WASHINGTON, D.C. Aug. 17 (DPI) – Her opponent is a national embarrassment and all polls predict a landslide. Thus Hillary Clinton is virtually assured to become the nation’s 45th president.  So it’s not too soon to discuss her presidency and what it may look like.

Mrs. Clinton, in public life for 25 years, is no mystery: By all accounts she’s intelligent, methodical, risk-averse and distrusting of almost everyone outside of a small circle of loyalists. In terms of temperament, she reminds some observers of Richard Nixon – not particularly warm, not a natural with people, but politically experienced and somewhat paranoid about her political survival.

Like her husband, and many other presidents, she has exhibited years of personal determination to attain the office. Certainly since her husband left office, she has checked off a list of high-profile public-sector jobs, which even when she occupied them appeared to be stops along the way to higher office.

As Senator of New York she was no driver of legislation, but she got some high marks in constituent affairs and was embraced by her liberal peers. She occupied the office, took few risks, offended few – and got re-elected while spending a record $36 million.

Her years as Secretary of State, though, are marked by her greatest controversies: She used a personal email server while handling classified information, and lied to investigators about it later on. Her role in not coming to the aid fast enough to Christopher Stevens – the Libyan ambassador who with three others was attacked and killed at a consulate in Banghazi – dogged her.  Republicans spent years suggesting that Clinton was responsible for those deaths, an unfair, misplaced accusation.

Her most egregious – and bafflingly inappropriate – behavior came as Secretary of State, when she actively, with her family, solicited and received funds for her Clinton Foundation while in office. That brazenly corrupt behavior, unprecedented for the nation’s top diplomat, should have gotten her expelled and indicted. Instead it became just another example of Washington’s ethical rot, more evidence of the need to elect a political outsider to clean things up.

But with her GOP challenger thoroughly unqualified, and somewhat unhinged to boot, Mrs. Clinton will still win the prize. That she brings so much personal history probably won’t matter to her performance as president.

Yes, much of her administration’s success will depend on whether Republicans maintain majorities in both houses of congress, and it’s difficult to determine, at this writing, if that will happen.

Whatever the configuration on Capital Hill, count on President Clinton to be untroubled and un-rushed – she will bask in her first-ness as the nation’s woman president. And she will likely be given a pass by a pliant media, at least those in the mainstream media. The usual honeymoon will likely last longer than usual.

As such, don’t look for much in her first 100 days other than cabinet appointments, which will preoccupy the press and pundits. Mrs. Clinton is a hardened partisan, and while like many candidates she campaigns from the center, her administration will likely veer left, or simply push a more partisan agenda.

All of the nation’s problems will fester.  She certainly won’t try to simplify the nation’s Byzantine tax code; in fact she may advocate complicating it further, which would benefit Democratic political interests.

She will be unlikely to take meaningful action on revising or repealing Obamacare, her predecessor’s principle domestic achievement, which was passed with zero Republican support. With echos to her efforts to introduce nationalized health care in the early 90s as First Lady, Mrs. Clinton may seek to fold Obamacare into Medicare and Medicaid, and try to push for something resembling single-payer federal health insurance.

It will be interesting to see what a Clinton Administration does in the face of education – the federal government directly funded or abetted more than $1 trillion in student loans since 2008, and the Obama White House has stood by that status quo, save for a recent initiative to expand vocational programs.

In foreign affairs, Mrs. Clinton is likely to humor and parry foreign powers, letting the confrontations come to her. It will be interesting, too, to see how Putin responds to her, and what kind of common ground she can achieve with the Chinese regime.