Obama on Iowa, Clinton, Sanders and 2016
Barack Obama, that prematurely gray elder statesman, is laboring mightily to remain neutral during Hillary Clinton’s battle with Bernie Sanders in Iowa, the state that cemented his political legend and secured his path to the presidency. But in a candid 40-minute interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast as the first flakes of the blizzard fell outside the Oval Office, he couldn’t hide his obvious affection for Clinton or his implicit feeling that she, not Sanders, best understands the unpalatably pragmatic demands of a presidency he likens to the world’s most challenging walk-and-chew-gum exercise.
“[The] one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you don’t have the luxury of just focusing on one thing,” a relaxed and reflective Obama told me in his most expansive discussion of the 2016 race to date.
“Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose,” he said. “I think Hillary came in with the both privilege - and burden - of being perceived as the front-runner. … You’re always looking at the bright, shiny object that people haven’t seen before - that’s a disadvantage to her.”
Even as he spoke wistfully of his 80-plus cold-pizza and crowded-van days in Iowa eight years ago, Obama seemed to embrace Clinton’s 2008 closing Iowa argument as much as his own, adopting her contention that inspiration without experience won’t cut it. He repeatedly praised Clinton without reservation while offering more tempered praise to the surging Sanders, whom he sees as a principled outsider seeking to change “terms of the debate that were set by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago.”
To some extent, he’s returning Clinton’s favor: The former secretary of state has lavished praise on Obama on the debate stage and in appearances throughout Iowa, where he remains immensely popular among the hardcore progressives who turn out for the labor-intensive caucuses. Her refrain on the trail these days in Waterloo, Ames, Davenport: “I don't think he gets the credit he deserves.”
Obama didn’t utter an unkind word about Sanders, who has been respectfully critical of his administration’s reluctance to prosecute Wall Street executives and his decision to abandon a single-payer health care system as politically impractical. But he was kinder to Clinton. When I asked Obama whether he thought Sanders needed to expand his horizons, if the Vermont senator was too much a one-issue candidate too narrowly focused on income inequality, the president didn’t dispute the assertion.
Gesturing toward the Resolute Desk, with its spread-winged eagle seal, first brought into the Oval Office by John F. Kennedy, Obama said of Sanders: “Well, I don’t want to play political consultant, because obviously what he’s doing is working. I will say that the longer you go in the process, the more you’re going to have to pass a series of hurdles that the voters are going to put in front of you.”
The past three weeks have been like a wicked ’08 flashback for a Clinton campaign that was intent on learning from its mistakes in Iowa. Sanders, preaching a simple message of fighting economic inequality and Wall Street, has been gaining steadily on Clinton - whose stump speech sounds like one of her husband’s more discursive and overstuffed State of the Union laundry lists. The high school and college kids are flocking to Sanders, while Clinton is counting - sound familiar? - on women over the age of 50 as the core of her caucus support. As Sanders gains on her, she’s gone negative, and the media has revived the familiar “Hillary attacks” theme, even if the Vermont senator is giving as good as he gets.
When I asked Obama if Clinton is facing “unfair scrutiny” this time around, his answer was a clipped “yes” - and he even admitted a tinge of regret that his own campaign had been so hard on her eight years ago.
But when I asked him if Sanders reminded him of himself in 2008, he quickly shot me down: “I don’t think that's true.”
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But the Obama-Clinton race in Iowa wasn’t simply a matter of hard work and spreading his optimistic vision of the future; it was a bitter political fight. Obama hammered away at the notion that the New York senator was on the wrong side of generational change, and his team successfully convinced reporters that every Clinton campaign swipe was an underhanded personal attack - something he’s less than proud of in retrospect.
“The truth is, in 2007 and 2008, sometimes my supporters and my staff, I think, got too huffy about what were legitimate questions she was raising,” he admitted. “And there were times where I think the media probably was a little unfair to her and tilted a little my way in calling her out.”
In fact, he said, Clinton “had a tougher job throughout that primary than I did.”
“She had to do everything that I had to do, except, like Ginger Rogers, backwards in heels,” he said. “She had to wake up earlier than I did because she had to get her hair done. She had to, you know, handle all the expectations that were placed on her.”
“Had things gone a little bit different in some states or if the sequence of primaries and caucuses been a little different,” Obama added, “she could have easily won.”
But he also offered a surprisingly blunt assessment of Clinton’s weaknesses.
She is better in “small groups” than big ones, he remarked, and he agreed that her first campaign appearances showed her to be “rusty” - comparing them to his God-awful first debate of the 2012 campaign. “[S]he’s extraordinarily experienced - and, you know, wicked smart and knows every policy inside and out - [and] sometimes [that] could make her more cautious, and her campaign more prose than poetry,” he told me.
This, from a president who has been governing in prose, especially during his second term. In fact, Obama’s experiences in office have brought him around to Clinton’s hardheaded view of the presidency, first forged during her eight years as first lady. “I think that what Hillary presents is a recognition that translating values into governance and delivering the goods is ultimately the job of politics, making a real-life difference to people in their day-to-day lives,” he said, echoing the very critique Clinton makes of Sanders.
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Obama is of two minds about 2016, people close to him say: He’s intensely interested in ensuring that a Democrat wins and is keeping close tabs on the race - to keep the barbarians from the gates. But like many liberals his age, he’s averting his eyes from a Donald Trump free-for-all he finds depressing and distracting.
“You think about it: When I ran against John McCain, John McCain and I had real differences, sharp differences, but John McCain didn’t deny climate science,” he said. “John McCain didn’t call for banning Muslims from the United States. … [The] Republican vision has moved not just to the right, but has moved to a place that is unrecognizable.”
