Eugene Robinson: Obama vs. the Clinton Legacy

[babylonsister]

Obama vs. the Clinton Legacy
By Eugene Robinson


WASHINGTON -- Six months ago, Bill Clinton seemed to be settling comfortably into roles befitting a silver-maned former president: statesman, philanthropist, philosopher-king. Now he has put all that high-mindedness on hold -- maybe it was never such a great fit, after all -- to co-star in his wife Hillary's campaign as a coldblooded political hit man.

No, scratch the "coldblooded" part. At times, in his attempt to cut Barack Obama down to size, Bill Clinton has been red-faced with anger; his rhetoric about voter suppression and a great big "fairy tale" has been way over the top. This doesn't look and sound like mere politics. It seems awfully personal.

Obama's candidacy not only threatens to obliterate the dream of a Clinton Restoration. It also fundamentally calls into question the Bill Clinton legacy by making it seem ... not really such a big deal.

That, I believe, is the unforgivable insult. The Clintons picked up on this slight well before Obama made it explicit with his observation that Ronald Reagan had "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not."

Let's take a moment to consider that remark. Whether or not it was advisable for Obama to play the role of presidential historian in the midst of a no-holds-barred contest for the Democratic nomination, it's hard to argue with what he said. I think Bill Clinton was a good president, at times very good. And I wouldn't have voted for Reagan if you'd held a gun to my head. But even I have to recognize that Reagan -- like Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union -- was a transformational figure, for better or worse.

Bill Clinton's brilliance was in the way he surveyed the post-Reagan landscape and figured out how to redefine and reposition the Democratic Party so that it became viable again. All the Democratic candidates who are running this year, including Obama, owe him their gratitude.

But Obama has set his sights higher, and implicit in his campaign is a promise, or a threat, to eclipse Clinton's accomplishments. Obama doesn't just want to piece together a 50-plus-1 coalition, he wants to forge a new post-partisan consensus that includes "Obama Republicans" -- the equivalent of the Gipper's "Reagan Democrats." You can call that overly ambitious or even naive, but you can't call it timid. Or deferential.

more...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/clinton_fights_obama_to_preser.html

[flordehinojos]

1. Mr. Robinson,

but why, if obama wants, "to forge a new post-partisan consensus that includes "Obama Republicans" -- the equivalent of the Gipper's "Reagan Democrats." ... did he deny to having had praise for ronald reagan and his policies?

i think clinton is right whe she told him that he first says one thing, then says, that is not what i meant, this is what i meant and then changes it all again whenever another question ...
i'd say obama is a little wind sock.

[babylonsister]

2. Lame:

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/01/21/final-debate-thoughts.aspx

snip//


Consider the moment tonight when he defended his statement on Ronald Reagan:

...what I said was is that Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests to form a majority to push through their agenda, an agenda that I objected to. Because while I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart. ... I was fighting these fights. I was fighting these fights. So -- but I want to be clear. ... What I said had nothing to do with their policies. I spent a lifetime fighting a lifetime against Ronald Reagan's policies. But what I did say is that we have to be thinking in the same transformative way about our Democratic agenda. We've got to appeal to Independents and Republicans in order to build a working majority to move an agenda forward. That is what I said.

Ignore, for a moment, the stuff about Clinton and Wal-Mart. Notice, instead, the key phrase there -- "working majority." It's a theme to which Obama returned later:

What I do want to focus on, though, is how important it is, when you talked about taking on the Republicans, how important it is I think to redraw the political map in this country. ... the truth is that we as Democrats have not had a working majority in a very long time. And what I mean by that is a working majority that could push through the kinds of bold initiatives that all of us have proposed. And one of the reasons that I am running for president is because I believe that I can inspire new people to get involved in the process, that I can reach out to independents and, yes, some Republicans who have also lost trust in their government and want to see something new.

When you look at Bush and Cheney and their record, the one good thing they've done for us is they have given their party a very bad name. That gives us a unique opportunity in this election, and what we can't do, I think, is just to take the playing field as a given. We want to expand the scope of the electorate so that we can start getting a 60 percent majority, more folks in the House, more folks in the Senate, and I think that's something I can do.

In other words, Obama is not reaching out to conservatives just to get along with them. He's reaching out to conservatives because he thinks it offers the best chance to enact liberal policies.

[babylonsister]

3. kick! nt