So here is the big “what it” being discussed by a top Washington reporter and other pundits: what if Hillary Clinton had indeed been elected President? Would she have done some things differently than President Barack Obama.
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank looks at this question and has some answers — partly on the basis of what some close Clinton associates tell him. Key parts:
Would unemployment have been lower under a President Hillary? Would the Democrats have lost fewer seats on Tuesday? It’s impossible to know. But what can be said with confidence is that Clinton’s toolkit is a better match for the current set of national woes than they were for 2008, when her support for the Iraq war dominated the campaign.
…Clinton campaign advisers I spoke with say she almost certainly would have pulled the plug on comprehensive health-care reform rather than allow it to monopolize the agenda for 15 months. She would have settled for a few popular items such as children’s coverage and a ban on exclusions for pre-existing conditions. That would have left millions uninsured, but it also would have left Democrats in a stronger political position and given them more strength to focus on job creation and other matters, such as immigration and energy.
A key point that underscores what future historians may say proved to be Barack Obama’s Achilles Heel: Obama focused so strongly, seemingly single-minded (even though he was multi-tasking) that it could be argued that he seemed to be or was not paying enough attention to jobs. The Democrat’s energy was so directed into the health care battle that other issues were put on the back burner — until the heat cooled them down and could not be revived in time.
The Clinton campaign advisers acknowledge that she probably would have done the auto bailout and other things that got Obama labeled as a socialist. The difference is that she would have coupled that help for big business with more popular benefits for ordinary Americans.
Another approach that would have been a plus. Obama acted in a way that allowed him to be defined by some as yet another creature of Wall Street…while at the time being defined by others as a dangerous leftist. He got the worst of both worlds.
Clinton, for example, first called for a 90-day foreclosure moratorium in December 2007, as part of a package to fight the early stages of the mortgage crisis with a five-year freeze on subprime rates and $30 billion to avoid foreclosures. But an Obama campaign adviser dismissed Clinton’s moratorium, saying it would “reward people for bad behavior.”
Calls for a moratorium returned a few weeks ago with news of lenders’ foreclosure abuses. Polls indicate public support for a moratorium, but Obama ruled it out. It’s a safe bet Clinton would have done otherwise.
See my previous comments which touch on political smarts.
Some differences would have been stylistic. As a senator from New York, Clinton had good relations with Wall Street. As the heir to her husband’s donor base, she would have had more executives in government – envoys who would have been able to ease the uncertainty about tax and regulatory policy that has been crippling business.
Most important, there can be little doubt that, whatever policies emerged, she would have maintained a laser focus on the economy; after all, she did that during the 2008 campaign, when it wasn’t as central an issue. She got little credit, for example, when she gave a speech in Iowa in November 2007 warning about the dangers of new financial instruments. Now, it seems prescient; then, it sounded boring.
His advice to Obama?
The answer is simple: Do what Hillary would have done.
And what’s the bottom line? The bottom line coming from many analysts on both sides and the underlying motif of this Milbank article is that for all the talk about how Barack Obama and his team were political genuises they proved to be shockingly flat-footed and almost amateurish in the long-run when it came to politics, political science and imagery. For all the talk from Obama administration sources about using political credit, they frittered it away.
Future historians will determine whether Barack Obama focused so single-mindedly on health care reform which halted some other things from being done and other important perceptions about his administration to flower because he felt it was genuinely something absolutely critical for the economy that had to be done now — or whether part of it was that other Presidents had failed and he felt he could be the President at this time in history to get it through after winning big in 2008.
There is a difference.
And there has been a price.
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.