Husband's legacy poses a dilemma for Clinton
It is one of the central challenges of Hillary Clinton's campaign: How to take credit for the accomplishments of her husband's presidency and profit from his popularity while distancing herself from his past and present positions on which they disagree.
The balancing act came into sharper relief this week as she took contrasting positions from Bill Clinton by opposing the Colombia trade deal and favoring a boycott of the Olympic opening ceremonies.
"The greatest challenge of her candidacy has been introducing herself as independent from her husband," said Jennifer Donahue, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
"It's one thing to have 100 percent name ID and entree into the top tier. It's another thing to get out from behind that, get out from under that shadow," Donahue said.
Donahue said yesterday that Clinton has not yet fully succeeded in drawing that distinction.
"It's perfectly legitimate for her to differ on policy positions from Bill Clinton, but it's unclear to a lot of voters where those lines are drawn," she said.
When asked about not seeing eye to eye with her spouse, Clinton has often laughed off the question, saying they talk about everything. "I don't think any married couple I know agrees on everything," she said Wednesday.
But they are unlike any couple in US political history.
Elaine Kamarck, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said Clinton has not adequately explained what role her husband would play in her White House - and the pressure to do so will only intensify if she wins the nomination.
The disagreements on issues only highlight that failing, said Kamarck, who served in the Clinton White House from 1993 to 1997.
While Hillary Clinton is strong enough that voters will believe her policies are her own, "The question is: Will he be using his influence to work against her?" Kamarck said.
Clinton has been at odds with some of her husband's positions for months. During a debate last September in New Hampshire, moderator Tim Russert of NBC caught Clinton in a disagreement on the use of torture.
"It cannot be American policy. Period," she said in answer to a question about whether there should be a "presidential exception" to allow torture in a "ticking bomb" scenario involving a captured top Al Qaeda leader.
Russert then revealed that the former president had given the opposite answer in an interview with him.
"Well, I'll talk to him later," she deadpanned.
Clinton has struggled to carve out her own identity on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which her husband pushed through by calling it a boon to the US economy. NAFTA has had a decidedly mixed impact, however, and labor unions and others blame it for job losses in industrial states such as Ohio, which Clinton won last month to save her candidacy, and Pennsylvania, where Democrats vote on April 22 and where Clinton holds a slim lead in polls.
She and rival Barack Obama have been trying to outdo each other in criticizing NAFTA, with both pledging to renegotiate the pact to help US workers. Both have also questioned how genuine each other's opposition is to NAFTA; Clinton's position has been weakened by the release of her schedules as first lady that showed her attending several meetings to promote congressional passage of the trade deal.
On the Colombia trade pact proposed by President Bush, Clinton declared this week that she will do everything she can to stop its passage in Congress, even though Bill Clinton and her former chief strategist Mark Penn both have pushed for it.
The attention on policy differences with her husband is so distracting Clinton's campaign that it is "going sideways rather than forward," said David Gergen, professor of public service at Harvard's Kennedy School and an adviser to four presidents, including Clinton.
"She very badly needs to get back to the campaign message, what she would do in the next four years," Gergen said yesterday.
But Clinton - who argues that her greater experience in Washington prepares her to be president "on day one" - does not want to divorce herself too much from her husband's successes and her own years as first lady.
Donahue spent time last week with blue-collar workers and retirees in Pennsylvania and said she was struck by how fondly they recalled the rising wages and standard of living during the Clinton administration. "The thing she doesn't want to distance herself from is the economy in the 1990s," Donahue said.
Bill Clinton "is literally a twin-edged sword here in Pennsylvania," said Donald Kettl, director of the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.
The former president is "still lionized in many parts of the state," Kettl said yesterday, recalling the crowd of more than 50,000 who showed up for an October 2004 rally for then-Democratic nominee John F. Kerry that was Bill Clinton's first public appearance after heart bypass surgery.
But many voters do not want to return to what Kettl described as "the drama of the Clinton years."
Clinton has also been seeking the most productive role for her husband as surrogate-in-chief on the campaign trail.
The former president has made more than his share of volatile remarks, most notably comments that many voters in South Carolina perceived as racially insensitive and belittling of Obama. Exit polls indicated that consternation among voters helped Obama to a sweeping victory in the late January primary.
In a poll conducted for Time magazine in February, voters were evenly divided as to whether he has helped or hurt Hillary Clinton's candidacy, but 57 percent of voters said Bill Clinton would help her presidency.
While many believed early on that he would be a major asset, she now seems unable to avoid questions about him, Gergen said.
"It underscores that running as a former first lady is harder than anyone thought," he said. 