Barack Obama: Clinton redux

Ever since Barack Obama won the presidential election, the media has been amazed at how many Clinton administration officials now hold influential positions on Obama's transition team, and are leading candidates for some of his administration's most important jobs. As Politico reports today: "Thirty-one of the 47 people so far named to [Obama] transition or staff posts have ties to the Clinton administration." Former Clinton White House political director Rahm Emanuel will be Obama's White House chief of staff. Former Clinton Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers could wind up in the same slot in Obama's administration. And Hillary Clinton's name is now apparently on the short list of candidates for secretary of state.
Such media head-scratching follows on the heels of a presidential campaign that witnessed the much-ballyhooed feuding between the Illinois senator and the Democratic party's old guard, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Reporters described the internecine struggle as a battle over how to define the future of the party – an epic fight that would determine the Clintons' place in American history and had the potential to crack the party open along racial, gender and generational lines.
In reality, however, Obama is closer ideologically to Bill Clinton than most in the media are willing to acknowledge, and the potentially large number of Clintonites in Obama's administration shouldn't be surprising to anybody. The personal shots and verbal slights of the 2008 election obscured an important development that partly explains why Obama would turn to former Clinton officials to staff his transition and why McCain's Obama-as-socialist trope never resonated. From taxes to cultural issues, Obama took a page from Bill Clinton's 1992 Democratic Leadership Council campaign playbook, and his electoral success in red states from Virginia to North Carolina owe a great deal to Clinton's centrist political legacy. Indeed, Obama's statements, TV advertisements and policies showcased the virtues of the politics of Democratic moderation. The campaign's final debate was a great example of how Obama neutralised allegations that he is a big-spending, tax-raising liberal, much as Bill Clinton once did. Obama stressed his plan to cut taxes for 95% of American families and faulted McCain for raising taxes in his healthcare plan. Like Clinton, Obama worked in that debate to feel people's pain, identifying with working- and middle-class families hit hard by the financial crisis. Obama's repeated paeans to the middle class in all three debates and on the stump were reminiscent of Clinton's 1992 pledge to expand economic opportunity for middle-income families. In October, Obama told 6,000 people at a rally outside Philadelphia: "We need to do what we did in the 1990s and make sure people's incomes are going up and not down. We need to do what a guy named Bill Clinton did in the 1990s and put people first again." "It's the economy, stupid," essentially became Obama's savvy rejoinder to the McCain-Palin campaign's personal attacks. Elements of Obama's tax plan – which raises taxes on the wealthiest Americans – owes a lot to Clinton's 1993 economic agenda. And when the financial crisis erupted in September, Obama met with Robert Rubin, Summers, Gene Sperling and Laura Tyson – the brains behind Clinton's economic policies – before holding a major press conference. Obama's campaign also made inroads among so-called Reagan Democrats because he inoculated himself, a la Clinton, from charges that he's a McGovern-Mondale liberal on social issues. Obama shied away from gun control after a recent US supreme court ruling overturning a gun ban in Washington DC. "The second amendment," he said, "protects the right of individuals to bear arms." He has adopted a moderate position on warrantless wiretaps, antagonised liberal leader Jesse Jackson and encouraged parents to teach children to "act responsibly". During the campaign's final debate, he also urged parents to keep kids away from video games and "turn off the TV set" and called abortions "a tragic situation". Clinton said abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare". Obama has echoed Clinton's centrist cultural refrain while encouraging abortion alternatives, like adoption. Obama has donned much of Clinton's centrist foreign policy legacy as well. When Clinton first ran for president in 1992, he often kept to George HW Bush's right on defence issues. The Democratic challenger blasted his rival for not standing up more strongly to China's communist leaders and Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Likewise, Obama has trumpeted his intention to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, should he have actionable intelligence. He has proposed inserting more troops into Afghanistan and lavishly praises American soldiers serving in Iraq, while pledging to honour their heroism by improving veterans' benefits. All this is not to say that Obama will be a third term for Bill Clinton. He is likely to undertake any number of bold actions on energy independence, healthcare reform and economic relief and recovery in the midst of the financial crisis that could be more far-reaching than a lot of what Clinton was able to achieve. At the same time, Obama may indeed be able to bring about a measure of political reconciliation that eluded both Clinton and, most dramatically, George W Bush. But whatever the future holds, Obama generally ran a centre-left campaign in the best political sense. He embraced the concepts of economic opportunity and social responsibility that aided Clinton so dramatically during his successful 1992 White House run. While countless news media reports are expressing surprise at the influx of Clintonites into Obama's transition team and administration, the underlying reality is that on key issues Obama warmly embraced a lot of Bill Clinton's centrist policies. That warm embrace seems likely to extend to Obama's presidency.