Q Day 6: Predicting Good Presidenting Skills?

Yet another anonymous commenter asks:

Does Hillary Clinton display any skills at 'Presidenting' that set her apart from Biden, Cuomo, Warren, and company? How much of this can we determine from past achievements? 

If I had an answer for that question...

Here's, I guess, what I would say:

1. Experience is better than lack of experience. Broader experience is better than narrow: Clinton's particular strength is that she's been involved in state government, she's been, if not quite White House staff, pretty close to it; she's been in Congress (don't forget that she's been House committee staff as well as of course being a Senator); and she has executive branch experience, and pretty much top-of-the-line at that as Secretary of State.

2. Workhorse is better than showhorse; evidence that the candidate can master her brief is a plus, as is evidence of a good grasp of multiple issue areas, and evidence of coalition-building and working well with others within the political system.

3. Pragmatism is better than ideological crusading. Also, look for evidence in governing record, not rhetoric; Reagan was a more pragmatic governor, and president, than his rhetoric would have suggested.

4.  You do want someone with healthy political ambition; you don't want someone too prone to hubris. No, I don't really know how to judge that.

5. And, yeah, you probably want to avoid a Nixon-style hater. If you can figure it out, and separate it from health ambition and from partisanship. Good luck with that.

Anything else?

Ten Feet Tall

I completely endorse the distinction that Ed Kilgore makes but appears to feel isn't really necessary between "clear the field" and "dominant opening position" when talking about Hillary Clinton and the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

I think, that is, that the distinction is necessary. To me, "clear the field" means something pretty specific: that no other plausible nominee would run. So I wouldn't say that Al Gore in 2000 cleared the field; he solidly beat Bill Bradley, and it was probably over before the Iowa caucuses, but Gore had to run a real primary campaign against a candidate who certainly could have been nominated.

I mean, around the margins, I can imagine arguments...did George H.W. Bush clear the field in 1992 when Pat Buchanan ran? Did Richard Nixon in 1972, when two members of the House ran? But Gore clearly didn't. And my guess is that Clinton won't.

It seems to me this is quite a meaningful distinction, too. For one thing, it could affect whether she chooses to run or not. If she really could have the nomination without having to run through the primaries and caucuses...well, that's a lot easier decision than one that would involve defeating one or two or three candidates, no matter how heavily she would be favored.

I'm also not quite ready to conclude exactly how dominant she would be if she ran. Clearly, she's would be a heavyweight, top-tier, contender. But there's a long time to go, and it's not clear yet how Democratic party actors will think about this when they really have to commit. Basically, the reasons why she's an overwhelming apparent favorite right now -- she's well-known, well-liked, clearly qualified, clearly can raise money, and to some extent there may be a feeling that she's earned it -- may not turn out to be the things that actually yield her the overwhelming support of party actors in 2014 and 2015. I'm not saying that she wouldn't win, or even that she isn't an overwhelming favorite...I'm just saying I'm not sure yet. All we can say for sure is that she would be a heavyweight/top tier type candidate. Which is a lot, but not everything.

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Robert Downey, Jr., 48. Surprised how many of his movies I've seen; I count at least nine movies he's been in that I've seen, despite that I never have watched Weird Science.

And some good stuff:

1. Alex Pareene on "the Mark Penn test."

2. Iraq dead-enders, from Dan Larison.

3. The future of marriage; Reihan Salam's view.

4. Yeah, I agree with Matt Yglesias about immigration, except I think I might be more pro-immigration than he is.

5. Ezra Klein on GOP health care policy.

6. And Abby Rapoport looks at NoDak populism.

What Mattered This Week?

I'll go with the end of the ban on women in combat. As with the demise of DADT, this is one that isn't ever going to be reversed, and will make a big difference for the people involved.

For didn't matter...the whole Hillary goes to the Hill thing is too obvious, right? (Not that I'm against oversight hearings). If you don't like that, I will say that Inaugural Addresses are invariably overhyped.

So that's what I have. What did you notice? What am I missing? What do you think mattered this week?

Q Day 7: The WH '16 Dem Field if Clinton Runs

TapirBoy1 asks:

To what extent does an HRC presidential run pre-winnow the field before the Iowa Caucus?

