This diary is informed by the opinions of Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria and the compiler of the Rating the President's series (I keep forgetting his name, he was on the KGO on President's day on the John Rothman show which I diaried earlier).
Zakaria's view is that Hillary Clinton is too much afraid of Republican attacks to act boldly. http://www.newsweek.com/...
In the article, he contends that the era of conservativism is over (which he follows up on this week with an article coincidently titled 'the era of conservatism is over'). It could be a fair point: Ronald Reagan's charge that "government isnt' the solution, government is the problem" was made almost 30 years ago, and as I've argued before, as much as Republicans everywhere seem to constantly go around and try to relive that, the degree to which government may actually have been a problem 30 years ago has been largely addressed and corrected.
So, if the era of conservatism is over, it's up to the Democrats to replace it. As Zakaria points out, Hillary is just too much a product of 1980s politics to realize that much of the public may be ready to move on from the conservative era. He and I are concerned that she will cave in on conservative criticism just as Bill Clinton caved on welfare reform.
For many voters, the Reagan lines are ancient history: probably half of the voters today weren't even old enough to vote (if they were even alive) in the 1980s. I think Obama is clearly aware of this, but I don't think she is. We see this most in foreign policy, where her views seem to be entirely callibrated based on how conservatives might respond to her.
So, as Obama said, he really is in a position to be a transformative president, and remove these vestiges of conservativism that have wrought so much damage on the economy, the environment, social policy and foreign policy.
This is further backed up by the Rating the Presidents series compiler who noted that great presidents seem to follow after failed presidents: Lincoln after Buchanen, FDR after Hoover, (for the Republicans, Reagan after Carter). Certainly whoever follows Bush will be following probably the worst president of all time. If this isnt' a chance to for a Democrat to use their predecessor as a foil and even simply advise "let's do the opposite of what he did" I don't know what is.
Finally, one bit on being 'transformative' just to show that I'm not a simpleton on the matter here. I appreciate that these things aren't black and white. For all of Reagan's bashing liberalism and the Great Society, he didnt' really roll it back all that much (although I'm sure he rolled it back more than many here would like.) And for all of the view that Clinton mainly acted to consolidate Reagan's era, he did try to be 'transformative' by advancing the so-called 'Third way' of 'reinventing' government and advancing infrastructure spending. So, of course, these things are never really anwhere near as simple as some try and make them seem in hindsight.
So, some may say that I haven't even said what transformation's Obama would like to make. I think he would be greatly informed by public policy research coming out of universities and I don't think he would try and rebuild the Great Society. My guess is he would really try and build the 'Third Way' that Clinton tried to start.