My must read of the day is "Our Weird Hillary Clinton Obsession," by Robin Lakoff, in Politico:
Our obsession is especially weird because it is virtually unique in the history of American political campaigning. This kind and amount of curiosity about a potential candidate’s intentions practically never arises—especially 2 ½ years before the election itself. And none of the other potential 2016 contenders—not Jeb Bush, not Rand Paul, not Joe Biden—has been subjected to anything remotely like the attention lavished daily on Hillary. […]
Because interpretive power is political power, and we are uncertain how we feel about women having that power, we over-interpret Clinton and insist that she be interpretable in ways we would not expect of a male pre-candidate. She is criticized for writing a book that doesn’t deal with her stands on issues (as a candidate’s should), even though the book is intended as a memoir (focusing on the past) rather than as a candidate’s statement (focusing on the future). At the same time, she is criticized for trying, unsuccessfully, to sound like a candidate: She is rusty; she is evasive.
People on book tours are seldom so described. If she decides to run, she will likely produce a candidate’s statement, which would appropriately be evaluated as such. But it’s unreasonable to tell an author what kind of book she should have written and judge the book on the basis of how badly it does what a book of that genre is supposed to do. (It is not unreasonable to think of Hard Choices as a possible pre-candidacy statement, but it is unreasonable to take our suspicions farther than that.)
Here’s why we care: In the field of potential Democratic presidential nominees Hillary Clinton is consistently found to be 50 points above her closest challenger. The Republican field is far less conclusive, but in a hypothetical match up with each of those contenders Clinton typically beats them all.
Clinton, for all intents and purposes, is the declared Democratic candidate. The Democratic Party treats her as that, with 60 lawmakers endorsing her unofficial candidacy. Consequently, it’s logical that Clinton’s opponents would also treat her as the nominee.
Hillary Clinton is not simply one of "those kinds of authors." To pretend otherwise is wishful thinking, and for the press to ignore her as she embarks on a de-facto campaign tour would be negligent. News does not materialize on a timeline, and Hillary Clinton is the most serious contender for 2016. We should be scrutinizing her every move.