PLANK SEPTEMBER 2, 2012
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Because Ryan Lizza’s terrific piece in this week’s New Yorker is filled with such good anecdotes, you might not notice something until you are finished reading it. I certainly didn’t. Lizza reports on the long rapprochement between Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as the White House sought to bring Clinton into the tent and utilize him in this year’s election campaign. Bad feelings, stemming from Obama’s lack of respect for Clinton’s two terms in office, and the nasty 2008 primary campaign, still linger. Thus the need for a concerted West Wing wooing effort.
What is so startling about the piece, which quotes several people close to Clinton, is the underlying assumption among seemingly everyone in his orbit: of course the former president would never jump headfirst into this campaign for the, er, sufficient reason that he thinks it would be good for the country. Instead, heaven and earth must be moved to make poor Bill feel loved.
Patrick Gaspard, the former White House political director...approached Douglas Band, Clinton’s closest political adviser and longtime gatekeeper, with some suggestions about how the former President might help. Band, who, by reputation, has an acute sense for moments of political advantage, tried to explain that you don’t just call up Bill Clinton and tell him to raise money and campaign for you. Band recommended that the two presidents begin by playing golf.
Since that time, Lizza goes on to report, Clinton has indeed been much more helpful. A little later in the piece, Lizza notes:
Regardless of Bill Clinton’s personal feelings about Obama, it didn’t take him long to see the advantages of an Obama Presidency. More than anyone, he pushed Hillary to take the job of Secretary of State. “President Clinton was a big supporter of the idea,” an intimate of the Clintons told me. “He advocated very strongly for it and arguably was the tie-breaking reason she took the job.” For one thing, having his spouse in that position didn’t hurt his work at the Clinton Global Initiative. He invites foreign leaders to the initiative’s annual meeting, and her prominence in the Administration can be an asset in attracting foreign donors. “Bill Clinton’s been able to continue to be the Bill Clinton we know, in large part because of his relationship with the White House and because his wife is the Secretary of State,” the Clinton associate continued. “It worked out very well for him. That may be a very cynical way to look at it, but that’s a fact. A lot of the stuff he’s doing internationally is aided by his level of access.”
Again, and not to sound like a wide-eyed innocent about how politics works, there is not a hint here that Clinton pushed for his wife to take the job because, oh I don’t know, she’d be good at it, and would therefore be an asset to Obama and the country. The only person who suggests Clinton might have pure motives is a senior Obama official who notes that the former president probably saw Obamacare as a good thing. Later on, Lizza adds that “the price” of Clinton’s involvement was Obama’s help in retiring Hillary Clinton’s campaign debts. This might be how Washington functions, but there is no sense from Clinton that, for him, politics is about anything else.
And it’s Hillary’s campaign on which the piece ends. Not this one, but the next one. Doug Band, described above by Lizza as Clinton’s “closest political adviser and longtime gatekeeper” is said to be voting for Romney, apparently because Hillary will have a higher chance of success that way. In the meantime, we are all honored that Bill Clinton has found the current presidential campaign worthy of his time.
8 comments
Well I'll be. I was kind of hoping that "Political Animals" had at least some substantial differences from reality, but I guess maybe Bill is the kind of former pol who obsesses over how his approval ratings are doing rather than how close the country is to achieving his political ideals, even if said motion happens under a different Democratic president.
- chaitless
September 2, 2012 at 11:12pm
Bill Clinton is a supreme political animal. That's how he got 2 terms as president and weathered his impeachment rather easily. You can't expect a player to give up playing. I don't like the guy. He talks himself into corners, while telling himself he's a genius. Plus, he's a Republican on economics. I wish he would go away. I'm glad he did for a while.
- magboy47.
September 3, 2012 at 12:02am
Here's what I consider the most telling comment in Lizza's very fine article: "As a Democratic President facing a resurgent conservative movement, Obama doubtless has come to appreciate what he once criticized as Clinton’s focus on seemingly minor issues, such as advocating for school uniforms in public schools. Although Obama once scoffed at Clinton for his small-bore initiatives, more recently, according to White House officials, he has come to realize that when a President doesn’t control Congress he must find solace in the often limited powers of his office." What Obama doesn't get is that Clinton didn't care about uniforms, it's the image, the optics, that Clinton was attempting to achieve. Uniforms are about conformity and discipline, which by some accounts Clinton (and Democrats generally) lacks. The other comment in Lizza's article that impressed me is that Obama is a loner with only three friends: "Throughout 2008 and 2009, Obama rarely contacted Clinton, a decision that the Clinton circle attributes to Obama’s loner personality. A Democrat deeply familiar with the relationship complained that the press has often made it seem that Clinton harbored “lingering resentments” from the primary battle: “It’s always sort of implied that it’s Clinton’s fault.” The truth, he added, “is that Obama doesn’t really like very many people.” He ticked off the names of some of Obama’s longtime friends: the Whitakers, the Nesbitts, Valerie Jarrett. “And he likes to talk about sports. But other than that he just doesn’t like very many people. Unfortunately, it extends to people who used to have his job.” If one thinks of Clinton as the anti-Nixon (the latter famously uncomfortable around people), then would Obama be considered more like Nixon than Clinton (or Roosevelt for that matter as Roosevelt is remembered for his preference for having his friends - and sometimes his enemies - around him).
