Subject: Fwd: "Searching for Hillary Clinton's big idea"
From: Cheryl Mills <[email-masked]>
To: John Podesta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2014 18:51:31 -0400

fysa

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dan Schwerin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 6:13 PM
Subject: "Searching for Hillary Clinton's big idea"
To: HRC <[email-masked]>
Cc: Jake Sullivan <[email-masked]>, Cheryl Mills <
[email-masked]>, Huma Abedin <[email-masked]>, Nick Merrill <
[email-masked]>, PIR <[email-masked]>

Madam Secretary, while you were in Europe, POLITICO ran a piece titled
"Searching
for Hillary Clinton's big idea" that took a fairly even-handed
and thoughtful look look at the question of what your "vision" might be if
you decide to run for President.  In the wake of this article, I have
received a wide range of reactions from our friends.  I'd like to prepare a
memo for you with some of their comments and my own thoughts, but as a
preview I wanted to share the note below from Walter Isaacson.  I'm also
including the full text of the POLITICO piece.
Dan

From: "Isaacson, Walter" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2014 at 5:41 PM
To: Dan <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Searching for Hillary Clinton's big idea

Dan,

               I think that Secretary Clinton's big idea should be one that
is focused, authentic to her, and substantive: restoring economic
opportunity for the poor and middle class. That is the economic, social,
and moral issue of our time, and I know she believes in it.

                The American dream is that if you play by the rules and
work hard you have an opportunity to succeed, to have a secure job at a
decent wage, and  to provide for your family. That was there for our
parents' generation. We want it to be there for our children and
grandchildren. But that basic American compact is eroding, which is why
income inequality is growing. Your opportunity to succeed depends too often
on where you were born, and your chance of getting a secure job at a good
wage has been undermined. What Bill Clinton passionately believed and was
able to act upon with great success -- and what Hillary Clinton believes
and would be dedicated to acting upon -- is fighting to make sure that
everyone has a chance to be part of the American dream.

                I would emphasize that issue, rather than focusing on
railing against the 0.1%. Why? Because the moral outrage of our time is
not, primarily, that a few people won the lottery but that a large segment
of our society feels, correctly, that they don't have a fair shot at
providing a secure life for their families. In other words (Gouvernor
Morris's), securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity.

I don't know the politics of this, because I haven't read a poll in ten
years since I left journalism. Maybe pitchfork populism against the rich
polls better. I leave that your political folks. But to me it merely offers
a feel-good, almost onanistic, approach that does not in fact do much to
solve the more fundamental economic and moral problem, which is that we are
losing the dream of being a land of opportunity and economic security.

The approach I suggest also feels more authentic for Mrs. Clinton. She
authentically cares about assuring that the poor and middle class have an
opportunity to succeed. It's what she believes. But it would feel
inauthentic for her to start decrying Paul Tudor Jones and Alan Patricoff
and Warren Buffett billionaires and Hamptons-dwelling hedge fund magnates.

The virtues of focusing sharply and passionately on a message of restoring
the American dream and providing opportunity for the poor and middle class
are: it's true, she believes it, and there are a lot of specific things
that can be advocated. There are actions that government, nonprofits, and
corporations can take, working together, to reduce the situations where
rich and poor kids get different opportunities. Make sure that every kid
has the choice of good school. That every kid has enriching after-school
opportunities. That every high school junior or senior who has good
attendance and grades is guaranteed a summer job if they want one. That
every kid who graduates high school or college has the chance for an
internship. That people who work earn a livable wage. That getting health
coverage is an opportunity we continue to fight for.  Etc., etc.

I would put almost everything under this umbrella. Keep the message
focused. Have her fight - in words and policy proposals - for making sure
that the poor and working and middle class have the same opportunities that
the more privileged of us enjoy. That's what America has been all about,
ever since a penniless Benjamin Franklin got a job working for a
Philadelphia printer and went on to open a shop of his own.

I hope that this helps. And I am fully aware that I may be wrong and that
another approach may be better.