(Slightly edited for clarity)

That's a great question.

Democratic fields for open nominations have typically been fairly large, with one big exception: 2000, when only Bill Bradley challenged Al Gore. 2008 was typical, with six plausible nominees running (Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Dodd, Richardson, Biden). Similarly, in 2004, there were about seven plausible nominees who made it to Iowa. Democrats typically have done little winnowing between the "all-in" stage and Iowa; that is, there are candidates such as Mark Warner and Evan Bayh who say they are exploring runs and then get out, but few if any similar to Pawlenty, Liddy Dole, and Quayle, who mount full-on campaigns but then fold well before Iowa.

So 2000 really was unusual for the Democrats. Could 2016 be similar?

I'm afraid all I have here is a very strong and definitive...maybe.

What we need to ask, basically, are two things: is Hillary Clinton '16 similar to Al Gore '00? And: if so, would it have the same result?

The thing is that there's really no similar case. In 1972, perhaps Humphrey or Ted Kennedy would have been similar, but Humphrey didn't understand the new system and entered late, while Kennedy didn't run at all. In 1976 only Kennedy, who didn't run, might have been a similar heavyweight. In 1984 Mondale didn't really have the same kind of strength as Gore '00...he had never really run for president before, was four years out of office, and had been the VP for a failed president, not one who was wildly popular among Democrats. Kennedy, once again, didn't run. There's no one in 1988 or 1992 that comes close to qualifying. In 2004 there's Gore, who would have been a very interesting test, but he didn't run. In 2008, perhaps Gore still might have had field-clearing strength, but again he didn't run.

In other words, probably the second-strongest candidate to enter the Democratic primaries during the modern era was Walter Mondale in 1984, and he failed to clear the field. But that's in the early days of the reformed process, when it was far less clear how party actors could control nominations (in fact, 1984 is generally accepted as a major turning point).

It's perhaps also worth peeking over to the GOP side: in 1988, George H.W. Bush totally failed to clear the field, despite being if anything in a stronger position than Gore in 2000.

What I think all of this history says is that there are very few precedents, and those few we have don't really point in the same direction. And so...maybe.

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Sheila E., 53.

And a bit of the good stuff:

1. Matt Yglesias David Weigel looks back at twenty years of Peterson deficit hype.

2. Suzy Khimm profiles Barack Obama's Congressional liaison, Rob Nabors. Nice story, and a typical career path for White House staff in the era of the partisan presidency; Nabors had previously worked for Bill Clinton's OMB and Dave Obey's Appropriations Committee, but not for Obama before his presidency.

3. And a good look at Hillary Clinton's polling numbers over the years from Nate Silver.

Sunday Question for Liberals

I was going to wait to ask this one, since we're a couple of years away from learning her answer, but since it's on the front page of the NYT today...Are you hoping that Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2016? Or are you hoping she'll pass? Why?

Monday Movie Post

There are essentially two things good about Political Animals, the recent six-episode miniseries on USA. Make that three things: six-episode length is excellent (I just finished State of Play, also. Six episodes is excellent).

The other two things? Well, we get to watch Sigourney Weaver, which is always a great thing. I've actually missed a lot of highlights of Weaver's career, and this reminds me that I really should seek out more of her stuff. Fans of Washington movies will know that she was wonderful in "Dave," but she's even better in this.

And the last worthwhile thing about it, as Alyssa Rosenberg pointed out, is that it's a rare entertainment about powerful, smart, capable, political women. It has a bit of an aspect of a feminist fantasy to it...at each turn, the women wind up triumphing, always (as Rosenberg noted) with the perfect zinger, the perfect line. Since we have so few of these, it's refreshing and very welcome.

(Warning: the rest of this contains spoilers, so if you care...)

That extends all the way to the end, at least in some ways. The reporter who is the second lead character after Weaver misbehaves in various ways, including sleeping with people she shouldn't sleep with -- except in this version, she comes out of it pretty much just fine, while her boss loses his job. This, shall we say, does not happen often on TV. So all of this is good: the women are allowed to be strong but also to fail at some things, and without falling back on men saving them or having them inordinately punished.

