With the buzz growing about a potential 2016 presidential bid by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, strategists are beginning to consider how she will spin her service in the Obama administration as a positive if President Obama is defeated by Mitt Romney in the fall.
Apparently it’s not that hard: One strategist said that Obama, fighting a crushing economy that threatens to make him a one-term president, would be left with a legacy of potentially just one major victory, foreign policy, especially if the Supreme Court guts Obamacare.
And guess who will get or at least share the credit for a winning foreign policy? Hillary Clinton.
“He will be left with a skimpy legacy except on foreign policy and that’s only because of Hillary,” said a strategist. “So she can say she repaired U.S. relations under Obama and helped balance budgets when her husband was president. That’s pretty effective,” said the political insider.
Obama, said an official, gets the credit for improving relations with foreign nations in the wake of the War on Terror. But a Clinton advocate said that unlike former President Jimmy Carter, who personally built his foreign policy record through the Camp David Middle East peace talks, it’s been Clinton who’s done most of the international spade work, not Obama.
Clinton has shrugged off a second presidential try, but her fans are talking her up now in part to separate her from the administration as more signals point to a tough reelection fight in the fall.
They see her as the frontrunner in 2016 against heavyweights such as New York Gov. Mario Cuomo because of her depth of government experience and her high popularity.
The buzz around Clinton comes as her husband has been undercutting Obama’s reelection efforts, most recently urging Washington to extend some of the Bush tax cuts because the nation is back in a recession.
