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Jewish World Review March 26 , 2012/ 4 Nissan, 5772 A Clinton-Bush matchup in 2016? By Ann McFeatters
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Tired of politics 2012? How about politics 2016? I know. I know. It makes me shudder, too. But you should know that most of the politicos in Washington are convinced that Hillary Rodham Clinton will run for president in four years. There is a ton of evidence. She has insisted that she will not serve as secretary of state for a full second term if President Barack Obama is re-elected. That will free her up to de-rust her "Hillary 2008" machinery and start running again. She let it be known that she did not want the soon-to-be-vacant job of head of the World Bank. She has flatly squelched the idea that she would replace Vice President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket this year. The extraordinary fundraiser for the Clintons, Terry McAuliffe, has been biding his time, not raking in the huge bucks for Obama this time as many expected, leading to the notion he is readying a campaign for Hillary Clinton. She is experimenting with yet another longer, younger-looking hairstyle. (She had 36 while first lady.) She wins praise from Republicans and Democrats alike for doing a good job as the nation's top diplomat. Many think America is finally ready for a woman president, particularly an experienced one who will be just 69 in 2016 and still excites like a rock star. There are legions of women eager for her to run, from her successor in the Senate, Kirsten Gillibrand, to the incomparable actress Meryl Streep. If Clinton runs, she would be the instant front-runner. Ed Rollins, the Republican political consultant who briefly ran Michele Bachmann's unsuccessful bid to be the first female president, says he is convinced Clinton will run and that she could very likely win. Most decisively, Clinton has put the full force of the State Department behind a new search to find out what happened to famed aviator Amelia Earhart, who disappeared over the South Pacific 75 years ago. Now this is really cool stuff. What a credential finding Earhart's plane would be! Earhart remains a fascinating mystery to millions, especially women. Clinton herself was inspired by the Earhart story as a young teen to write NASA asking if she could join the space program. (She was told it did not accept females.) A new underwater search for Earhart's long-missing plane is being advised by U.S. oceanographer Bob Ballard, who found the wreckage of Titanic. This summer, researchers from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, led by its founder, Ric Gillespie, hope to find her plane based on a picture taken in 1937 by a British soldier. The photo shows what appears to be part of an airplane like Earhart's in the ocean off a remote island in the Pacific nation of Kiribati. Gillespie believes Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, survived a crash but died on the nearby uninhabited island. Announcing her backing of the project to find out once and for all what happened to Earhart and Noonan, Clinton said: "She gave people hope and she inspired them to dream bigger and bolder. When she took off on that historic journey, she carried the aspirations of our entire country with her." Clinton herself has said she is out of politics, leading to the expectation she will go to work with her husband on his foundation. But many believe a woman with her ambition, skills and work ethic would find it hard to turn down a chance to be the nation's first woman president. Now here's the weird part. A lot of Republicans think Jeb Bush, the former GOP governor of Florida who finally but tepidly endorsed Mitt Romney, will be the front-runner for the Republican nominee for president in 2016 if Obama wins re-election. The nation has had 24 years of a Bush or a Clinton as president or vice president. That could increase to 28 or more if a Bush or a Clinton wins in 2016. Everything old is new again.
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