The chances of an Obama-Clinton ticket get a little more remote

June 16, 2008

Just about a month ago, we learned that Patti Solis Doyle, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager and confidante, had begun preliminary discussions with the Obama campaign about a role on the team. Today, we see the result of those discussions.

The Obama campaign is about to make its first big hire out of the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Patti Solis Doyle, who was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign manager until she was ousted in a staff shake up in February, will join Mr. Obama’s campaign as the chief of staff to the vice presidential candidate — whoever he (or she) will be, campaign officials said.

Ms. Doyle will take the position before Mr. Obama announces his choice for a running-mate — he has not said when that will be. Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Doyle have a long friendship, and Ms. Doyle has long been one of her closest aides, until she was forced out. Could that mean — tea-leaf reading time — that Mr. Obama is really considering Mrs. Clinton for the No. 2 position, and wants to have an ally of her in place to ease the way? Perhaps.

Or perhaps not. More likely, the Obama campaign was looking for a high-profile spot to put Ms. Doyle, given her previous position, and most of the major roles in Mr. Obama’s campaign are filled.

At first blush, it may seem odd to hire a chief of staff to a vice presidential candidate who has not yet been chosen (at least as far as we know). Wouldn’t the running mate have a CoS of his/her own? Yes, which is why the title is probably misleading — in this case, the chief of staff to the vice presidential candidate will probably be more of a liaison between the VP candidate’s team and the Obama campaign HQ.

As for how this relates to Clinton possibly joining the ticket, I’ve seen ample speculation that this makes an Obama/Clinton ticket more likely, but I’m very much inclined to believe the opposite.

I’m reminded of this NYT item from a week ago:

Mrs. Clinton dumped her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, who had been with her since 1992, and the two have not spoken since.

In other words, if the goal of the Obama campaign was to have a Clinton ally in place to “ease” the transition, the very last person they’d pick is Patti Solis Doyle.

For that matter, I thought initially that maybe this could be spun as a “unity” move — the Obama campaign has placed Clinton’s former campaign manager in a prominent position. See? We can all get along!

Except, that doesn’t quite work here, either. Obama won’t get credit for hiring a top Clinton aide who Clinton no longer talks to. As Ben Smith noted, “many” Clinton backers “view Solis Doyle as a bit of a traitor for having signaled that she’d move to Obama before the primary was over.”

Obviously, speculation like this should be taken with a grain of salt, because one would need to be on the inside to fully appreciate the campaign’s thinking. But given today’s news, I think the likelihood of an Obama/Clinton ticket is more remote this afternoon than it was this morning.

I can’t fathom why this move was done. Patti Solis Doyle is of no value to anyone. She’s incompetent and wasteful, and even Clinton fans can’t stand her because they rightly blame her for damaging Clinton’s campaign.

So hiring Doyle is a bad idea on the merits AND a bad idea for PR.

  • …and even Clinton fans can’t stand her because they rightly blame her for damaging Clinton’s campaign. -Tamalak

    Clinton fans blame everyone but Clinton for her failed campaign, so that’s hardly compelling evidence. I rather think Mark Penn and Harold Ickes were the agents of destruction, especially since Solis-Doyle was actually let go in February, and not fake-fired like Penn.

  • I think the likelihood of an Obama/Clinton ticket is more remote this afternoon than it was this morning.

    How do you get more remote than zero? (Hillary=Bill=Monica=Zero Chance of VP Hillary)

  • I thought she was going to be hired for Latino outreach since she has connections with a lot of Latino leaders.

  • Perhaps she was Obama’s mole in the Clinton organization. Strange move though. I hope Obama is not losing his touch already from the pressure.

  • Does anyone out there know if Patti Solis Doyle and Bill Richardson have any particular professional affinity for each other?

  • I don’t think Obama can come right out (yet) and emphatically deny Clinton the VP role, so if you can’t come out and say it, this might be the second best thing. Not a lot of voters are going to know or care who Doyle is, but Clinton knows and that’s the only one who needs to get this message clearly.

