Personnel is policy, as the saying in Washington goes. That’s why, when President Clinton’s former chief-of-staff John Podesta went to serve as an adviser to President Obama in the White House, it hinted at continuity between the policies of two administrations led by two apparently very different Democrats.
It is therefore telling that Podesta plans to leave the White House in February so he can help run Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. The campaign has not been officially launched, but Podesta’s move, announced Tuesday, means we know something highly significant about it. Assuming Clinton seeks the office her husband left in 2001, she will be running not only for a third Clinton term, but also for a third Obama term.
This is not the impression she wishes to convey. She has for some time felt the need to distance herself from Obama. For although he came to prominence for his talk of uniting America, and briefly persuaded the nation that he could do it, he has become one of the nation’s most divisive figures. This is not because of race, as some of his most cynical supporters suggest, but because he is relentlessly partisan, never more comfortable than distorting the motives and policies of those who disagree with him. He has become known as the Great Divider, and his high public disapproval contributed heavily to Democrats’ resounding defeat in the 2014 midterm elections.
Thus, Clinton has now criticized Obama’s economic stewardship, which Podesta, her adviser to be, has helped shape — and even his foreign policy, which she personally conducted as his Secretary of State. But it will be awkward for Clinton, should she run, to disown the man who built the most successful Democratic coalition of modern times.
After all, before Obama, the last Democrat to win a popular-vote majority in a presidential campaign was Jimmy Carter in 1976. Mrs. Clinton’s husband never won a majority, not even in his decisive victory over Bob Dole in 1996.
More importantly, President Clinton won with a coalition that has disintegrated and cannot be revived — carrying West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Louisiana. None of these states are winnable for a Democratic presidential candidate any more. The Clinton coalition could bank on votes from die-hard Southern white Democrats who are mostly now dead or have become staunch Republicans.
Clinton probably cannot win by counting on either her husband’s defunct coalition or on Obama’s. She has to build her own. And part of doing that means she must distance herself from Obama in the public eye, yet at the same time avoid alienating the low-propensity voters who got involved in politics specifically because of Obama.
This will be difficult. Podesta is a canny political operator and his new boss may turn out to be a formidable candidate. They certainly have a well-oiled machine, and have won more political battles than they have lost. But after having worked together in three decades and done their time in the current administration, they face a serious challenge in persuading voters that they represent anything fresh and attractively different.
