This time, Clinton’s campaign is pretty good

When it comes to running a campaign, Hillary Clinton doesn’t make the same mistake twice. Compared with Donald Trump’s operation, hers looks brilliant. It looks pretty good compared with her 2008 campaign, too.

Team Clinton faces its toughest test to date this week in how it manages the lingering tensions of her primary battle with Sen. Bernie Sanders at the Democratic convention. The job became harder when WikiLeaks released a cache of Democratic National Committee emails suggesting the party was hostile to Sanders and was weighting the scales for Clinton. Under mounting pressure to resign, party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said she would play a limited role in the convention and step down when it ends.

Admittedly, the bar to run a better campaign than Trump 2016 — or Clinton 2008 — is low.

The most obvious contrast this year is Clinton’s selection and introduction of Sen. Tim Kaine as her vice presidential pick. The process was so buttoned down that though he seemed the obvious choice, it wasn’t leaked. The first Clinton- Kaine event was a well- reviewed rally in Miami, where she praised him specifically and at length. He then told America about himself, demonstrated his Spanish- language skills and showed off his ability to seem like a nice next- door neighbor even while lacing into Trump.

Trump canceled his initial event to introduce VP pick Mike Pence. Leaks from the Trump camp suggested he was having second thoughts about the Indi- ana governor. When Trump finally committed, the event was at his office building. He talked twice as long as Pence and mostly about himself, and if photographers weren’t quick, they’d have missed the seconds the pair were in the same frame. The music said it all — “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.” Team Trump quickly abandoned its initial Trump-Pence logo because it had a distinctly X- rated look. And the Rolling Stones are demanding that Trump stop using their music.

Could a campaign do any worse? Maybe.

Clinton’s 2008 operation was a morass of conflict, indecision, bad decisions, constant talk about strategy and leaks about all of the above. There was the decision to bypass caucuses in “red” generalelection states, one that arguably lost the nomination for Clinton as Barack Obama vacuumed up delegates in places like Idaho.

For all her 2016 campaign’s professionalism, there is a glaring failure — how Clinton and her campaign have handled the investigations from her decision as secretary of State to use a private email server. Her default response has been defensiveness, and evasion. An explicit mea culpa at the first presidential debate, one that makes clear Clinton understands the risks she took and the mistakes she made, would be helpful. Kaine is the one partner she could have picked with gravitas and experience approaching her own. Maybe he can persuade her to do what she has spent months resisting.