Walter

*Searching for Hillary Clinton's big idea*
By: David Nather
July 7, 2014 05:07 AM EDT

Here's one thing you won't find in Hillary Clinton's book: a clear reason
to run for president again.

The "Hard Choices" book tour has had all the trappings of a warm-up for
2016, and even though Clinton insists she hasn't decided yet, she keeps
dropping hints that she has ideas for the future of the country. "You've
got to ask people who want to run for anything, but particularly president,
what's your vision? What is your vision for our country, and do you think
you can lead us there?" Clinton said at a CNN "town hall" forum.

But if Clinton has a big idea for 2016, the book -- all 596 pages of it -- is
not the place to look for it. Policy experts in the Clinton orbit say
that's not the right way to read the former first lady's latest tome -- it's
mostly a foreign policy memoir, and any hints of other themes, like the
advancement of women and climate change, are there to wrap up the issues
she has already worked on throughout her career.

But any campaign has to have a big idea it's wrapped around, and that means
Clinton still has to spell one out -- assuming she has one in mind.

If Clinton gets into the race, the pressure will be on to make clear what
she would actually do in the White House and what she thinks will be the
unfinished business after eight years of Barack Obama's presidency. Any
Democratic nominee would have the same problem: It's especially challenging
to follow a president of the same party and make the case that you'd really
provide something different. But the problem would be especially tough for
Clinton since she served in the Obama administration -- and since she's
already talking about the need for a policy "vision."

The early consensus in Democratic circles is that Clinton's best bet is a
campaign about the economic challenges that will remain after Obama's
presidency, either income inequality -- which Clinton is already mentioning
with increasing frequency -- or the general problems of the middle class,
according to interviews with a dozen Democratic strategists and policy
thinkers.

That's the best way for her to play to her strengths, the strategists and
policy experts say, since she has been talking about income inequality for
years and can also talk about the economic growth that helped middle-class
Americans during Bill Clinton's presidency.

She'd have to decide which issue should get more weight, since that's one
of the biggest simmering disagreements among Democrats. The more populist
ones think inequality is the bigger issue right now, and Clinton herself
has been talking about it more than she used to. But the centrists and some
Bill Clinton alums say the middle class is more important -- and the former
president is reminding Democrats not to overlook middle-class concerns, saying
in a speech
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/bill-clinton-income-inequality-108078.html?hp=r9>
that
"the absence of social mobility is a far bigger problem than income
inequality."

She may be able to resolve that tension by nodding to both camps, as she
did at the Aspen Ideas Festival
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/hillary-clinton-american-dream-iraq-aspen-ideas-108465.html>
last
week. Clinton sounded a populist tone, saying Americans should "feel they
have a stake in the future and that the economy and political system is not
stacked against them." But she also spoke to more general, middle-class
anxieties: "Of course, you have to work hard. Of course, you have to take
responsibility. But we're making it so difficult for people who do those
things to feel that they're going to achieve the American dream."

Most Democrats believe voters will see the economy as the major unfinished
business of Obama's presidency, and they'll be looking for any ideas
Clinton can offer on how to speed up the economic recovery and improve the
quality of their lives.

"We survived the recession -- now, how do you get the economy from second
gear into third gear?" said Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy
at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. He said there's "no one
better in the Democratic Party" to lay out the next steps in 2016: "She was
part of an administration that understood the economy extraordinarily well."

Officially, Clinton's aides say she's not doing anything other than talking
about the issues she's always considered important. "There's no candidate,
so there's no campaign, but the themes you are hearing are ones she has
cared about and worked on all her life, and always will," said Clinton
spokesman Nick Merrill.

But there's already a strong interest in how she'd move the Democratic
agenda forward if she does jump in. And Clinton noted, almost as an aside,
at the Aspen Institute that "I'm thinking a lot about what we might do and
how we can do it."

In many of these conversations with Democrats, there's a clear hope that
Clinton can re-create her appeal to white, working-class voters that she
displayed when she ran against Obama in 2008 -- a demographic that
Democratic strategists say the party must start winning
<http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaugust_2014/features/beyond_identity_politics050650.php?page=2>
in
greater numbers.

