David Sirota comments on something that I think is going to become an issue come January — something that ties into the concerns I raised yesterday about Barack Obama and progressivism.
Basically, Sirota raised concerns about Bill Clinton’s potential impact on an Obama presidency, given some comments that Clinton made yesterday that had Fox and some conservatives talking about Obama as offering a third Clinton term. (I’m not sure that Clinton was implying that, but impressions are everything in politics.)
Sirota, who spoke on Fox about the Clinton speech, rightly concludes that “Clinton’s entire narrative is the starting gun of what will be a very intense effort by the larger pool of Clintonites to infiltrate an Obama administration.” That, were it to happen, it would undercut Obama’s argument of change and populist economics.
If we can step back and look honestly at the economic situation, then we have to admit (as I admitted on Fox) that Clinton officials had a hand in the key deregulatory policies that led to the financial meltdown, and the key free-market fundamentalist policies (rigged trade deals, corporate tax loopholes, etc.) that are hollowing out the economy. These same people are now going to try to use an Obama presidency to reassume the posts they had in a Clinton administration. And the fact that, according to Bill Clinton, Obama is already potentially letting them – well, that’s really disturbing (if unsurprising).
The hope is with a big enough election mandate, Obama will feel more empowered to sweep out the Clintonites and start fresh – both in terms of personnel, and in terms of ideology. Because if he doesn’t, not only could it stunt his policy agenda, it could also create political problems for him. The media – and especially outlets like Fox News – are going to be looking for weak points that allow them to tar and feather an Obama presidency as just “more of the same.”
Obama, in winning the primaries and potentially the general electon, will have taken control of the Democratic Party — and, by extension, will have relegated Bill Clinton to the history books.
But , as I wrote yesterday, there is a tension apparent in Obama’s political makeup that has him shifting between the progressive/liberal and Clinton wings of the party. Which is why, as I wrote yesterday and as Sirota writes today
it’s important for progressives to start laying down markers about what we should and should not cheer on – what we should and should not expect from an Obama adminstration. In my opinion, it doesn’t help Obama win the election, nor will it help his administration, to be painted as a mere second act for the last Democratic administration.
Making the Obama presidency the third term of Bill Clinton’s presidency is both substantively inappropriate to the times, and politically dangerous/tone deaf. I hope that’s not the path a President Obama takes, should he win the White House.
And it’s a path we shouldn’t allow him to take.
Hank Kalet 