Hillary Clinton should announce very soon that she is running for president in 2016. On the Republican side, candidates' abundance promises a long and wild primary campaign. On the Democratic side, Clinton should not face any serious rivalry. The Democrats' (most to the left) champion, the senator of Massachussetts, Elizabeth Warren, repeated many times that she would not run for primaries. Clinton nevertheless has to take into account a radicals' fringe susceptible to play up her in her own party. What is their capacity of nuisance on the American political scene?

Since her departure from the State Department in 2013, Hillary Rhodam Clinton continues to fascinate the press which scrutinizes her slightest actions, looking forward to an announcement of her candidacy for the 2016 presidential elections. For years nevertheless, the former First Lady kept her distances with the journalists. This notorious mistrust could turn out problematic if she confirms her candidacy.

Poll numbers are the life blood of politics these days. Anything expressed in digits has a claim to truth that assertions without digits cannot make. They inspire confidence - especially among those aspiring to public office - that they actually understand what public sentiment is.

There are moments in life when you receive an unmistakable sign that the game is over. That it’s time to fold your tent, to pull up stakes, to pack it in, to furl the flag, to trim the sails, to let go of a lost cause. At best, to wait for next year. In the extreme, to write it off permanently. And if one chooses to breast the tide, to do so stoically.

Accountability is on the endangered species list. No - not the word. Indeed, “accountability” reverberates around the electronic ether almost as frequently as “thwarking.” It is the reality of persons, especially public persons, taking responsibility for acts of malfeasance in ways that entail exemplary punishment and personal costs.

Hillary Clinton has been enthroned as the presumptive next President of the United States - by the celebrity mongers, by the trendy Hollywood set, by the media, by the pundits, by the big donors, by Congressional Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer and by the Las Vegas odds-makers. The crystallization of a consensus three years before the event is as intriguing as the questions about what sort of president she would make. 

The near meltdown of the United States government evoked worldwide dismay and confusion. Both reactions were especially acute among America’s well-wishers. For not only would they have suffered the consequences of a global economic crisis but they also feel dependent on the probity of American leadership. That dependence may stem in part from their own failures to assume their reasonable share of responsibility for sustaining an orderly international system - a state of affairs remarkably unaffected by the costly flaws in Washington’s custodianship over the past several years. It is nonetheless real.