everything's different." We all know that's fantasy.

So you don't find Obama's meta-arguments against "politics as usual" particularly convincing?
You cannot have a president who doesn't like politics. You will not get anything done. Period. I happen to love American politics. I think American politics is wonderful. I can understand why people don't. But one of the problems in America is that politics has been so soured, people try to be above it all. It's like Adlai Stevenson. In some ways, Barack reminds me of Stevenson.

Why?
There's always a Stevenson candidate. Bradley was one of them. Tsongas was one of them. They're the people who are kind of ambivalent about power. "Should I be in this or not... well, yes, because I'm going to represent something new." It's beautiful loserdom. The fact is, you can't govern without politics. That's what democracy is. Democracy isn't some utopian proposition by which the people suddenly rule. We're too complicated a country for that. We have too many interests here. You need someone who can govern, who can build the coalition and move the country forward. You hit on something that's really my pet peeve about the others. Edwards the same way, except he doesn't condemn the politics of the '60s, rather he talks about the special interests...

A populist slant.
Oy vey. Let's be real here about how American politics works. It's a posture. It makes people feel good, but it's not reality. They should be part of the party. The party is complicated, like a weird bird with so many wings it sometimes doesn't know how to fly. But I don't think any one of them can lead the way she can.

Do you agree with the people who think her "efficient, controlled" campaign is evidence of that?
I don't think it's so much her campaign. That's inside-baseball, Washington stuff--something to chatter about. To me, it's not so much that as it's the way she can hold a nuanced position, and think it through and say it and risk being called a waffler, when in fact she's not.

Edwards calls that "doubletalk"...
It's not like she's said A and then gone back and said B. She's been very upfront about how any particular position can evolve, and life changes, you don't just take a position and stick with it for all time. You take your positions on the basis of principle and reality.

What about the cold, calculating stereotype?
It's a stereotype. I mean, calculating--I'm all for calculating. What's wrong with calculating? She's called an opportunist. That's good! I'm for opportunity. You see an opportunity and you take it. She's not an opportunist in the sense that she's corrupt. But my generation--and this is the reason for the rise of the independents and so forth--was so turned off to politics that everybody became Adlai Stevenson. This is not good. You need a leader who's going to restore a sense of Democratic politics.

So it's a pragmatic argument? That she can get things done politically?
That's true, but it's beyond that. Pragmatism is an approach to power. It's not a philosophy. It's not just going for half a loaf or knowing when to compromise, although all that is important. Rather, it's an understanding of the provisional nature of all of our deeds--an understanding that the politics of hope, taken too far, can turn into the politics of dogma. Just as the politics of memory can turn into the politics of fear. Hillary actually reminds me more of what John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy were up to--more than anybody I've seen since. More than her husband.

But people always tie Obama to the Kennedys.
God knows why. His philosophy is much more like Eugene McCarthy and Adlai Stevenson. He's that kind of politician, in a post-Baby Boomer sense. If the argument we're having today in the party is like the one we had in '68 between the Kennedyites and the McCarthyites, she's Bobby Kennedy. She's not Eugene McCarthy. She's not the beautiful-loser idealist, or the person who's ambivalent about politics. She loves politics. Just as Bobby Kennedy loved politics. Bobby Kennedy could deal with Cesar Chavez and Mayor Daley. That's what you need in America.

What people found so attractive about Bobby Kennedy when he ran for president, though, was that despite his toughness he also gave off a sense of vulnerability. Hillary doesn't seem able to convey that vulnerability, or warmth, or humanness.
Talk to women out in the Midwest who've had a wandering husband. It's not just any woman politician, because they wouldn't have voted for Liddy Dole. It's Hillary. It's what she's been through. She's lived a life. But really it's less to do with people identifying with her than people thinking she'll get the job done. That's basically what people want out of politics. We're not a very ideological country. We're not terribly into virtue for virtue's sake. People really just want government to do what it's supposed to do.

Do you think that's a particularly strong desire at this moment in history?
Yes. It's the end of age of Reagan, and you need a leader who can take us out of it. Nixon gave us part of the recipe; Reagan gave us part of the recipe. But they couldn't quite do it. Maybe Congress was in their way; maybe the public held them back. Now, for the last eight years, the Republicans have finally been able to do it. And they've done it with a degree of zealotry that would've astonished Reagan. Et voila! They cooked their cake, used their recipe--and look what happened.

But Hillary excites so much antagonism on the right. If she were elected, wouldn't it just be four years or eight years of the same old shouting?
You know who makes that argument more than anybody else? Republicans. This is a favorite Republican argument. They say, "We want to run against Hillary. She's the polarizing candidate and we're going to take advantage of that. She's going to rile up our base, et cetera, et cetera." Whenever Republicans tell us who they want us to nominate, we should nominate her. They're scared of her. Who else is going to build a coalition?

Edwards would argue that he has rural, red-state appeal. Obama would argue that he attracts independents and black voters.
Look at the state of New York. You have to be able to appeal to lots of different kinds of people. It cuts across racial lines, it cuts across ethnic lines, it cuts across rural and urban lines. She carried every county but two. What that tells me is that all the things that the sophisticates like you and me don't like about her--her coldness, her dowdiness, all these thing about her that seem uncharismatic, as opposed to the dashing Obama or Edwards--that's all stuff people like. We don't get it. They get it. They're the people who are going to be voting. I've seen this disconnect before. In 1998, the chattering classes thought Clinton was toast, but the country was for him.

What do you think of Obama's and Edwards' attacks on the Clinton years, things like NAFTA?
There's a misreading of the Clinton years. This is so weird. You've got a popular president, so you're going to attack him? This is not a good idea. This sort of sounds like desperation. But they're appealing to an old left-wing part of the party conceit, which is the idea that Clintonism is the equivalent of what they call triangulation. As if triangulation is a political philosophy. Triangulation was a tactic in the aftermath of 1994, after he screwed up big-time in his first term--he was not ready for primetime, in my view. He had his back against the wall. He was reduced pathetically to saying, "The President is still relevant." He had himself to blame for that, in part. But he was smart enough to deal with political reality. He had to establish a position that was not only independent of the Republican party, but independent of the left-wing of the Democratic party, which wasn't taking us anywhere--except to doom. Now, I love the left of the party. We need the left of the party. But it can be very frustrating if you're looking for political success. That's the problem with being allergic to politics.

You asked in Rolling Stone, "Is Bush the Worst President Ever?" Can we still have a great president?
Of course we can.

People are cynical about the potential for presidential greatness.
Talk to someone who knows about politics. People's cynicism is borne of alienation from politics. It's not crazy-- it's just corrosive. We don't know who it's going to be. You have to look for potential. FDR was not Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Abraham Lincoln was not even quite Abraham Lincoln in 1860, or we didn't know it. Certainly the chattering classes didn't know it. The person has to rise to the occasion.

Is this one of those occasions?
Yes. The nation has the lowest esteem around the world that it's had in decades. That's not just a matter of people liking us. You cannot do diplomacy if people assume you're lying all the time. You cannot run the world based on mistrust. That's a political fact. It's not a moral category. At home, we're really hurting. It's not the economy, simply. But we've gone back to the Gilded Age in terms of inequality. In the end, this is the function of liberalism in American life -- to save the system from the people who actually run it. The people in power get greedy. They get crazy. Now they need to simmer down.