Clinton. Christie. Cringe.

On Jan. 20, 1981, Michael Deaver, a political aide, peered into a bedroom in Blair House, across from the White House, and said to the man still abed, “It’s 8 o’clock. You’re going to be inaugurated as president in a few hours.” From beneath the blankets, Ronald Reagan said, “Do I have to?”

Some are so eager to be inaugurated in 2017 that the 2016 campaign has begun 28 months before the 1.4 percent of Americans who live in Iowa and New Hampshire express themselves. It is, therefore, not too soon to get a head start on being dismayed. Consider two probable candidates.

Hillary Clinton comes among us trailing clouds of incense, so some acolytes will call it ill-mannered, even misogynistic, to ask: What exactly is it about the condition of the world, and about America’s relations with other nations, that recommends the former secretary of state for an even more elevated office?

Granted, neither she nor any other U.S. official can be blamed for the world’s blemishes. To think otherwise is to embrace what Greg Weiner, an Assumption College political scientist, calls “narcissistic polity disorder.” It is the belief that everything everywhere is about us. Today, it is the delusion that, although events in Egypt and Syria look like violent clashes between Egyptians and Syrians concerning what those countries should be, the events really are mostly about what America has or has not done.

That said, however, this also should be said: Clinton’s accomplishments are not less impressive than those of many who have sought, and some who have won, the presidency. But the disproportion between the thinness of her record and the ardor of her advocates suggests that her gender is much of her significance.

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