Former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor — and current blogger — Robert Reich has a bit of advice for Democratic presumptive nominee Senator Barack Obama: don’t pick Hillary Clinton to be your Vice President.
Reich points out that just when the American public should be focused on Obama, it’s once again a case of the news focus being on Hillary Clinton — and he warns that this won’t change if she’s selected to be Obama’s Veep.
She has clearly signaled her desire to [be on the ticket], and her surrogates have suggested that for Obama to do otherwise risks alienating her legions of supporters. Put to one side whether this is correct; we have no way of knowing. The more significant reality is this: at the very time when Obama should finally be free to make make his case to the American public for why he should be president, he is engaged in another diversionary and distracting fight with her for the public’s attention.
His point is an interesting one: just as it has evolved that Bill Clinton campaigning has evolved into It All Being About Bill, there is an issue Obama has to face as to whether Hillary Clinton can be counted on if she is on the ticket to it not being All About Hillary. There is after all another teenie factor involved (Barack Obama).
Reich doesn’t see the Clintons changing their modus operandi if Obama selects Hillary to be his Veep:
I have known and admired the Clintons for decades and I have no doubt that Hillary could do an excellent job as Vice President. But this current spectacle illustrates why he should not choose her. Hillary and Bill Clinton are masters at claiming the public limelight even at the expense of larger public purpose. Media attention puts her unflagging ambition center stage and his unbridled (although sometimes misdirected) charm on full display. Were Obama to make her his Vice President, she would turn the tables and make him her President, just as she has turned the tables this week and transformed his remarkable victory into her audacious dare.
Of course, yesterday Hillary Clinton disavowed efforts to pressure Obama to select her. Even so, the speculation and pressure continues — even a report that some 25,000 signatures clamoring for Clinton to be on the ticket have been collected.
Obama will have a variety of factors to consider when he makes what remains to be one of the most undemocratic selections left in American politics — a nominee basically handpicking the person who is a heartbeat away from the President. If he picks Clinton, presumably he’ll have some polite-but-firm understanding worked out with her — and perhaps a less polite but firm understanding worked out with Bill Clinton.
But warnings like Reich’s are likely to be noticed by Obama when he begins his deliberations…
Cartoon by Jeff Parker, Florida Today
UPDATE: A new Gallup Poll indicates Hillary Clinton’s image among black voters has gone substantially south this past year:
In an election year in which race is front and center, American blacks have grown more negative toward Hillary Clinton, with her favorable image sinking from 84% to 58% over the last year, while blacks’ favorable opinions of Barack Obama have soared from 68% to 86%. Blacks have also become more negative toward John McCain.
A new USA Today/Gallup survey, conducted May 30-June 2, 2008, shows that American blacks are significantly more likely now than they were a year ago to have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton. While in June of last year, an overwhelming 84% of blacks said their opinion of Clinton was favorable, that has dropped to 58% today. Unfavorable opinions of Clinton among blacks have jumped from 10% last June to 36% today.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.