The Clintons’ critiques in recent days have been explicitly aimed at congressional Republicans, who helped spur a 16-day government shutdown and potential debt default in October. But their remarks also seem to contain an implicit rebuke of President Obama’s failure to change Washington as he pledged when first running for the White House.If so, then this should be filed in the Someone Left The Irony On Department. The Clintons are hardly known for their soft-pedal tactics in politics, and Hillary especially has been seen as a hard partisan. She coined the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy” to describe how her honest husband was being hounded by his opponents, until the Clintons had to admit that Bill wasn’t being all that honest in the first place. As Secretary of State, she may best be remembered for yelling What difference at this point does it make? at a Republican Senator for interrogating her over the State Department’s lies about the al-Qaeda attack on Benghazi.
The arguments suggest a way that Hillary Clinton could attempt to run in 2016 as an agent of change — potentially putting her at odds with the two-term Democrat she would be seeking to replace.
Let’s step away from the irony for the moment. Can Hillary distance herself from Obama? It’s possible, but it would be a difficult task. The only executive experience Hillary has comes from her time as Secretary of State under Obama — and she has few accomplishments to her credit for those four years anyway.