That assumes, however, that Clinton will be able to shake off the
tone-deafness she has shown on the book tour with comments like the one she
made about being "dead broke"
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/hillary-clinton-financial-struggle-diane-sawyer-abc-107591.html>
--
and the Clintons' struggle to buy "houses" -- and later, her insistence
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/hillary-clinton-108162.html> that
the Clintons "pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly
well off."

"One of the big tests for her will be, is she in touch with ordinary
folks?" said Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, a former adviser to Bill
Clinton. "But it's so clear that this will be the main problem facing the
country that that will force her to be in touch. I think she'll welcome the
chance to do that."

Some Democrats say she can make the case that economic growth is the single
best strategy to fight income inequality, based on her husband's record in
the 1990s. "She had a ringside seat to what a growth agenda can do. It can
narrow wage and income gaps, and it will mitigate inequality," said Will
Marshall of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute, a longtime adviser
to Bill Clinton who helped develop the "new Democrat" ideas that shaped his
presidency.

"You can't go back and re-create the policies 20 years later. You need an
update. But she knows what prosperity looks like," Marshall said.

Others argue that Clinton could adapt other longtime causes of hers -- such
as early childhood development and education in general -- as an entry point
to talk about the bigger themes of economic growth and inequality.

It's "a major idea that's both economically and socially important and
plays to her strengths ... and is central for both economic growth and for
reducing inequality," said Austan Goolsbee, a former chairman of the
Council of Economic Advisers in Obama's first term. "It's a space that
she's always been identified with, and it's a contrast with the
Republicans, who tend to say the federal government shouldn't be involved."

And Heather Boushey, executive director and chief economist at the
Washington Center for Equitable Growth, notes that Clinton has already
talked
<http://www.newamerica.net/conference2014/keynote_by_the_honorable_hillary_rodham_clinton>
about
how the struggles of middle-income and low-income families drive economic
inequality. "These issues are intricately intertwined -- inequality and what
happens to families," Boushey said. "Talking about these issues together --
and how they affect each other -- is a compelling and logical next step."

So far, there's no sign that Clinton or her advisers are having the "what
if" conversations about policy ideas just yet. One longtime Democratic
operative, speaking anonymously to give a candid read of the situation,
says Clinton's advisers haven't reached out for ideas yet because that
would require acknowledging that she's running -- even though everything
else about the book tour suggests that she is.

There are places in the book where Clinton teases her readers with some
broad themes that wouldn't sound out of place in a 2016 campaign -- a taste
of everything from inequality to the plight of the middle class to gridlock
in Washington.

"Citizens and leaders alike have choices to make about the country we want
to live in and leave to the next generation," she writes at the end of the
book. "Middle-class incomes have been declining for more than a decade, and
poverty has increased as almost all the benefits of growth have gone to
those at the very top. We need more good jobs that reward hard work with
rising wages, dignity, and a ladder to a better life. Investments to build
a truly 21st-century economy with more opportunity and less inequality. An
end to the political dysfunction in Washington that holds back our progress
and demeans our democracy."

But policy advisers who are close to the Clintons argue that the book
doesn't really break new ground for her -- even in the few policy
discussions that go beyond her record as secretary of state -- so it
shouldn't be seen as a road test for 2016 ideas.

"She's worked on income inequality for a very long time," including the
2008 campaign, said Neera Tanden, who was Clinton's policy director in that
campaign and is now the president of the Center for American Progress.
"They're not indicative of a campaign. They're the issues of her life, and
that's what this book tells us."

Gene Sperling, who served as an economic adviser in both the Clinton and
Obama administrations, argues that "many of the ideas she discusses from
inequality to women and girls to jobs to early childhood education come
from decades of a road well traveled with the type of hands-on policy
leadership you just saw from her at a global level at State."

There are some themes that would be sure to come up, even if they're not
the centerpiece of the campaign. On foreign policy, Clinton writes about
America's place in the world as the "indispensable nation" -- noting that
"while there are few problems in today's world that the United States can
solve alone, there are even fewer that can be solved without the United
States."

