She couldn’t quite shatter the glass ceiling in 2008, but she vowed that the “18 million cracks” she had etched in it would help ensure it would yield in the end. On Sunday, Hillary Clinton surprised nobody at all by confirming that she does indeed intend to be the woman who will do the final smashing. Irrespective of whether Mrs Clinton is the worthiest inaugural Madam, rather than Mr, President, it would surely be wonderful if the 43 men who have held the office since George Washington were at long last followed by one woman.  It is remarkable now to consider that only one generation has passed since the first female nominee for the vice-presidency, Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, could rally the Democratic faithful with the line that “by choosing a woman to run for our nation’s second highest office, you sent a powerful signal to all Americans”. There have been many setbacks in the American culture wars since the 1960s, but look at things across the decades as a whole, and the right has not succeeded in turning back the clock: it is now agreed, everywhere except the reactionary fringe, that it will not do to regard second best as the best that a woman can do. And with four years as her nation’s chief diplomat on the world stage under her belt, Mrs Clinton’s personal gravitas is even harder to quibble with than it might have been in 2008. In that year, candidate Barack Obama hailed his victory in Iowa with the words “they said this day would never come”, and with all the signs being that, even more than last time, Mrs Clinton will seek to make explicit virtue of her gender, there is now the real prospect that one avowedly precedent-breaking presidency could be followed by another.  Symbolically, then, a second Clinton presidency would have much to recommend it – although this does need to be weighed against what it would indicate about the narrowing of the American political class. With Jeb Bush running prominently in the Republican field, hoping to become the third president of the last five to spring from a single family, the eventual choice in 2016 could be between a presidential brother and son on the one hand, and a former first lady on the other. The American dream would not be well served by rival dynasties taking the reins in turn. That prospect has a good deal to do with privileged access to big money thwarting equality of opportunity, and the Clinton campaign’s reported ambitions to spend an extraordinary $2bn persuading the people to embrace their woman only underlines the plutocratic threat to the world’s proudest democracy.  The more substantive prospect of a Hillary Clinton administration is harder to gauge – and to a remarkable extent, given that she is by far the most prominent and the most widely predicted of Democratic candidates for next year. On the economy, she emphasises the importance of middle-class wages, but then no politician who wants to win is going to dismiss them. Fewer are confident about how to reverse the four-decade-long stagnation in middle America’s pay, and in the particular case of Mrs Clinton, there are few hints even as to how far – or not – she is ready to rethink the free-market thrust of her husband’s third way. On foreign policy, her spell as secretary of state leaves her with a somewhat clearer record – she is associated with a rather more interventionist approach than Mr Obama. Her admirers would describe her as a happy mix of the smart and the muscular; doubters will recall her vote for the ruinous invasion of Iraq in 2003, and prefer the Obama-esque oath to first do no harm. On the more positive side, she brings a style of politics – a willingness to get stuck in and haggle – which could be right for the time. After Mr Obama’s lofty rhetoric ran up against the immovable obstinacy of an entrenched Republican-majority Congress, America may be ready for leadership by prose rather than through poetry.  It was welcome, as well as expected, that Mrs Clinton would lob her hat into the ring. But with so much unknown about how she would intend to govern, it would be best if the Democratic primaries were fought with the sort of vigour – ideally by candidates that would include other women – that could force her to spell out her plans. Political contests are, almost invariably, to be preferred to political coronations.
Editorial: The case for a first Madam President is inarguable. The case for a second President Clinton is still to be made