And yet...well, several things.

First: as a show, it's a mess. I guess I should back up a bit...I haven't mentioned the main conceit, which is that Weaver is playing (a version of) Hillary Clinton -- former first lady, lost a tough nomination fight, is now Secretary of State. Anyway, instead of one daughter, Hillary and Bill have a soap opera family of two sons who  would fit right in with the Tates and the Campbells, except that those characters were better developed and more interesting. Six episodes is not enough time for, say, the gay suicidal drug-addict son to be anything more than awful. So as a show, you have to really want your feminist political power fantasy (and really enjoy Weaver) to make the rest tolerable.

The second thing is that the Hillary wish fulfillment (she's going to challenge the president who beat her for re-nomination) makes the feminist wish-fulfillment pretty awkward, or at least so it seemed to me. Yes, it's cute to see this version of Hillary dump her Bill, although as the show goes on you wonder what the point is, since they're basically back together. Beyond that, however, what struck me is that we sort of have to buy into that Bill is his worst image, and of course Hillary should have been president instead of Obama. Not to mention that some people might not actually like Hillary because they're, well, Republicans; the only Republican we get to know is not exactly impressive. If it was a bit less about Bill and Hillary in all but name then I don't think it would be a problem, but I think it is, here. So: when in a late episode she basically shames the not-Obama president into being a good president after all, and teaches him how to do it, I just couldn't get past how condescending it was to real-Obama, even though the show's character shares neither ethnicity nor any other obvious traits with the real thing.

And then...well, the thing sort of collapses on itself eventually. The big plot conflict for Weaver's Elaine Barrish is that she wants to run for president again even though it will probably destroy both of her (adult) sons. Wait, what? What's that doing in here? Do we really need to have an exaggerated career/mother conflict? And the resolution in the final episode is just awful: as both of her sons' lives collapse, she decides to bow out after all...although only to run for vice president, which apparently wouldn't be hard on her family at all...except that then the president up and dies and leaves the villainous VP in change, and now she's just got to run after all. Which I think, although I couldn't quite tell, was supposed to be okay because now she's going to do it because the country needed her and not because it turns out she was just being ambitious with her earlier decision to run. If that's what we're supposed to believe, it's awful: the whole point of the piece is presumably that her ambition is a good thing. Anyway, it would have worked fine if the sons had less desperate problems, but as it is we're ping-ponged rapidly from being told that it's okay for her to sacrifice her ambition for her family to being told that she needs to do it anyway.

Perhaps I'm asking too much of a show on USA. To their credit, I thought the political (unlike the personal) twists and turns were at least plausibly okay. I just wish that more of it had been watchable, and that the ending wasn't as messed up as it was.

Catch of the Day

Excellent reporting from Aaron Blake, who notices that all seven of the candidates that Bill Clinton has endorsed in Democratic primaries this year supported Hillary Clinton in 2008, while in six cases their opponents endorsed Barack Obama.

Blake ends the piece by framing it around the question of how important Clinton's endorsement might be, but what I find far more interesting is whether we're seeing the beginnings of a more enduring factional split or not. I've done some research (with Casey Dominguez) that sort of touches on questions of factions within the Democratic Party, using data from way back in 2000...we were interested then, among other things, whether DLC involvement was relevant to the Gore/Bradley choice. The whole question of party faction, however, is still a fairly obscure one as far as I know, especially in the US context (explicit, well-organized factions have been important in some other democracies, but they don't really happen here). So the question I'd have is: could something that begins essentially as a personal faction in presidential politics wind up getting institutionalized and spread to state and local politics? If so, would it eventually develop policy components -- even though the original split didn't really have any?

My guess is that the answers to these questions is that on a theoretical level, this could happen. But in the present Democratic Party, it's very unlikely. Both of those, however, are just guesses...anyway, if you want to know what I find really interesting, it's this sort of thing. I'll almost certainly be looking out for it when the 2016 invisible primary gets underway (which, of course, isn't all that long from now).

Oh, and: great catch!

