On whether Democrats made a mistake

Peggy Noonan makes some entirely fair and reasonable criticisms of Obama in her actually quite measured column today, like this:

Mr. Obama is starting to look unlucky, and–file this under Mysteries of Leadership–that is dangerous for him because Americans get nervous when they have a snakebit president. They want presidents on whom the sun shines...

...Mr. Carter needed to be able to point at Nixon and say, "I'm not him. He dirty, me clean. You hate him, like me." Carter's presidency was given coherence and meaning by Nixon, Watergate, and without it that presidency seemed formless. Mr. Obama, in the same way, needs Mr. Bush standing in the corner like Boo Radley, saying "Let's invade something!"

One might quibble here and there, but these are basically fair observations. I'd say it's also fair to point out that Noonan's boss, Ronald Reagan, needed Carter in the same way. It's worth remembering today that though conservatives have painted Reagan's eight years as uninterrupted sunshine, he was actually under 50% for a good chunk of his first term: about mid-40s at a similar 18-month juncture. And Republicans pilloried Carter remorselessly, a lot more than Democrats are doing to Bush today.

Anyway, "snake-bit" isn't inapposite (although I also have to say now that I re-read it that she dwells excessively on the fact that Obama moved his hands too much during Tuesday night's speech and doesn't even mention the actual $20bn that the president pried out of another set of hands, BP's). But then she writes this:

But it's also true that among Democrats—and others—when the talk turns to the presidency it turns more and more to Hillary Clinton. "We may have made a mistake. She would have been better." Sooner or later the secretary of state is going to come under fairly consistent pressure to begin to consider 2012.

Maybe I run in strange circles, but I actually haven't heard very much of that at all. It's a pointless hypothetical in some ways. But admittedly pointless hypotheticals are fun, so: would she have done better?

I'd assume she'd have made judgments similar to Obama's on the auto makers, the bailout and the stimulus. I'd assume she'd have met with similar recalcitrance from the Republicans. I'd assume she would not have passed a big health bill, which would have been both good (she'd have been more focused on the economy) and bad (no historic health bill, though I admit that's "bad" only to liberals). I'd assume she'd have been not very different on Afghanistan.

I'd assume she'd have been a little more conservative, to put it coarsely, on certain matters. On the economy she'd have been more of a deficit hawk, probably: some political advantages and some substantive disadvantages there. The Middle East policy would have been different.

One can probably assume that her political operation would have been somewhat (but I'd say only somewhat) more sure-footed. She'd have had more people with White House experience around her. On the other hand, she was the chief executive of a campaign, and it made some really bad miscalculations and was inferior to Obama's, in that Obama's won. I would say she probably would have avoided certain dust-ups like the one over the KSM civilian trial.

It's a fun game, but she is not running in 2012, short of really massive catastrophes. Lanny Davis might wish it. But it doesn't seem realistic on a host of levels to me.