- rayward
September 3, 2012 at 7:53am
Ray, sorry but you are ascribing views to Obama that are not in evidence. I don't believe that Obama did his modified form of the dream act because it was a great policy, he did it primarily because it was great politics. The same with his coming out for gay marriage (which had absolutely no effect on policy at all). Now you can disagree with the politics of these as being too much to the left, I don't. I think they helped shore up gay and latino voters at very little cost. As to this cretin Doug Band, for anyone to want to see millions of Americans lose insurance, the inequality gap continue to rise, potential war in Iran, the social safety net shredded all so that Hillary Clinton can have some perceived tactical advantage in four years is beyond loathsome. And he is beyond stupid as well, he should have told Lizza that he was joking, that of course he will enthusiastically support Obama (regardless of what he does in the voting booth). Doesn't he realize that this kind of shit now lives forever on the internet?
- blackton
September 3, 2012 at 12:25pm
Four years after the 08 Primaries, it's nice to see the Clinton team's political acumen remains as bad as ever. They think Hilary will have an easier time if Romney wins? Only those guys would think the repudiation of an Administraton where their gal was the most prominent cabinet minister would be a GOOD thing. It's very, very hard to defeat an incumbent President. (It's happened 3 times in the last century). It's nearly impossible to beat one four years after your party was in power (that happened once in the last century, in 1980). Obama loses now and Clinton runs in four years, every GOP speech would be "We can't go back to the Obama-Hillary policies that left us broken at home and weakened abroad...." Every. Single. Speech. She'd be yoked as practically his running mate. And every Democrat running in four years (Cuomo, O'Malley, etc.) would run on turning the page, moving beyond the old ways, can't go back to 2008, etc. Clinton will be 69 by Election Day 2016. She'll be Reagan old in a party ever more dependent on younger voters who barely remember the Clinton years. Have Obama win, and she can run as the heir apparent for an open seat, able to take credit for some things and avoid blame for others (especially if Term II goes south, for example.) Have him lose, and you're just as much a failure as he is, especially since his team won't forget to shiv all this disloyalty from your camp on the way out the door. It's completely simple, which is why her political team (which ran as bad a campaign in 08 as Obama ran a good one) doesn't get it. Of course, beyond the stupidity of the idea, you know what's real stupid? Telling the press this fact. That's just too stupid for words.
- Crock1701
September 3, 2012 at 1:01pm
Actually, BHO win or loss in 2012, Hillary will not be the 2016 nominee-- nor will Biden. If Romney wins, it will be because the economy obviously collapsed between now and mid-October-- almost cetrtainly due to an EU collapse following a Greek exit from the EU that quickly leads to disaster in Spain and Italy. And BHO is out-- together with anyone associated with his administration (that followed Clintonian, non-Keynesian-to-confused-Keynesian economic advisors). If BHO wins, and the coming economic collapse occurs under his 2013 administration--- good luck to ANY Democrat with THAT fiasco. [Much less those responsible --see previous sentence.] To change the current rightward drift of both parties, both must be decisively defeated to re-organize. A decisive defeat is not in the cards for the Repubs in 2012. It yet could be for the Dems-- but now unlikely. In that case, Dems need wait until 2014-- and suffer the consequences for a long time as Repubs run against the Dem's Hoover for a generation even though Dem's almost-certainly re-organize too-late in 2016.
- drofnats1
September 3, 2012 at 3:25pm
It's a coherent theory, drof, and things certainly might/could work out the way you predict. Thing is, there are a thousand unforeseen circumstances that more likely than not will lead things to work out completely differently from how you predict. Any one predicted future is, almost by definition, less probable than the countless undefined alternatives. Your problem, as I have said previously, is that, like Marx, you attempt to do historical analysis on the future. History has a way of bending such intellectual upstarts over and making them her bitch.
- AaronW
September 3, 2012 at 6:20pm
"Your problem [drof], as I have said previously, is that, like Marx, you attempt to do historical analysis on the future. History has a way of bending such intellectual upstarts over and making them her bitch." Yes, Aaron, history has, indeed, turned Marx into her bitch. But it has also turned him into one of the Marx Brothers. Kind of a comedy act, Das Kapital, an incomprehensible one (I never understood the Marx Brothers either).
- magboy47.
September 3, 2012 at 11:55pm