If you only read one column today, let it be Lisa Schiffren's brilliant and impassioned one on Hillary Clinton's path to greatness. You read that right.
With her nomination for the presidency imperiled (Lisa doesn't think she has a realistic shot at being president), she could stand up and help defeat what will be a disastrous deal for the United States and Israel with Iran.
Three mysterious women visit Hillary (guess who they are–I got it wrong and was surprised when Lisa finally identified them) in an empty ballroom after a fundraiser and chide her for supposedly having withheld opposition research on President Obama in 2008, but they give her the chance for greatness now:
It is our task to inform you that the position you have lusted after for thirty years will not be yours. But we are here to offer you a different deal. . . .
t’s best if we are frank. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as things stand you will be remembered, if at all, as the unpopular, power hungry, corrupt wife of a popular president, who twice sought her own power and lost.
But we can ensure that you are not a footnote, if that, in the history books. We can guarantee you a place greater than being the first female nominee – or even the first woman president.
Hillary… we know that you are not a friend of the Jews. No, don’t bother…we’ve always known. It’s okay. You will be more effective because you are not our friend.
We are deeply concerned – worried sick is more like it – about your President’s deal with the leaders of Iran.
Governor Huckabee is close in his evaluation. He is a minister, given to dramatic pronouncements. No one likes hearing that an American President and Secretary of State are all but sending Jews to the ovens. Of course, a nuclear fireball will annihilate Israel faster than any gas or oven.
Jordan, Syria, the Saudi Kingdom – they are vulnerable too. The remaining Christians of the Levant, the small tribes, the Kurds, Turks and anyone else with whom the Ayatollahs take issue, will all be vulnerable once they have these weapons. The nuclear arms race of our nightmares has already begun. . . .
The deal is vague in places, but it has carefully precluded Israel’s options for defending herself from a nuclear Iran. They have made it difficult for your Congress to stop matters. And the language that Obama and Secretary Kerry now use toward American Jews who wish to defeat this deal – is ugly by any historic standard.
We need to halt this tragedy. We need someone with enough clout to shut this deal down by force of reason and her own power. She must be a liberal Democrat. She must be credible enough so that Democratic Senators and Congressmen have cover when they vote against the President. It’s possible that Senator Charles Schumer could do it. But Chuck cannot grasp anything bigger than his own status. He is not capable of sacrifice, or greatness, even now, when the possibility reaches out to him. He will vote with us, and do nothing to win. . . .
If you do this, Hillary, you win the world’s eternal respect and gratitude. If you reveal the treachery against American power, constitutional processes, and the hidden anti-Israel mechanisms of the deal; if you take a firm stand, the truth will become clear. This deal is a time bomb. It is a blank check to crazy Ayatollahs, who have guaranteed noting in return except terror and destruction.
Of course, it is unlikely that it will come to pass that Hillary Clinton will defeat the Iran deal.
Meanwhile, Bill McGurn tries a similar tactic with Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat who has come out against the deal but is not expected to do anything to affect other Democratic votes. In "Chuck Schumer, Hero?" McGurn asks the senior senator from New York to model himself on Scoop Jackson, the liberal Democrat from Washington who was liberal on domestic issues but who was never fooled by the Soviet Union.
It is likely that neither of these political figures will seize fate's proffered glory.
We are in an age of resumes rather than heroism.
But both these columns remind us that we can dream of what it would be like to have a better political class.
And the irony is that both would burnish their names for history if they took Lisa's and Bill's challenges.