Mid-Terms: Obama to adopt Clinton approach - go to Indonesia

The Washington Post have come up with a resemblance between the Obama and Clinton administrations. In the mid-term elections in 1994 Clinton suffered a damaging defeat and he said that he was prepared to work with the Republicans but block them from doing anything that would “take us back to the policies that us before”. Obama has in a way been tempting fate as last Saturday in Chicago he stated “We don’t want to relive the past, we’re not going back”.

The bizarre issue here is that their schedules after the mid-terms are just about identical as Clinton headed off to Indonesia in 1994 and Obama is going there for three nights also as part of his 10 day trip to Asia. Obama wants to pursue issues like Clinton did – eg. deficit reduction and education reforms which are more achievable.

However by this time Clinton had struck up meaningful association with the Republicans, especially House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. Obama on the other hand has done little to make friends with congressional leaders of either party - and certainly not his political opponents, who are more unsympathetic than those during the Clinton administration. Click here for full article.