Democratic fantasy ticket: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
Tom Blackwell
Last Updated: Dec 31, 2011
As Abe Lincoln geared up for his re-election campaign in 1864, the Republican unceremoniously jettisoned his first-term vice-president and picked Andrew Johnson, a southerner from the rival Democratic Party, as his surprising running mate.
Lincoln hoped to broaden the administration’s appeal after four years of the catastrophic Civil War, and the gambit seemed to work. The bipartisan team swept into office, before a pistol-packing theatre actor ended it all for the president a few months later.
With Barack Obama likely facing a daunting battle in next year’s race, some Democrats have suggested an unusual reprise of the Lincoln manoeuvre: Why not have Joe Biden, the current Vice-President, swap jobs with Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State?
An Obama-Clinton ticket, as the theory goes, would revive a Democratic base disillusioned by the President’s compromises on various issues, and inject some verve into a campaign that lacks the electricity of that first drive for the White House.
“Moreover, the economy won’t be in superb shape in the months leading up to election day,” Robert Reich, labour secretary in the Bill Clinton administration, said in a recent blog that gave new life to the idea.
“Clinton would help deflect attention from the bad economy and put it on foreign policy, where she and Obama have shined.”
A recent Gallup poll found the President and the Secretary of State were the most admired people in the United States, though the survey tends to favour familiar names. At the same time, an anonymous group has sponsored automated “robo-calls” to voters in several states suggesting Ms. Clinton actually replace Mr. Obama as the Democrats’ presidential candidate.
No one takes that idea seriously, but even the notion of subbing out Mr. Biden as vice-president seems to have an element of fantasy about it.
Despite her long-standing ambitions for the top job and the many supporters who advocated making her the 2008 vice-presidential candidate, Ms. Clinton has said repeatedly she will leave her post at the end of Mr. Obama’s first term. The President has already indicated officially that Mr. Biden would be his running mate.
A White House official said Friday that questions about election strategy have to be handled by the Democratic National Committee; no spokesman could be reached there.
Outside analysts suggested the odds are slim a vice-presidential trade is in the offing, but they would not rule out the possibility entirely, especially if the polls look grim for Mr. Obama a few months from now.
Ms. Clinton has always wanted to be president, and Mr. Biden was in the past very much interested in State, Christopher Hull, who teaches politics at Georgetown University in Washington, noted about the “dynamic-duo” speculation.
“In the States, we have a saying, ‘If Democrats don’t win, they don’t eat.’ The Obamans will do what it takes to win, and if that includes the Biden-Clinton shuffle, they’ll do it,” he said.
“That said, given the level of second-guessing and back-biting it may cause, swapping Clinton and Biden may do more harm than good — for Obama, at least.”
Sparking excitement around presidential re-election campaigns is always a challenge; putting the current Secretary of State on the ticket would certainly shake things up, said Cary Covington, a political scientist at the University of Iowa.
“Running for the first term is like poetry, running for the second term is like prose — it just doesn’t instill enthusiasm in people,” he said.
“Hillary Clinton as VP — the first woman to hold the office if she were to win — opens all sorts of possibilities. It would create a big stir, it would be a way of stealing some thunder from the Republicans.”
The idea would work only if both individuals were on side, as Mr. Obama could not afford to alienate Mr. Biden with a forced demotion, Prof. Covington said.
Such vice-presidential switches are certainly rare, but Lincoln was not alone in trying it.
Franklin Roosevelt fired his VP twice. The first time he dumped John Nance Garner, a conservative with whom he had clashed during their first two terms, and ushered in the more left-leaning Henry Wallace. He was replaced four years later by Harry Truman, who became president on Roosevelt’s death a few months after the election, held before the U.S. Constitution restricted presidents to two consecutive terms.
Mr. Reich admitted his prediction was based on “absolutely no inside information,” citing instead a feeling Mr. Obama needs to “stir the passions and enthusiasms” of Democratic voters after a series of cave-ins to Republicans in Congress.
Such a move might give the campaign a short-term bump, much as happened when John McCain took on Sarah Palin as his Republican running mate in the 2008 election, Prof. Covington said.
In the long run, though, it is unlikely a Great Trade would have much impact in an election that is likely to be a referendum on Mr. Obama’s economic performance, he said.
In fact, the popularity of vice-presidential candidates rarely figures much in U.S. election results, the political scientist added, pointing to the fact George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988 despite the bumbling image of his running mate, Dan Quayle.
“The voters in the United States … are going to be voting their pocketbooks,” he said. “What’s happening with unemployment, what’s happening with the median income — those are things that studies have shown time and time again will drive this kind of election.”
In addition, sliding Mr. Biden out of the vice-president’s office would raise an awkward question: Was the President wrong to have given him the nod in 2008?
Still, the hopes of some Democrats for a White House job swap seem to run deep.
“Obama-Clinton in 2012,” Mr. Reich states simply in wrapping up his blog post.
“It’s a natural.”