  • John (#8) gets it right. Will the rest of you please stop wringing your hands and getting your knickers in a knot, over a fear (Fantasized Expectations Appearing Real) that the Obama campaign has somehow screwed the pooch? They’ve already demonstrated that they’re far more capable of running a successful campaign and making the right choices than any of us are, if we compare our “advice” to their actions. We can thus save valuable bandwidth for CB and not give ammo to the trolls.

  • Solis Doyle has a long relationship with David Axelrod, has admired Obama for awhile, and has Chicago roots. This should be no surprise. She’ll be putting together the staffing structure for the VP, who will not be bringing his/her own structure, but rather most-likely integrating his/her team into the one already in place. That’s not out of the ordinary politics, I believe Gore did the same with Lieberman; remember, the VP will not be running his/her own campaign, but rather running as a full-time surrogate for Obama, who’s got to be on the Obama campaign message at all times. Having Obama staffers work with that person makes sense in terms of keeping it altogether as one streamlined team

  • All evidence suggests Doyle was in way over her head as a campaign manager, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t effective as Hillary’s assistant during the White House years. She could be a very good choice in the more structured role as a chief of staff. I don’t think she is necessarily the right person for the job, but then again I don’t know any of the campaign people personally so I recognize their opinions are far more informed than mine. Everyone should give Patti Solis Doyle at least a chance to do her new job before deciding that she isn’t doing it well.

  • Doyle has to do well for Obama. She can’t risk being fired another time, or her career in politics is over.

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  • I really doubt Obama is going to choose Clinton for his VP, and I doubt even more strongly that she wants him to. VP really isn’t the type of job Clinton would want, particularly in the top-down kind of White House Obama would likely run. And at any rate, the two of them have had a few meetings lately, and if this issue wasn’t discussed I would be extremely surprised.

    Really, the entire VP thing is nothing but empty speculation and/or pressure coming from Clinton die-hards who refuse to let go, and pundits and former surrogates trying to keep the primary horse race going a little longer. I would bet gold to grass that the issue has already been resolved privately between Obama and Clinton, and that the answer was “no”.

  • “Clinton fans blame everyone but Clinton for her failed campaign, so that’s hardly compelling evidence. I rather think Mark Penn and Harold Ickes were the agents of destruction, especially since Solis-Doyle was actually let go in February, and not fake-fired like Penn”.

    Amen.

    Clinton was aware by this time last year of the broad outlines of Obama’s strategy, i.e., that he intended to target the caucus states. Penn and Solis-Doyle dismissed the threat outright. Ickes entertained forebodings, but they did not spur him to decisive action. Ultimately, however, Clinton and Clinton alone chose to disregard the potential implications of her rival’s well laid plans.

  • ***Unbeknownst to the Clintonian masses, Patti Solis Doyle was actually a one-woman sleeper cell for President Obama, sent back to us from the year 2015 with the sole task of waging passive political jihad on the forces of all things Clintonian, thus denying McBush more free airtime and summarily crushing the old geezer’s political career, once and for all. This also caused considerable stress on his marriage; his wife being unable to properly manage her dead draft-horse bodily fluids “beer” distributorship, which allowed InBev to buy Anheuser-Busch for a mere pittance, and those mackerel-brained twits in St. Louis finally had to produce a light amber lager that tasted like a light amber lager is supposed to taste.

  • My guess is that Obama and Clinton have already resolved the issue of her candidacy for the VP spot privately, and all of the speculation is moot. Obama’s happy to have the public speculate about who he will choose, and to watch him approach the process thoughtfully, but he’s certainly made the decision (whether or not to team up with HRC) already. My own guess is that the answer is no, he does not want her on the ticket any more than she wants to be on the ticket.

  • It appears that Obama and Clinton are going on their first date in Unity for more than just unifying the Democratic party. I truly believe that in the next few days if their appears to be a love connection, this will be a connection that could last at least the first 4 years of Obama’s presidency if in fact he wins. So I won’t be surprised to hear Obama announce Senator Clinton as his running mate if their next few dates together are successful.

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