Peter Beinart: Obama Steals Clinton’s 1994 Playbook With Daley Demotion

Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His next book, The Crisis of Zionism,  will be published by Times Books in April 2012.

Ever since the GOP won the House of Representatives a year ago, one historical analogy has fixated the media: Bill Clinton’s response to the Republican revolution of 1994. Time and again, pundits have asked: Will Barack Obama triangulate, as Clinton allegedly did, or will he tack left, thus reaffirming his desire to be the transformational liberal that Clinton never was?

Back in January, when President Obama named Bill Daley to be his chief of staff, the press thought it had the answer. A month earlier, Obama had agreed to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for another two years. Now he was putting White House operations in the hands of Daley, a vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase who had masterminded the passage of NAFTA in 1993. As former Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert told the Los Angeles Times, Daley “understands the things that can bring [Obama] more toward the middle, exactly as Bill Clinton did.”

That was then. Now, with last week’s news that Daley is being stripped of his power—and Obama’s recent embrace of a minimum tax on millionaires—the storyline has turned. Suddenly, Obama is the anti-Clinton once again.

But by demoting Daley and tacking left—after first hiring him and tacking right—Obama isn’t burning Clinton’s playbook; he’s following it...