Buzzfeed is running a story titled "Libya Threatens Clinton Legacy -- and State Does Damage Control."
Obviously, Hillary Clinton is going to be running for President in 2016. Obviously, Barack Obama wants to be reelected in 2012. This puts them at interesting cross-purposes.
Obama -- being the famous blame-shifter that he is -- would like to off-load responsibility for the terrible foreign policy debacles onto the State Department. But he can't fire Hillary because of her position in the party -- and her husband's. And obviously, Hillary (and Bill) will fight like the blazes against any attempt to saddle her with the administration's foreign policy failures.
Everyone knows the easiest path for Hillary is to be able to challenge an incumbent Republican in 2016 -- that's even truer now that the Mideast is up in flames, unless somehow Barack Obama is going to be able to fulfill all the promises he made four years ago in the next four years. In other words, unlikely. It's easier to run with a critique of the existing president than as the defender of eight years of failure, when memories have not yet had time to dim. What's more, it's easier to attribute administration foreign policy failures to a former president of the same party who's already been voted out of office than an incumbent of the same party.
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All that being said, Bill Clinton can't openly root against the home team, lest it be held against his wife in four years.
So pull up a chair, and pop up the corn. My bet is the Obama/Clinton relations are about to get a whole lot more complicated and more interesting.
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