Worst-Kept Secret in Washington: 'President Hillary Clinton' in 2016

The worst-kept secret in Washington these days is that Hillary Rodham Clinton will become the 45th president of the United States on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. That will also give her the distinction of being the first female chief executive in the White House in 238 years.
 
That's a prediction, of course, but according to Clinton's frenetic activity lately, she isn't hiding the fact that she is going after the top prize. She will be 67 on Oct. 26. She is showing the stamina of a person half her age.
 
Clinton has so far neither denied nor confirmed that she will be a Democratic Party candidate for the presidency. The Democratic Party itself is supposed to be divided on how much support its membership would throw to Clinton when and if she formally declares herself as a bonafide candidate.
 
But, at the same, she has been in and out of the news almost weekly in the past 18 months. On radio and television talk shows. In newspaper columns and at public town-hall-like gatherings.  She also crisscrossed the country promoting her book, Hard Choices.
 
Like her husband, former President Bill Clinton, Hillary says what she is thinking at the moment--even though much of it is hardly newsworthy.  But once in awhile, she gets off a good one.  Like her recent interview published in The Atlantic magazine.
 
In that interview with veteran reporter Jeffrey Goldberg, Hilton criticized President Barack Obama on his so-called foreign policy. She said he didn't recognize two years ago that arming the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad might have saved thousands of innocent lives. Now new terrorist groups have entered the conflict, confident the U.S. will not directly intervene in the fighting.
 
Hilton also voiced her support for Israel against its 40-day war with the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza. She supported the tough stance taken by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That was on obvious cupcake offered for coming election support from the strong Jewish lobby in the United States and abroad.
 
Her press secretary Nick Merrill has been quoted as saying Clinton later phoned Obama to tell him her published views were not meant as a direct personal attack on him.  Huh?  What were they meant to be then?
 
Clinton has never said she was misquoted at any time in The Atlantic article.
 
Lately she has been characterized by some of her critics as a war-monger.  "George Bush in drag" is how one critic described her in a recent CBS News online posting of reader comments.  That was meant to be a reference to former President George W. Bush's hard-line stance against terrorists.
 
Clinton was Obama's secretary of state during his first term as president. She resigned in early 2013 but gave no specific reason at that time for doing so. She ran unsuccessfully against Obama for the party's nomination in 2008.
 
And the Republican Party, of course, doesn't see Hillary as a candidate at all in 2016.  Their own hopefuls?  All phantoms at this time.