With a Book, the Last Democrat in the White House Tries to Help the Current One
By JODI KANTOR
NYT
Last summer, as Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton celebrated the former president’s 65th birthday with a party at their rented Hamptons home, talk among their guests turned to President Obama’s travails over the debt crisis and doubts about his re-election. “I’m really trying to help him,” the white-haired former president said, shaking his head, “but he seems to have lost his narrative.”
Starting Tuesday, that help will take its most public form yet, in the form of a new book by Mr. Clinton, titled “Back to Work,” that makes a case for confidence in government and Mr. Obama’s jobs bill. The book marks a new and somewhat warmer stage in the two men’s rivalry and relationship, one that could benefit Mr. Obama. The awkward twist: the former president has been so frustrated at what he sees as the current one’s failure to explain his economic policies that he has literally decided to write his own version of the story. “He both sells it and wants them to sell it more,” said John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff who also advises the current administration.
The differences between the two leaders go to the very bedrock of personality and temperament. Mr. Obama has discipline that Mr. Clinton can barely dream of; Mr. Clinton excels precisely where Mr. Obama struggles (at economic storytelling and attracting white working-class voters). Their divide began long before Mr. Obama’s 2008 primary battle with Mrs. Clinton, now the secretary of state. In 1996, the new Illinois state senator criticized Mr. Clinton’s move to the center, called his campaign “disturbing” and said his convention was “for sale”; Mr. Clinton returned the favor by endorsing Representative Bobby Rush, Democrat of Illinois, whom Mr. Obama had challenged.
There has been no recent heart-to-heart talk for the two men, say their aides, no confessional moment about the ill will generated during the 2008 campaign. Instead, they have improved their bond through a series of mutual allies — Mrs. Clinton, but also Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., their chief mediator — brief but positive meetings, and shared beliefs.
(More here.)
NYT
Last summer, as Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton celebrated the former president’s 65th birthday with a party at their rented Hamptons home, talk among their guests turned to President Obama’s travails over the debt crisis and doubts about his re-election. “I’m really trying to help him,” the white-haired former president said, shaking his head, “but he seems to have lost his narrative.”
Starting Tuesday, that help will take its most public form yet, in the form of a new book by Mr. Clinton, titled “Back to Work,” that makes a case for confidence in government and Mr. Obama’s jobs bill. The book marks a new and somewhat warmer stage in the two men’s rivalry and relationship, one that could benefit Mr. Obama. The awkward twist: the former president has been so frustrated at what he sees as the current one’s failure to explain his economic policies that he has literally decided to write his own version of the story. “He both sells it and wants them to sell it more,” said John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff who also advises the current administration.
The differences between the two leaders go to the very bedrock of personality and temperament. Mr. Obama has discipline that Mr. Clinton can barely dream of; Mr. Clinton excels precisely where Mr. Obama struggles (at economic storytelling and attracting white working-class voters). Their divide began long before Mr. Obama’s 2008 primary battle with Mrs. Clinton, now the secretary of state. In 1996, the new Illinois state senator criticized Mr. Clinton’s move to the center, called his campaign “disturbing” and said his convention was “for sale”; Mr. Clinton returned the favor by endorsing Representative Bobby Rush, Democrat of Illinois, whom Mr. Obama had challenged.
There has been no recent heart-to-heart talk for the two men, say their aides, no confessional moment about the ill will generated during the 2008 campaign. Instead, they have improved their bond through a series of mutual allies — Mrs. Clinton, but also Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., their chief mediator — brief but positive meetings, and shared beliefs.
(More here.)
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