The Clintons’ Comeback

While Obama is weakened by the crisis and Republicans are mired in their primaries, the Clintons are the stars of Washington.

Each year, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year is a personality who, from the American point of view — which is not always ours — has marked U.S. affairs with action and charisma or, sometimes, with the hatred that he or she inspires. In 2011, Time managed not to make such choice; instead, it chose a concept, and a very respectable one: that of the protestor, or rather the angry disputer, an idea that covers the very dissimilar realities ranging from those indignant toward Wall Street to the Arab Spring revolutionaries to the anti-Putin protestors of the past few days. Is this choice slightly disappointing because it is so politically correct? Another honor has captivated the attention of the U.S. political class, one bestowed by the Washington Post, which has established a sort of 2011 Richter scale for a certain number of personalities and corporate bodies. The daily paper classified them based on whether 2011 was good, the best or the worst year for them.

The Red Light Congress

The most dreadful prize was won by Congress. The Washington Post notes that the U.S. representatives already have a bad reputation. Their inability to rise above their pathetic squabbles while the United States’ reputation for economic power hangs in the balance earned them unprecedented disapproval: 75 percent of Americans hope that the current members of Congress do not aspire to another term. According to the voters, their mistakes on budgetary matters has caused them to lose the confidence, already weakened by the subprime mortgage crisis, that, for the past 60 years, the world has had in the stability of the American economy.

This was also a bad year for Barack Obama. On the verge of his second term and after succeeding in passing his health care law, the president hoped that the situation would allow him to announce a revival supported by growth and a general decrease in unemployment. Internal factors and the European sovereign debt crisis paralyzed the revival, and America’s improvement is very weak and fragile. Even if the unemployment figure improves — it is less than 9 percent now — it is not enough to compensate for the social and individual tragedies provoked by the 2008 crisis.

Gingrich: Back from the Dead

If the presidential election year doesn’t turn out as well as Obama would have hoped, it seems he may benefit from the dilemmas in which his Republican adversaries find themselves in choosing their favorite for the White House. Since the beginning of 2011, in the colorless and vapid debates, they successfully grilled five or six potential candidates before Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich broke away just before the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary, the first official rounds of the campaign. As for Gingrich, an old bird from the Clinton years, he has so many black marks on his reputation (dubious finances, scandalous affairs, suspicious friendships) that it is miraculous to see him at this stage of the race. That’s why the Washington Post considered 2011 a good year for Newt Gingrich.

But the U.S. capital’s daily paper named unexpected winners this year, at least from the European perspective. The Washington Post essentially believes that the Clintons have had the best year. It doesn’t only refer to Hillary, who the newspaper is pleased to recognize for the incredible energy that she brings to the service of American diplomacy. She is credited with some 60 trips abroad and not much less than 600,000 miles traveled. Above all, the Post acknowledges her positive actions in flying in to help Libya, taking a stance against Mubarak, keeping a distance from Putin and visiting Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi.

Chelsea’s Transformation

After Hillary, we can’t forget Bill. The former president, who had trouble finding his place in Hillary’s 2008 electoral campaign, seems to have become the sage of the Democratic Party and an expert in campaign strategy. His book “Back to Work” has even become the bible of those combating the foolishness of the tea party.

And finally, the icing on the cake is the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea. People remembered her as a kid with a slightly unattractive physique. She is in the process of becoming a very popular TV hostess of the show “Rock Center” on NBC. We haven’t finished hearing about the Clintons. Without a doubt we’ll see them in the next round: 2016.