Her dreams of the White House denied, her once powerful campaign reduced to lobbying for a vice-presidential nomination on her opponent's ticket, Hillary Clinton may never lay legitimate claim to membership in a political dynasty. But Ms. Clinton, along with her husband and the loyal circle of advisers around her, succumbed to the form of hubris that has felled many a dynasty past: an overarching sense of entitlement to the trappings of power.
Look back at the media coverage of Ms. Clinton's campaign through to the end of 2007, and the same words - "inevitable," "unstoppable" - crop up again and again. Ms. Clinton, or at least the men and women running her campaign, seem to have spent too much time reading their own press clippings. They believed that her experience, her fundraising prowess, and above all else her stature in the Democratic Party assured her of victory. Democrats owed her, and her husband, for the party's only two-term hold on the White House since the 1960s. It was unthinkable that they would turn their backs on her in favour of a greenhorn such as Barack Obama.
Consequently, Ms. Clinton's campaign was outworked and outmanoeuvred by Mr. Obama's. Never could Ms. Clinton, who worked as tirelessly for the nomination as any candidate could, be personally accused of laziness. But her efforts were crippled by a lack of imagination and of foresight. Up against what proved to be the sleekest and most modern nomination campaign in history, her strategists banked on name recognition and 1990s nostalgia.
Emblematic of these failings were Ms. Clinton's fundraising efforts. Adjusting to a new reality in which campaign-finance legislation limits large donations, Mr. Obama recruited members of the high-tech industry to fashion a record-shattering online campaign that helped raised more than $100-million (U.S.) in small personal contributions of less than $200 alone. Ms. Clinton, confident in the network of affluent donors and fundraisers who had subsidized her husband's campaigns, made little effort to update her methods. The result was that, despite raising more money than any earlier nomination candidate, she was unable to compete with her opponent. Ms. Clinton, outspent by ever-increasing margins as the race wore on, was forced to personally finance the latter stages of her campaign and to lead off speeches with unseemly pleas for financial support.
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