Maybe Hillary Clinton isn’t George Costanza, after all. A new report from the National Journal’s Ron Fournier notes that while Clinton will obviously agree with President Obama’s policies given her poor political track record and inability to articulate sensible policies on her own, she will also seek to distance herself from the president by denigrating his leadership skills.
Clinton aides, according to Fournier, believe the elderly homeowner’s central challenge in 2016 will be "to convince voters that, unlike Obama, she can deliver on her promises."
"He can blame Republicans and all sort of structural problems – and get sympathy from a lot of us," an anonymous Clinton associate told National Journal. "But voters don't want to hear that. They want shit done. He hasn't gotten shit done."
The key for Clinton will be to talk about Obama’s woefully deficient leadership skills "without overtly insulting the president." But that might be easier said than done. Here’s Fournier [emphasis in original]:
I had coffee recently with an adviser to both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Halfway through an animated conversation about the 2016 presidential campaign, he grabbed my napkin and sketched out how Clinton might contrast herself to Obama. He wrote:
Consensus builder > Loner
Plodder > Celebrity
Listener > Lecturer
Doer > Talker
Interesting stuff. But this person was not able to tell me exactly how Clinton would align herself with the can-do attributes on the left side of is list – except to say "she has a biography and a background that lends itself to the case." Sensitive to the growing influence of the Democratic Party's extreme liberal wing, this adviser said the differences between Clinton and Obama are far less ideological than they are a matter of personality, experience, and leadership qualities.
Interesting stuff indeed. Will Democrats field a primary candidate who will step up the plate and defend the president's legacy as a transformative leader? Maybe. Unfortunately for Clinton, some of these contrasts will be more easy to draw than others.
