If This Is “Change,” What Would The Status Quo Look Like?

Because while Obama is still seen as the insurgent candidate challenging Hillary’s Democratic establishment camp, he has actually been recruiting ex-Clintonites in large numbers. Behind the scenes, Obama and Hillary have been engaged in a vicious battle for the best and brightest officials of the 1990s, those who mastered “working the system in Washington” a decade ago. The competition has grown so fierce that several Obama officials who were once Friends of Bill tell me they have been threatened with becoming pariahs by the Hillary camp if she wins the nomination. In response, the Obama campaign has only revved up its recruiting effort of midlevel former Clinton officials. “The Obama pitch is, ‘You’ll never be in the inner circle’ with Hillary,” says Gene Sperling, Sen. Clinton’s top economic advisor. ~Michael Hirsh

Obama’s “transformed,” “unconventional” foreign policy will be steered by former Clinton officials and the odd Brookings advisor.  His foreign policy will manage to combine all of the excessive ambition and overreach of his progressive internationalism and the destructive, interventionist instincts of “centrist” Democratic foreign policy staffers.  On foreign policy, Obama and Clinton are becoming almost indistinguishable.