Of Course Hillary Shouldn't Run Against Obama

Regular readers will know that I'm a big fan of presidential scholar Matthew Dickinson, but there's almost nothing I agree with in his open letter to Hillary Clinton urging her to challenge Barack Obama for re-nomination.

Well, one thing. I agree with him that serious nomination challenge are products of, rather than causes of, presidential weakness.

But a challenge from Clinton would be a complete disaster, both for her and for the Democrats.

Dickinson is certainly correct that Obama is in considerable trouble in his campaign for re-election (ground which Adam Serwer covered nicely earlier this week -- and that was before the stock market plunged today). But there's absolutely no evidence that this problem is specific to Barack Obama, and not to Democrats in general. In other words, were Clinton somehow able to dislodge the president, she would have the exact same problems that Obama has right now in the general election.

Dickinson notes, perhaps anticipating this point, that Clinton's approval ratings are quite good, and a lot higher than Obama's. But he admits that they would fall once she became a candidate, and that's exactly right -- she would most likely wind up no better than Obama is now, and likely quite a bit worse, since many Democrats would be not happy at all about her run. Nor is it easy to imagine the basis for her candidacy. Dickinson imagines it would be purely personal -- she would be rerunning the argument from 2008 that experience matters. But that's ridiculous; no one currently happy with Barack Obama (as most Democrats are) is going to defect to another candidate because she boast more experience. He's president!

The truth is that there have only been two comparable challenges to an incumbent president in the modern era (beginning in 1972), and neither is remotely comparable. Ronald Reagan in 1976 and Ted Kennedy in 1980 were both challenging incumbents who had little long-term loyalty from their parties. Gerald Ford was an accidental president, and Jimmy Carter was an accidental nominee. Obama's roots in the party many not go back a long time, but they are deep, as his resilience in the polls among Democrats demonstrates. No one really blame Reagan for taking on Ford in 1976, but there are a lot of intense Obama partisans who would never forgive a primary challenge. And there's no way for a Democrat to win without them.

Moreover, both Reagan and Kennedy were longtime leaders of their party's mainstream and dominant ideological faction, and both had strong arguments to the party faithful that they would restore proper party doctrine. Clinton has no such claim on party loyalists. And of course neither Reagan nor Kennedy was successful. There's no reason to believe that Clinton would be.

Basically, it's pretty simple: if Barack Obama is unpopular enough that he's vulnerable for nomination, then the nomination isn't worth very much. Under those circumstances, it might make sense for someone obscure who has little other chance of ever winning a Democratic nomination to take a shot at him; after all, such a candidate might have no better chance of ever winning. And there's always a case for a challenge based on issues or ideology. But a Clinton challenge would just be a complete disaster for her, and for the party.

Why Presidents Do What They Do

Bruce Bartlett pines conservatively, so to speak, for President Hillary:

For one thing, given her disastrous experience with health care reform in 1993-1994, it's reasonable to assume that she would have stayed away from that issue at all costs.

Jonathan Chait basically agrees; Kevin Drum dissents.  

I'm with Drum, and not just for his excellent reasons.  The fallacy here, I think, is the idea that presidential preferences on issues of public policy are the critical input into what presidents actually do.  Not so!  Presidents are driven by all sorts of things: events; the president's skills; his or her personality; historical constraints; or, most relevant here, party and the nomination process.  The evidence is overwhelming that it was impossible to win the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 without making health care reform a first-tier platform item, and once that was the case any possible nominee would have moved strongly ahead with a plan, really at about the same time Obama did.  The nominating coalition, not to mention the nominating coalitions responsible for the elections of most Democratic Members of Congress, demanded it.  That's easy to see from the actual platforms of the candidates; they all pushed health care to the top of their agendas.  And once a reform effort was underway, the logic of the situation called for persevering as long as victory was plausible.

