A tantalizing notion has gained steam around Washington in recent months: President Obama will toss Vice President Biden off the ticket in 2012 and replace him with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The most recent perpetrator of the idea was Bob Woodward, who said in a CNN interview Tuesday that the possibility is “on the table.” The logic, according to Woodward and many others – mainly pundits – is that Obama could energize the Democratic Party in 2012 and install an heir apparent for 2016 if he engineered a job swap between Biden and Clinton, thereby making the most of his former rival’s stratospheric approval ratings.
But there’s a problem with this scenario: Despite all the chatter, no one has offered any evidence to suggest it’s true. The White House, not surprisingly, flat-out denies it.
“There’s absolutely nothing to it,” senior adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday night. “The president is blessed to have a spectacular vice president and an outstanding secretary of state. They’re both doing great work, and he wants to keep them on the job.”
Advisers to Clinton said the same, and another Obama adviser called the idea “nuts.”
Where, then, is this fantastical rumor coming from?
A student of the Obama-Clinton relationship could trace its roots to the summer of 2008, when Clinton supporters lobbied for Obama to pick her as his running mate and he, after considering it, declined. Then, after he chose her to be secretary of state, people in her orbit started musing aloud that she could shift into a different role down the line, although Clinton never went near that idea.
But it wasn’t until this past summer that the Clinton-Biden swap narrative started to fully swirl. As Obama’s approval ratings sank, a variety of luminaries started promoting the idea of the ultimate “staff shakeup,” in some cases claiming to have inside knowledge that it was being discussed.
In June, for example, Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that Obama appoint Clinton to replace Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates when he leaves the Pentagon next year. Then, Gelb wrote, Obama “could drop another bombshell and announce Mrs. Clinton as his vice-presidential running mate.”
“He would wait until the last minute to see just how badly he needed her on the ticket, but the choice would have obvious advantages,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
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One Response
Biden would actually make a good Secretary of State, and Clinton would make a good Vice President. Both would make a good President, they each have more experience than the incumbent.