As EJ Dionne says, Barack Obama 2008 is really Bill Clinton 1992. But I'd take the analogy farther than EJ does. It's not just that both seem like fresh, new, post-partisan faces (and for those who think Obama's negatives will stay low, do remember that Clinton was once Obama, and seemed fairly post-partisan himself), but that both come with a fair amount of uncertainty. Take Clinton, for instance, He entered office and immediately pursued deficit reduction and NAFTA, failed on health care, then spent six or so years battling with a Republican Congress and finding relevance in incrementalism and orthogonal initiatives like welfare reform. But if he had succeeded on health care and not lost the Congress, would he be remembered as a grand progressive hero who married a strong welfare state to responsible fiscal stewardship? Probably. But Clinton was operating in a rougher ideological moment, when government was deeply mistrusted and a Southern realignment was long overdue. Folks talk often about how Clinton didn't leave a strong Democratic Party, but he also didn't have a strong Democratic Party to rely on, but did have a surging conservatism to deal with. That's, in part, why he struck out on his own ideological journey, creating a presidency that survived without much of a party supporting it. Obama, on the other hand, is operating in a much more progressive moment, with a stronger Democratic Party, more empowered liberal institutions, and a fractured conservative coalition. So the structural incentives would probably -- though not certainly -- push him in a different direction. With Clinton, though, there's somewhat less uncertainty. One thing about having been in the White House before and running so explicitly on that experience is that we know she has a distinct template for how to run a presidency. I think she'll be good at it. But I think it will be a center-left administration that performs its duties competently and pushes for center-left changes continuously, it's not going to gamble on new ideas or big moments. The chances for disappointment are less, but so are the chances for transformation.