Obama told me he has spoken to both Clinton and Sanders about 2016, albeit in general terms. “We’ve had a conversation broadly about the importance of a Democrat winning [with Clinton], and I've had conversation with Bernie, about issues that he’s interested in or concerned about,” he said. “I have not been trying to kibitz and stick my nose into every aspect of their strategy.”
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“[The] one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you don’t have the luxury of just focusing on one thing,” a relaxed and reflective Obama told me in his most expansive discussion of the 2016 race to date.
“Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose,” he said. “I think Hillary came in with the both privilege - and burden - of being perceived as the front-runner. … You’re always looking at the bright, shiny object that people haven’t seen before - that’s a disadvantage to her.”
Even as he spoke wistfully of his 80-plus cold-pizza and crowded-van days in Iowa eight years ago, Obama seemed to embrace Clinton’s 2008 closing Iowa argument as much as his own, adopting her contention that inspiration without experience won’t cut it. He repeatedly praised Clinton without reservation while offering more tempered praise to the surging Sanders, whom he sees as a principled outsider seeking to change “terms of the debate that were set by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago.”
To some extent, he’s returning Clinton’s favor: The former secretary of state has lavished praise on Obama on the debate stage and in appearances throughout Iowa, where he remains immensely popular among the hardcore progressives who turn out for the labor-intensive caucuses. Her refrain on the trail these days in Waterloo, Ames, Davenport: “I don't think he gets the credit he deserves.”
Obama didn’t utter an unkind word about Sanders, who has been respectfully critical of his administration’s reluctance to prosecute Wall Street executives and his decision to abandon a single-payer health care system as politically impractical. But he was kinder to Clinton. When I asked Obama whether he thought Sanders needed to expand his horizons, if the Vermont senator was too much a one-issue candidate too narrowly focused on income inequality, the president didn’t dispute the assertion.
Gesturing toward the Resolute Desk, with its spread-winged eagle seal, first brought into the Oval Office by John F. Kennedy, Obama said of Sanders: “Well, I don’t want to play political consultant, because obviously what he’s doing is working. I will say that the longer you go in the process, the more you’re going to have to pass a series of hurdles that the voters are going to put in front of you.”
The past three weeks have been like a wicked ’08 flashback for a Clinton campaign that was intent on learning from its mistakes in Iowa. Sanders, preaching a simple message of fighting economic inequality and Wall Street, has been gaining steadily on Clinton - whose stump speech sounds like one of her husband’s more discursive and overstuffed State of the Union laundry lists. The high school and college kids are flocking to Sanders, while Clinton is counting - sound familiar? - on women over the age of 50 as the core of her caucus support. As Sanders gains on her, she’s gone negative, and the media has revived the familiar “Hillary attacks” theme, even if the Vermont senator is giving as good as he gets.
When I asked Obama if Clinton is facing “unfair scrutiny” this time around, his answer was a clipped “yes” - and he even admitted a tinge of regret that his own campaign had been so hard on her eight years ago.
But when I asked him if Sanders reminded him of himself in 2008, he quickly shot me down: “I don’t think that's true.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But the Obama-Clinton race in Iowa wasn’t simply a matter of hard work and spreading his optimistic vision of the future; it was a bitter political fight. Obama hammered away at the notion that the New York senator was on the wrong side of generational change, and his team successfully convinced reporters that every Clinton campaign swipe was an underhanded personal attack - something he’s less than proud of in retrospect.
“The truth is, in 2007 and 2008, sometimes my supporters and my staff, I think, got too huffy about what were legitimate questions she was raising,” he admitted. “And there were times where I think the media probably was a little unfair to her and tilted a little my way in calling her out.”
In fact, he said, Clinton “had a tougher job throughout that primary than I did.”
“She had to do everything that I had to do, except, like Ginger Rogers, backwards in heels,” he said. “She had to wake up earlier than I did because she had to get her hair done. She had to, you know, handle all the expectations that were placed on her.”
“Had things gone a little bit different in some states or if the sequence of primaries and caucuses been a little different,” Obama added, “she could have easily won.”
But he also offered a surprisingly blunt assessment of Clinton’s weaknesses.
She is better in “small groups” than big ones, he remarked, and he agreed that her first campaign appearances showed her to be “rusty” - comparing them to his God-awful first debate of the 2012 campaign. “[S]he’s extraordinarily experienced - and, you know, wicked smart and knows every policy inside and out - [and] sometimes [that] could make her more cautious, and her campaign more prose than poetry,” he told me.
This, from a president who has been governing in prose, especially during his second term. In fact, Obama’s experiences in office have brought him around to Clinton’s hardheaded view of the presidency, first forged during her eight years as first lady. “I think that what Hillary presents is a recognition that translating values into governance and delivering the goods is ultimately the job of politics, making a real-life difference to people in their day-to-day lives,” he said, echoing the very critique Clinton makes of Sanders.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Obama is of two minds about 2016, people close to him say: He’s intensely interested in ensuring that a Democrat wins and is keeping close tabs on the race - to keep the barbarians from the gates. But like many liberals his age, he’s averting his eyes from a Donald Trump free-for-all he finds depressing and distracting.
“You think about it: When I ran against John McCain, John McCain and I had real differences, sharp differences, but John McCain didn’t deny climate science,” he said. “John McCain didn’t call for banning Muslims from the United States. … [The] Republican vision has moved not just to the right, but has moved to a place that is unrecognizable.”
Obama told me he has spoken to both Clinton and Sanders about 2016, albeit in general terms. “We’ve had a conversation broadly about the importance of a Democrat winning [with Clinton], and I've had conversation with Bernie, about issues that he’s interested in or concerned about,” he said. “I have not been trying to kibitz and stick my nose into every aspect of their strategy.”
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