Now, it's possible that Hillary Clinton would have failed where Obama succeeded.  We can't know how adept she would have been at handling the presidency.  Perhaps she would have failed to win support of the necessary GOP votes in the Senate for the stimulus, and perhaps that would have killed off the health care effort.  Perhaps she would have been considerably less popular than Obama, whose approval ratings have held up fairly well in the face of tough economic times, and that would have killed off health care reform.  But those are skills arguments, not arguments about her policy preferences, and of course one can argue that she would have been more, not less, skilled, and therefore passed health care reform more easily (and perhaps even with a public option and other provisions conservatives dislike).  I tend to think that she would have been somewhat less adept than Obama, but that's obviously speculative.  Guesses about their true policy preferences (or lack thereof) is speculative too, but in my opinion basically irrelevant.  Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Bill Richardson or Joe Biden, no candidate was going to win the 2008 nomination without making health care reform a top priority and acting accordingly in 2009.

Second Time Around

Still working from Ezra Klein's interesting post about interest groups and health care reform...

A couple of other thoughts about the Obama presidency and the Democrats.  

First, I think one of the lessons here is that Barack Obama did a terrific job of putting together his White House.  I've criticized him for being slow on appointments -- and that's going to matter, perhaps, when it comes to implementing the bill -- but Obama acted quickly after the election to put together a highly qualified, experienced White House staff, and it seems to have served him well in this fight (all the annoying stories the last few weeks notwithstanding).  Obama's success at, as Ezra Klein says, neutralizing every interest groups that might have sunk this bill was no accident; it was a deliberate, and difficult to carry out, strategy.  It involved cutting deals in the first place, and then pushing Democrats in Congress to stand by those deals even when there were serious pressures from other groups, from the polls, or from expedience to walk away from them.  The most visible of those, perhaps, was the drug re-important issue, in which Democrats in Congress were obliged to flip-flop against a very popular issue, but there were quite a few others.  I think most liberals this week, or at least the ones who believe that the bill is going to pass, have been most comfortable praising Nancy Pelosi (and rightly so!), but it was Obama and his administration that led the way on this.  And it almost certainly helped that the people who suffered through the last try at health care reform were the same ones in place now, second time around.

The other thing I'd point out here is that one of the reasons the Democrats could pull this off it because the Democratic Party right now, Will Rogers (and I guess Jane Hamsher) notwithstanding, if really amazingly unified.  That was always the underlying story in the Obama/Clinton nomination fight, that they weren't really fighting over much of anything.  And what it meant was that when Obama won, he didn't just have to put up a facade of unity for the rest of the campaign, but he had a truly united party that was able to govern.  Just in terms of personnel, it was an important advantage for Obama that he could call on the talents and experience of the Bill Clinton White House, both for the transition and then for his White House staff.  Obama's transition was probably the smoothest for any Democrat since...oh, I don't know, let's just say the smoothest for any modern Democratic President.  Democrats are still not, as everyone watching this week can see, especially good at being team players, but again the underlying dynamic behind what looks to be the success of health care reform is just how little the Democrats differ. 

Who to Blame for 1994?

Catching up on some of the items in the news this week...Andrew Sullivan minimized the importance of health care fabulist Betsy McCaughey's (Andrew-published) hit piece in the 1993-1994 reform disaster, and blames Hillary Clinton most of all. Matt Cooper struck back on the latter point and lists "the American Medical Association, Bill Kristol, Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Harry and Louise and all the other opposition to the plan" as important to mention.

My view? Cooper is of course correct that it's important to remember the opposition, and not just the supporters, of failed initiatives. But the AMA and Harry and Louise were opponents because of the way reform was organized and sold, and the proponents of reform deserve blame for that. And there's nothing wrong for proponents of reform to analyze their own actions, given that that's the part that they could control.

However, I think Andrew is wrong to place the blame on Hillary Clinton (and way off base to put all the blame on her). In my reading of what happened, Hillary wasn't as important a problem as her colleague Ira Magaziner -- and the responsibility ultimately rests on Bill Clinton, who hired both of them and signed off on a strategy that resulted in the opposition of virtually all of the key interest groups (and, on top of that, the lack of enthusiasm from labor). Others who, in my view, share some of the blame are Lloyd ("Listen to Byrd") Bentsen and Robert ("No Reconciliation") Byrd -- not to mention that it was Bill Clinton's fault that the Democrats gave up Bentsen's seat in the Senate. I don't know that Hillary did a great job, placing the blame on her for the Democrats' foibles isn't right.