NYT: Clinton Campaign to Be Built on an 'Obama Third Term'
Saturday, 11 Apr 2015 09:33 PM
By Todd Beamon
Hillary Clinton plans to build her planned quest for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination on a risky strategy that touts a "new chapter" that builds on President Barack Obama's efforts and embraces her 2008 opponent as a key ally and adviser.
Clinton, 67, who is expected to announce her candidacy on Sunday, "is proud of what was accomplished, both as President Obama’s partner on critical issues of national security, and on the progress made on the domestic front," her spokesman, Nick Merrill, told The New York Times.
Merrill added that Clinton's campaign, "would be about laying out her own vision for tackling our toughest challenges."
The Times sums up the dilemma facing Clinton this way: "How can she run for president as her own person, without criticizing the sitting president she served — while her Republican opponents will be working to demonize them both?"
The former secretary of state can take little credit for many of what Obama considers as his strongest domestic accomplishments — Obamacare, for instance — and she opens herself to widespread attacks regarding such foreign policy issues as Israel, Iran, and Russia, the Times reports.
And, then, there's the 2012 Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens and two former Navy SEALs, among others.
The House select Benghazi committee, chaired by South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy, has said it plans to subpoena Clinton for testimony. He announced his decision after news reports that Clinton used a private email account for public business during her four years at the State Department.
But other risks remain in touting an "Obama third term," according to the Times. One is assuming that no more crises erupt during the remaining two years of the Obama administration.
The other is Clinton being careful to not appear as dwelling in the past with her praise of both the current president and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
"How do you leverage the benefits and accomplishments of the last four years but make clear this is an election about the future?" Chris Lehane, a strategist who worked for Bill Clinton and Al Gore, asked the Times.
Republicans, further, stand a strong chance of closely tying Clinton to Obama as the Democrats did in 2008 with Sen. John McCain and incumbent George W. Bush.
"That’s the anchor she’ll be dragging for the next couple of years," Stuart Stevens, who was a top strategist for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, told the Times.
In a general election, Clinton is expected to use Obama to raise money and stump for her in the swing states with large African-American voters that he won in 2008 and 2012, the Times reports.
Clinton, in her White House quest, will be also seeking to defy history, according to the report. Only once since the two-term presidential limit was established in 1951 has a candidate succeeded a president from the same party: Republican President George H. W. Bush, who followed Ronald Reagan in 1989.
According to her advisers, Clinton's strategy was greatly influenced by the GOP's victory in last November's congressional elections, when Obama had record disapproval records of 55 percent.
Subsequent polling, however, has shown that Americans still remain frustrated with Washington gridlock versus making broad changes to President Obama's policies.
"Even people who are ambivalent about President Obama’s record want to elect a president who will do things, rather than a president who will undo things," Geoff Garin, a pollster who was a chief strategist on Clinton’s 2008 campaign, told the Times.
She will walk a fine line, advisers said, working to position herself as "more capable of working across the aisle than the current administration, without directly criticizing" Obama, according to the report.
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