ANALYSIS Obama aides, Clinton camp on same page
Her win would help cement his legacy
When President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigned together for the first time recently, the collection of staff members milling about the sidelines at the Charlotte Convention Center represented a final melding of two formidable political machines.
Obama once portrayed Clinton as the past of the Democratic party and himself as its future.
Now, as they try to bind one precedent-setting presidency to another, they see their great ambitions as inextricably linked.
Near a bike rack behind the stage in Charlotte, N.C., stood Clinton’s campaign chairman and communications director — John Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri — both of whom left the Obama White House to take their current jobs.
Two other campaign staff who served in the Obama administration, Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin, stood in the same area, along with a posse of White House officials who had worked to secure Obama’s 2008 primary victory over Clinton — Josh Earnest, Jennifer Psaki, Ben Rhodes and David Simas.
The early rifts between the two camps, dating to that 2008 primary, were largely healed early in the president’s first term.
But as the current campaign has unfolded, the rivalry-turned-alliance has entered a new stage: one in which Obama and his aides are prepared to work doggedly to land Clinton in the White House, which they see as an opportunity to preserve their own work and cement the president’s legacy.
Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday will be a centerpiece of that effort.
“The president would argue that the job is not yet done,” said Psaki, the White House communications director. “The question is who is going to be at the head of the table when we’re winding down this year.”
The collaboration, which has been underway for months, has been a huge boon for the Democratic nominee, but there are liabilities as well.
Clinton will lay claim to a stronger economy and expanded health care coverage in the United States, for example, but voters may also blame her for a chaotic Middle East and a political
system that many believe favors Washington insiders.
“From the very beginning of the creation of the Obama world, there was deep coordination, cooperation and integration with the Clinton world,” said Simon Rosenberg, who heads the liberal think tank NDN. “The degree of integration that happened from the very beginning of this campaign is almost unprecedented in modern American history.”
White House aides regularly talk to their counterparts, and Obama’s former campaign manager and senior adviser David Plouffe began informally advising
Clinton’s campaign months earlier.
“There’s no forced marriage,” said Steve Elmendorf, a longtime Democratic strategist and lobbyist, adding that Plouffe “has become the bridge to all things Clinton.”
No moment crystallized the melding of these two worlds more clearly than when Clinton decided Friday to choose as her running mate Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who endorsed Obama over her in 2007.
Kaine was the president’s pick for the job, according to an individual familiar with his thinking who sought anonymity to talk about a sensitive subject. Obama believed that Kaine was well poised to govern and could serve as a future leader in the party.
The president “is quite enthusiastic” about Kaine’s selection, Earnest, the White House press secretary, said.
As the two big factions of operatives and strategists in the Democratic Party, the Clinton and Obama camps were always working together.
Many of the men and women who worked on Clinton’s 2008 campaign — and worked in her husband’s White House — also helped shape the early days of Obama’s administration.
As the primary competition between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the ostensible independent from Vermont, intensified, she moved to claim the mantle as Obama’s heir and those differences faded.
Clinton’s embrace of Obama makes sense. His favorability rating is above 50 percent in most polls, he remains a major draw on the fundraising circuit and he can be effective in mobilizing key constituencies such as African-Americans, Latinos and young people.
But Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Monday that Obama’s push on Clinton’s behalf reinforces the idea she’s “the same old Democrat with the same old ideas.”