Obama can help or hamper Clinton’s bid
He’s popular but can be seen as a handicap on desire for change
Count President Obama as one of Hillary Clinton’s most potent assets — and as one of her biggest challenges.
The asset side was in the spotlight at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night as Obama was guaranteed to bring just about everybody in the hall to their feet with a speech designed to boost her with the electoral coalition that twice has elected him to the White House. Her past rival and former boss, he planned to deliver what amounted to an enthusiastic recommendation for her job promotion.
“You know, nothing truly prepares you for the demands of the Oval Office,” Obama was to say, according to excerpts of his remarks. “But Hillary’s been in the room; she’s been part of those decisions. ... Even in the middle of crisis, she listens to people, and keeps her cool, and treats everybody with respect. And no matter how daunting the odds; no matter how much people try to knock her down, she never, ever quits.
“That’s the Hillary I know. That’s the Hillary I’ve come to admire. And that’s why I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president.”
But the challenge was equally clear at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week, when Donald Trump promised dramatic change to the majority of voters in both parties who are dissatisfied by the nation’s direction. He is tying her to every stumble and setback in the Obama administration, from the ambush of police officers in Dallas to the rise of the Islamic State.
“The problems we face now — poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad — will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created them,” Trump said in his acceptance speech.
At a freewheeling news conference in Florida on Wednesday, Trump’s tone was less somber, but his message was the same, mocking the assertion Clinton could be a “change-maker.” That’s the word Bill Clinton repeatedly used in his speech to the Democratic convention Tuesday, when signs declaring “changemaker” were distributed throughout the Wells Fargo Center.
“In terms of change, she’s been there 30 years!” Trump said.
That is one of Trump’s most powerful themes. In a Wall Street Journal/ NBC News poll this month, 56% of those surveyed said they wanted the next president to bring major changes in the way the government operates — that fits with Trump’s vow — while just 41% wanted someone with a steady approach. That would be Hillary Clinton.
Independent voters, those who typically determine election outcomes, preferred change by double digits.
In an electorate demanding a new direction — albeit without a clear consensus about what direction that might be — Clinton’s alliance with the outgoing president reinforces the perception, her groundbreaking gender aside, that she is a candidate of the status quo.
“You have to be for continuity and change at the same time,” says Bill Galston, a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns and a White House aide to Bill Clinton. “That’s not an easy assignment.”
Some of the strains have been apparent this week in the debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-nation trade deal that Obama negotiated and considers a significant part of his legacy. While she was his secretary of State, Clinton called it “the gold standard” of trade deals. But in the face of fierce opposition by primary rival Bernie Sanders and other progressives, Clinton has come out against it.
There’s a reason the relationship between second-term presidents and his party’s nominee to succeed him — call them political in-laws — are fraught.
In 1960, it was President Eisenhower who seemed reluctant to do much for Richard Nixon.
In 2000, it was Democratic nominee Al Gore who kept his distance from the scandal-tainted President Clinton. And in 2008, Republican nominee John McCain shied from a close embrace by President George W. Bush.
In those three elections, Nixon lost. So did Gore and McCain.
The instinct for change after eight years of White House control is one reason it’s so hard for one party to win a third consecutive term. In the past six decades, that’s happened once, in 1988, when then-vice president George H.W. Bush was elected to succeed the popular President Reagan.
This time, Obama’s approval rating in recent months has risen above 50%, the highest level for him in nearly three years and a crucial dividing line.
Political scientist Alan Abramowitz of Emory University studied the relationship between an outgoing president’s approval rating and his party’s prospects in the next cycle. Since World War II, the three candidates who sought to succeed presidents with approval ratings below 50% lost. Two of the three candidates who sought to succeed presidents who had approval ratings above 50% won the popular vote.
That is crucial for Clinton. It’s also crucial for Obama, to ensure that Republicans would be stymied in their promises to undermine the Affordable Care Act, revise financial regulations and reverse executive action on immigration — that is, to dismantle Obama’s legacy.
“She will be helped by a president who is looked at very positively,” Democratic strategist Stan Greenberg says. “But she will have to work hard to make sure her call for change can get heard, when Trump’s message is so straightforward and crude.”