Why Hillary Is Hiding in Plain Sight on Her Big Day

The possibly impossible challenge of selling one of the most famously ambitious people on the planet as someone who wants to be president for you rather than for her.
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If you’re Hillary Clinton, the most frustrating part of running for President must be the popular conception that you have a monopoly on ambition, egotism, and cold-blooded calculation. There will be more than a dozen, perhaps even 20 or more, human beings who will attempt in the next 577 days to convince a plurality of American voters to make them the most powerful person on the planet. But only Hillary is the one who, before she has even moved into her new offices in Brooklyn, has the neighbors greeting her with this.

Ambitious … calculating .. secretive … these are adjectives that describe every person who has ever run for president and every person who ever will, but with Hillary, they stick. “Saturday Night Live” did a whole cold-open sketch last night imagining the backstage intrigue behind today’s announcement—Hillary is such a first-name-only driver of political intrigue that the biggest comedy show in the country just opened an episode with a full six minutes about her constructing a Tweet—and the undeniable takeaway from the segment was “she wants this too, too much.” And of course she does! What kind of lunatic would run for president—twice—who didn’t?