All Clinton, all the time

What was noticeable and important about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) blitz through five Sunday talk shows last weekend was not what she said but the fact that the marathon took place at all — that, and her treatment by the anchors.

Clinton is now so far ahead of her rivals in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination that her campaign has acquired an air of destiny. It has not yet, and perhaps could not yet have, reached the point at which her rivals tacitly acknowledge that they are merely going through the motions.

But still, there is a whiff about the Clinton campaign of what George W. Bush had back in 1999 and which prompted a beleaguered Dan Quayle, at the Ames, Iowa, straw poll in 1999, to ask one of his fellow also-rans how they could “stop this.” “This” was the Bush juggernaut. They never did stop it, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Clinton is matched against more impressive candidates than Quayle, but as The Washington Post reported Monday, her “trip through the Sunday gantlet was designed to solidify the impression that [she] is strong, indomitable and all but inevitable as the Democratic nominee and next president.”

There are four months to go until the Feb. 5 national primary, so there is still time for Clinton to be overhauled — but only just. Her double-digit leads over every other candidate are so long-standing — her nearest rival, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), appears not to be narrowing the gap — that it would probably take a major scandal or blunder to knock Clinton off course. Simple good campaigning by her competitors is unlikely to cut it.

All of this was apparent, though unacknowledged, on the Sunday shows. Clinton was asked some soft questions, such as about being Eisenhower to Bush’s Truman. And she was not interrupted much, being allowed to reel off great chunks of her healthcare policy speech. (Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not an opportunity granted to candidates understood not to have more modest chances of victory.)

 The core of the Post’s report Monday was about the fact that “Clinton illustrated her ability to talk. And talk. And talk.” The simple fact of being on all five shows was a campaign coup in itself, suggesting her unofficial anointment by the networks. Current-affairs shows are news programs, focusing on what is new. There is a new level of recognition that Clinton is heading for the nomination, and no one looks like stopping her.