The pressures facing Clinton

The following is an excerpt from an editorial in The Guardian:

Although domestic politics has framed the U.S. presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton’s election would be greeted with relief and optimism in most world capitals other than Moscow and Damascus. Despite her hawkish outlook, she will have no alternative but to recognize that the 21st century no longer always looks to the United States as an indispensable hegemon, whether benign or threatening. Clinton should focus on U.S. soft, not hard, power — dealing with climate change and working out fairer global trade arrangements.

If Clinton is elected she must recognize the mood without pandering to its demons.

She needs to bring the bold ambition about the role of government to this era that Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt each did in earlier times.

She has the intelligence, the seriousness and the experience to do this. The U.S. presidency is hugely powerful: 10 per cent of all posts in federal government are allocated on the basis of political patronage. Clinton offers the best chance of ensuring those jobs go to competent people. Her choice of treasury secretary in the aftermath of the banking crisis will be watched with special care, as will an olive branch appointment to Sen. Bernie Sanders of the kind that President Barack Obama made to her in 2008.

She offers the greatest hope that the Supreme Court defends abortion rights and looks again at issues like campaign finance as well as background checks on gun owners. Yet America will soon find itself weakened at home and abroad if the new president is as badly served by congress as Obama has been for most of his tenure.

There is a danger, if Clinton wins, that the Republicans will relapse into the Hillaryhatred that has marked them for a quarter century.

The tragedy of this election is that, to become president, Clinton has had to talk more radically than she actually felt. To be an effective president she may be compelled to act more conservatively than she now says she wants to do.

David Holland PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER DIRECTORS: John A. Honderich Chair Campbell R. Harvey Martin E. Thall Elaine B. Berger Daniel A. Jauernig Alnasir Samji David Holland Paul Weiss Linda Hughes Dorothy Strachan Daryl Aitken

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