A couple of months ago, one of the guests of On Point, our mid-morning national talk-show, mentioned Kirsten Gillibrand as one woman who might make a possible future presidential candidate.<\/p>\n
It struck me at the time as a stretch. <\/p>\n
Gillibrand’s resume at the time was still pretty fragile: <\/p>\n
A one-and-a-half term congresswoman from upstate New York, filling out Hillary Clinton’s term in the US Senate.<\/p>\n
It’s still premature to talk about presidential aspirations, to be sure. <\/p>\n
But Gillibrand’s handling of Harold Ford Jr. and her peculiar political adeptness suggest that there’s a lot more to come.<\/p>\n
Let me recap a little. When Gillibrand ran against (the now incarcerated) John Sweeney in 2006, she led a smart, ruthless, focused campaign.<\/p>\n
Sweeney imploded, but Gillibrand had put herself in a position to capitalize, and maybe even nudge him over the edge of the cliff.<\/p>\n
Then she ran against Essex County’s Sandy Treadwell, who seemed like the perfect moderate, decent Republican to take back a traditional GOP seat.<\/p>\n
She ran circles around him.<\/p>\n
Then, after being picked by Governor David Paterson to fill Hillary Clinton’s seat, Gillibrand faced a firestorm of criticism from downstate Democrats and journalists.<\/p>\n
At the event where Paterson picked her, I heard some of my reporter colleagues from Albany and Manhattan essentially writing her epitaph.<\/p>\n
But one after another, Gillibrand convinced Big City Democrats not to challenge her in this year’s primary.<\/p>\n
And then she carefully, meticulously boxed out Ford. Put simply, she made him look like an idiot.<\/p>\n
At present, she’s running essentially unopposed and unless things change dramatically, Gillibrand will win a full term in the Senate.<\/p>\n
The next steps could be even more interesting. Like Clinton, Gillibrand has played the apprentice, junior senator role carefully.<\/p>\n
She’s stepped out front on one or two issues — backing gays in the military, for example — but only in areas that shore up her political position.<\/p>\n
I’m guessing that, if she wins in November, we’ll see a much higher profile over the next six years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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