Legal Commentary

I didn't watch Hillary Clinton's speech last night; I'm not a huge pomp-and-circumstance fan, and in any event I was busy spooking myself (not for the first time) with Jacob's Ladder, and seeing with a parent's eyes just how beautiful Macauley Culkin was as a young child.  I understand that the notices have been quite positive and that the consensus was that she made much more than a tepid effort at salving the wounds of her disappointed supporters.

On the other hand, the second paragraph of the Times coverage of the speech today was this:

Mrs. Clinton . . . also took steps on Tuesday ? deliberate steps, aides said ? to keep the door open to a future bid for the presidency. She rallied supporters in her speech, and, at an earlier event with 3,000 women, described her passion about her own campaign. And her aides limited input on the speech from Obama advisers, while seeking advice from her former strategist, Mark Penn, a loathed figure in the Obama camp.

The story doesn't give much evidence of Clinton's efforts to keep the door open for 2012/2016 beyond what it offers in that paragraph.  But that first sentence is telling.  When "aides" are telling the paper of record that their boss took "deliberate steps" to keep open her route to the presidency, two things seem clear: it is unlikely that the aides are freelancing, and it seems evident that someone in her camp wanted this to be the second paragraph of the story. 

Does that erase the job she did with her speech?  No, and by all accounts she went to the mat for the victor in her speech.  But it does suggest that, as usual with the Clintons, it's still all about . . . the Clintons.