Why Clinton’s Arctic stance is her political declaration of independence

Share

The most important U.S. political story of the month very likely has nothing to do with Donald Trump, or undocumented workers, or the bacon-wrapped riblets-on-a-stick that were the rage at the Iowa State Fair where more than a dozen presidential candidates showed their wares in front of a substance-starved audience.

The most important political story of the month consumed only 10 paragraphs at the very bottom of page A14 of The New York Times last week.

This piece was no tube-ripper, as former Washington Post editor Benjamin C. Bradlee used to describe a boffo story that had the potential of setting tongues a-wagging in the U.S. capital. It was a dutiful, detailed account of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's opposition to drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean.

Now in truth this was not a remarkable position for a Democratic presidential contender to take in her effort to win the nomination of a party where environmentalists are an important interest group and funding source. The notion of Arctic drilling – considered by environmentalists and groups representing native interests as a threat to the Alaska landscape, and to the economy and diet of native Alaskans who fish and hunt in the Chukchi Sea – is opposed by Friends of the Earth, the National Audubon Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, an activist group called Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands, and many others, all of which are broadly if not specifically congenial to Democratic policy goals on the environment.

But that's not the point. The import of the Clinton decision is that the onetime member of Barack Obama's cabinet has taken a position in direct conflict with the position taken by the President himself.

Ms. Clinton's position may help a few hundred thousand dollars roll into her campaign coffers, but it won't substantially affect her position as she tries to sew up the Democratic nomination. Virtually all of her all-but-unknown Democratic opponents will very likely take precisely the same position. Her biggest rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, is already considered the ne plus ultra of environmental senators, not surprising given his base of left-leaning activists in enviro-friendly Vermont.

So why is this move, completely congruent with Ms. Clinton's policy instincts and already embraced by her competitors, significant?

It has no importance whatsoever for the Democratic caucuses and primaries in February and March. But it has enormous significance in the general election in November, should she win the nomination at the Philadelphia party convention in mid-July, 2016. Until then, the premium for her is simple: taking and holding positions that have broad support within the Democratic Party.

But beginning next August – and accelerating through the televised debates in late September through mid-October, 2016 – Ms. Clinton will have to portray herself as her own woman, not as a creature or a clone of the president she served, a president whose approval ratings are not exactly a life raft for a candidate cascading through the Class V river rapids of U.S. politics.

Here is the question faced by many political figures – from William Howard Taft in 1908 to Richard Nixon in 1960 to Hubert Humphrey in 1968 to Walter Mondale in 1984 to George H.W. Bush in 1988 to Al Gore in 2000: How do you differ from the president under whom you served or with whom you are closely identified?

This is the difficult, dreaded but destined question that strains establishment candidates who are steeped in the virtues of loyalty but who are struggling to establish their own identity. It requires rhetorical gymnastics, balancing gracious expressions of fealty and respect with subtle assertions of independence. It has produced some of the most awkward moments in American political history, such as when then-vice-president Mr. Bush, running to succeed Ronald Reagan, used the phrase "kinder and gentler" in his acceptance speech at the Republicans convention in August, 1988. The remark prompted Nancy Reagan to wonder exactly who Mr. Bush wanted to be seen as "kinder and gentler" than.

Five years earlier, Mr. Mondale, who had served under Jimmy Carter and had kept his distance once the 39th president was repudiated in the 1980 election, gritted his teeth and made a pre-1984 campaign journey to Mr. Carter's mountaintop log cabin along Turniptown Creek in remote Ellijay, Ga., there to dispose of his obligation to acknowledge his presidential mentor (and to court Southern voters) without bringing attention to the politically unpopular policies of the administration of which he was a part.

Mr. Carter had said he understood his vice-president's need for a separate identity, explaining before the visit over barbecue and peach cobbler: "I think it is obvious that no candidate who hopes to be president of the United States could permit himself or herself to be stigmatized by subservience to the policies of someone else." Still, he may not have done Mr. Mondale much good by telling reporters after the session, "When I made a decision, he supported my decisions in every instance." The preferred interpretation of that remark was that Mr. Mondale was prudent and respectful.

Ms. Clinton's natural impulses toward prudence and respect have kept her from reproaching President Obama, though she is conscious of her need to be seen to be running for her own term and not for Mr. Obama's third term. Now her portfolio of positions includes two diversions from Mr. Obama –Arctic drilling and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she once praised fulsomely but which has become a toxic issue for Democratic Party interests such as labour leaders and environmentalists.

Before she's done, there will be more. That dreaded question is coming, and she is building an answer.