For a number of reasons, it has proven extremely difficult in recent history for a presidential candidate to win after eight years in which his party controlled the White House. Only one candidate has done it since 1948-George H.W. Bush in 1988. This fact would make a Hillary Clinton victory next year an unusual event, and there will be lots and lots of discussion between now and next November about how her candidacy is affected by the complex legacy of the Obama administration. The early form that discussion is taking seems to be that Clinton's essential challenge is to "distance" herself from Barack Obama, which will be difficult because she served in his administration for four years. Comparisons are being made to John McCain, who was dragged down by George W. Bush in 2008 despite the fact that McCain hadn't actually worked for Bush, but was just a senator (and a "maverick" at that, an idea that was essentially bogus but ubiquitous), as well as to Al Gore, who never found quite the right way to describe how his candidacy related to the administration in which he served.
This is a topic that I'm sure I'll be returning to, because how the electorate thinks about Barack Obama and feels about the last eight years is going to be a central theme of the campaign. But my feeling right now is that it might not be as much of a problem for Clinton as so many people seem to think.
First, let's dispense with the two main comparisons everyone is making: 2008 and 2000. Barack Obama's popularity right now is pretty middling, in the high 40s. Would it be better for Clinton if it were higher? Sure. But it's still worlds away from where George W. Bush was in 2008. In Gallup's last poll before the 2008 election, Bush's approval was at 25 percent. His administration was judged by Democrats, independents, and even many Republicans as an abysmal failure, because of both the disaster in Iraq and the financial cataclysm that had just hit. McCain was one of the war's biggest supporters, and was offering essentially the same economic policies as Bush. That's why it was easy for Obama to say that McCain offered more of the same, while he offered change-not only was there substance to the charge, but "more of the same" was something almost everyone agreed they wanted to avoid.
Today, people are less than satisfied with the way many things are going, but we aren't in the throes of a disaster. The economy is recovering rather nicely, and attention has turned to long-standing problems like inequality and wage stagnation. Republicans can say that Obama didn't fix these problems and Clinton won't either, but they'll have much more trouble saying that their remedy-essentially a return to George W. Bush's economic policies-will produce something better.
As for 2000, the comparison is even less apt. Al Gore struggled to get out of Bill Clinton's shadow and prove he was his own man, and because of the Lewinsky scandal he had a certain reluctance to embrace the successes of the administration. But nobody is going to plausibly say that Hillary Clinton isn't her own woman or would just reproduce everything about the Obama years.
Nevertheless, in many ways, a Hillary Clinton presidency would probably look like a combination of her husband's and the one she worked in. If you're a Republican you think that sounds dreadful, if you're a Democrat you think it sounds great, and if you're an independent there are probably some things you'd like about it and some you wouldn't. But it isn't some nebulous mystery onto which Republicans can project a bunch of fears. A Hillary Clinton presidency is, as Donald Rumsfeld would say, a known known.
Things can change, of course-maybe there will be another recession, or some huge scandal that covers Obama in eternal shame. But if we proceed along as we're going now, I doubt the Obama legacy is going to prove much of a problem for Clinton. It may even help her.
