Mediaboss Marketing

The president's proposals are designed to force his presumptive successor to campaign and govern on his terms.

Jim Young/Reuters

Theres a subtext to President Obamas slew of domestic policy proposals since the November elections: President Obama does not trust Hillary Clinton very much.

None of the presidents domestic-policy brainwaves has much chance of becoming law in the next two years: not free community college, not cash grants to selected middle-income households, and certainly not heavy tax increases on upper-income earners. The president knows these odds better than anybody. So why keep propounding such no-hopers? The intent, pretty obviously, is to box in his presumptive successor as head of the Democratic Party.

The Language of the State of the Union

Every time the president advances a concept that thrills his partys liberal base, he creates a dilemma for Hillary Clinton. Does she agree or not? Any time she is obliged to answer, her scope to define herself is constricted.

Hillary Clinton emerges from the Democratic Partys business wing. Whatever her own personal viewsstill an elusive quantum after all these years in public lifeshe is identified in the public mind with her husbands record, her husbands appointees, and her husbands donors. Not just in the public mind, but seemingly in the presidents mind, too. So as the clock runs down on his administration, he seems determined to set the post-Obama Democratic Party on a more leftward course than he himself had the strength to steer.

Obama here is sharply departing from the practice of other recent two-term presidents as their transition neared.

As Ronald Reagans second term entered its final stretch, he and his last chief of staff, Ken Duberstein, became legendarily solicitous of the views of the Republican Partys likely next presidential nominee, George H.W. Bush. Bush got such a voice in major policy decisions and appointments that insiders dubbed the process a friendly takeover, with the emphasis on the takeover, not the friendly. President Reagans 1987 and 1988 State of the Union addresses were strikingly cautious: more old nostrums, like the balanced budget amendment, than new initiatives. The outgoing president seemed determined to avoid anything that might compromise his likely successor.

President Bill Clintons relationship to Vice President Gore was more fraught than Reagans with Bush. President Clinton was also more personally energetic in his final two years than the more elderly Reagan. Yet to the extent that Clinton tried to shape the next presidential election, he did so by hammering upon the theme on which he and Gore most emphatically agreed: earmarking government surplus revenues to the Social Security trust fund, rather than tax cuts or new spending, the famous lockbox.

Excerpt from:
The Real Target of Obama's Speech on Tuesday? Hillary Clinton