That can't be the central theme of a campaign, especially since Democratic
voters aren't likely to put foreign policy at the top of their priority
lists. But Clinton can use that viewpoint to define her approach to foreign
policy, as she did in her CNN town hall interview to answer her critics on
the attacks in Benghazi, Libya: "When they say the United States shouldn't
be in these dangerous places, I just fundamentally disagree. I don't think
we should be retreating from the world."

And Clinton makes clear in the book -- and repeatedly in interviews on the
book tour -- that the advancement of women's rights and opportunities is an
important subject that was undervalued not only by many foreign leaders but
by Obama administration officials as well. Clinton clearly feels free to
talk about these issues now that she's left the administration, and
Democrats say they expect the advancement of women to be a natural theme of
a Clinton campaign -- though not necessarily the central one.

Income inequality, however, has been an increasingly important part of
Clinton's speeches as the topic has gained importance among Democrats -- not
just Obama but other liberal stars like Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

In a Facebook video promoting the book, Clinton said the nation needs to
deal with the"cancer of inequality."
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/hillary-clinton-hard-choices-facebook-equality-107161.html>
And
in a recent speech to the New America Foundation
<http://www.newamerica.net/conference2014/keynote_by_the_honorable_hillary_rodham_clinton>,
Clinton talked about how the well-being of families -- and the strength of
community institutions like schools, churches and civic organizations --
help determine how many people can build comfortable lives.

It's that prescription -- "healthy families and inclusive communities" --
that suggests that Clinton could drive the inequality debate forward,
according to Anne-Marie Slaughter, president of the New America Foundation
and Clinton's former director of policy planning at the State Department.

"Her notion of family is very expansive," said Slaughter. "This idea that
you start with the family, with the community and you build from there --
you can't have a successful society or prosperous economy without digging
into the roots. I'd not heard that before."

Those themes could help Clinton rally Democrats and build on the momentum
of other efforts already underway, like Obama's White House Summit on
Working Families
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/06/18/youre-invited-white-house-summit-working-families>
and
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's economic agenda
<http://dyn.politico.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp:/www.democraticleader.gov/Women_Succeed%E2%80%9D>
for
women and families.

Even so, Clinton would have to spell out what she thinks the federal
government could do about those issues and what it couldn't do. And so far,
the few hints she's dropped suggest that her prescriptions for improving
working families' lives would be cautious. When asked in the CNN town hall
interview whether paid maternity leave should be a required benefit
throughout the country, she said, "I think, eventually, it should be" -- but
not now "because I don't think, politically, we could get it now."

Clinton's biggest challenge would be navigating the tensions between
Democrats who think addressing income inequality is the biggest challenge
of our time and those who think it's better just to focus on building a
strong middle class, not to worry about what rich people are earning.

Boushey, for example, argues that economic inequality has larger economic
effects, and that "if you look at the economy broadly, that's the most
important thing that is going on." But that's not a universally shared
view. James Carville, who rose to fame in Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign,
recommends a "laser-like focus on rebuilding and revitalizing the middle
class," adding that he's "more into getting incomes up" than worrying about
the difference between incomes.

And Third Way's Kessler argues that "the middle class decides every
election. They want to believe that there are jobs that will allow them to
have the kind of *lives* that they expected to have. Everything else is a
sideshow."

It may just be a matter of emphasis, though Democrats will be watching
closely to see what balance she strikes.

"It can't just be inequality (though she'll talk about it) because, while
people think inequality's out of control, their real gripe is that it
prevents them and people like them from getting ahead," Ruy Teixeira,
author of "The Emerging Democratic Majority," said in an email. "In other
words, it's about opportunity and mobility, not just fairness (though they
do think it's unfair)."

Regardless of how Clinton frames it, most Democrats say a sluggish economy
would be the most important unfinished business she would have to tackle
when Obama leaves the White House.

"I don't expect there to be sudden, miraculous growth in the next 18 months
where everyone would say, 'Everything is solved,'" said Kessler.

*Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.*
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=D4086763-AFB6-4156-AB8D-9D1FF127E2D8