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James Carville was in Toronto recently for the HR Men speaking series.Chris Bolin/The Globe and Mail

This week, U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans to restore, after more than five decades, economic and diplomatic ties with Cuba. The move came as a surprise in large part because Mr. Obama, midway through his final term, has been widely likened to a lame duck, especially since losing control of Congress in last month's midterm elections.

But that was a mistaken impression, political strategist James Carville says.

Renowned for helping to elect Bill Clinton and coining the phrase "It's the economy stupid," Mr. Carville was in Toronto recently for the HR Men speaking series.

Afterward, he fielded questions about the Oval Office for Globe and Mail readers, beginning with one about its current occupant.

With the Republicans firmly back in control of the House and Senate, is Barack Obama a spent political force?

I'm more than willing to criticize the President. I think it is a big story that three defence secretaries, all well-qualified, have all resigned. But what exactly are Democrats whining about? Obama and a Democratic Congress raised taxes on the 1 per cent, passed health care, passed Dodd-Frank [to reform Wall Street and protect consumers] and, with a stroke of the executive pen, achieved meaningful immigration reform. The thing to remember about Obama is: He doesn't care if you like him or I like him or somebody else does. He literally would rather do homework with his kids than be around other politicians. Does this make him unpopular at times? Yes. Does it make him ineffective? Most certainly not.

Do you worry about a Hillary Clinton coronation, about by Democrats and her not being pressure-tested through a competitive nomination?

As Mike Tyson says, everybody has a plan until they get hit in the mouth. The one thing we know about American presidential politics is: You're going to get hit in the mouth. During the [Bill] Clinton campaign, we got hit in the mouth so many times you couldn't move around in the ring. We know what is going to happen. The anti-Hillary Clinton Democrats, the Republicans and the news media are all going to gang up on her. They're going have morning conference calls every day. It's going to be grotesquely unfair, but she already knows this going in. How she and her campaign react to this reality will be determinative.

What will surprise Clinton's opponents in primaries and the presidential election?

Hillary has one really important hole card: Women feel she has earned this. What people don't understand is that there are a lot of women who like Elizabeth Warren, but feel deep down that this is Hillary's turn. I've been part of her family's life and I see what she has gone through. Hillary's endurance is a source of political strength that is not sufficiently recognized by the cognoscenti in the United States. They think she's just a Clinton, she's running on her husband's name, she's has a cult of celebrity. Man, I go around the country and I guarantee Canadian women who vote Conservative would be pulling for her. They'll say, "You know what? She has suffered. She has stepped aside. She has paid her dues."

Who are your favourites among the current group of front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination?

If you're a Republican, you want a really talented field and one person emerging as mighty and strong. The 1980 Republican presidential contest might have been as good a roster of candidates as ever fielded by any party. [Ronald] Reagan, [George H.W.] Bush, Bob Dole, Howard Baker, John Connally and John Anderson. When Reagan beat these people, he looked strong. What happened to [Mitt] Romney was, you don't get credit for beating a Herman Cain or a Michele Bachmann. It don't count.

You like Jeb Bush as the nominee? What about Marco Rubio?

If I had to bet, I'll wager that [Mitt] Romney runs and wins the Republican nomination. They always nominate the dull white guy. He is the dull white guy. Among the Republican faithful, he should have beaten Obama, and he was right on Russia. History has proven him to be right. He's what Republicans think America needs: a good manager. He's a good family man.

What concerns you about the state of American politics today?

I try to recruit successful young African-Americans to vote and run for office in New Orleans. These people get out of college, they get a job with Chevron making a ton of money, and they think: "Why do I have to go and deal with a bunch of old politicians and work my way up" in a system they see as corrupt? I don't know if a Bill Clinton – coming out of Georgetown, Yale Law and Oxford today – would have sought elected office in Arkansas. He would have a lot of other options in 2014 that weren't available to him in the mid-seventies.

How will the turmoil in Ferguson, in Illinois, and the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the New York police play out?

I think it's a big moment. I live in New Orleans. We're a majority-African-American city; and we have a very high murder rate, which is typically characterized as black-on-black crime. No, it's human-being-on-human-being crime. When you dehumanize a group, there's lasting consequences, because they know that they're being dehumanized. I was very skeptical about the President coming out and speaking out after Ferguson. I think he's got to really say something now.

Rudyard Griffiths is a Toronto writer and a co-organizer of the HR Men speakers series.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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