In an election year when Bill Clinton's policies and personal indiscretions have faced intense scrutiny, Hillary Clinton is beginning to shape the role her husband would play in her administration, zeroing in on economic growth and job creation as crucial missions for the former president.
Hillary Clinton told voters in Kentucky on Sunday that her husband would be "in charge of revitalizing the economy, because you know he knows how to do it," especially "in places like coal country and inner cities." On a campaign swing this month before the West Virginia primary, she said her husband has "got to come out of retirement and be in charge" of creating jobs.
She has not provided details about how a former president would fit into a policymaking role in his wife's administration, a position never before seen in American politics. Asked on Monday whether Bill Clinton would hold a Cabinet position, Hillary Clinton shook her head and said, "No."
Aides said Bill Clinton's role would be narrowly defined to focus on hard-hit areas of the country, such as the Rust Belt, and they rejected any implication that Hillary Clinton would outsource a central part of her administration to her spouse.
But even a passing promise that Bill Clinton would be put in charge of a significant part of a president's portfolio raised questions about how such an arrangement would work in a White House that has long relied on an appointed Treasury secretary and National Economic Council.
"There is a practical puzzle of how a role like this would jibe with the existing Cabinet members whose job is to work on the economy," said Austan D. Goolsbee, an economic adviser to President Barack Obama and a professor at the University of Chicago.
The declaration about Bill Clinton's potential place in a Hillary Clinton administration comes as her campaign is preparing to battle the likely Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, and widening its efforts to win the support of white working-class voters. Those voters hold generally favorable opinions of Bill Clinton, but view her with more skepticism.
The former president's more emotive style appears to resonate with blue-collar voters in ways Hillary Clinton's has not. Some 55 percent of voters nationwide said they do not believe Hillary Clinton "cares about people like me," according to a Quinnipiac poll conducted in February.
And Bill Clinton's record — a balanced budget, the creation of 22.7 million jobs and 7.7 million people lifted out of poverty — is in many ways simpler for Hillary Clinton to pitch than Obama's economic record, when economic growth has disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans.
"Hillary Clinton's statement that if elected president she'd put Bill Clinton 'in charge of revitalizing the economy … because, you know, he knows how to do it' suggests she's no longer touting the successes of the Obama economy, or even linking herself to it," said Robert B. Reich, a secretary of labor during the Clinton administration who endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary.
But for all the benefits of relying on Bill Clinton, and touting the economic prosperity he oversaw, the strategy could open Hillary Clinton up to further attacks by Trump, who has outspokenly criticized Bill Clinton's personal indiscretions.
Trump, who has campaigned as an economic populist, has also hit Hillary Clinton over her husband's trade policies, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, which ...(Continued on next page)
Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993 and which many voters believe hurt U.S. workers.
Hillary Clinton's embrace of her husband's economic legacy comes after she has spent much of the past year grappling with a challenge from Sanders and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. With economic inequality emerging as a main concern among Democratic voters, she has sought to distance herself from the Wall Street deregulation and trade policies associated with the 1990s.
"To what extent does Bill Clinton's mixed policy agenda map out to the current campaign? That's the challenge," said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
Hillary Clinton often says she is not running for her husband's third term, but she has also leaned heavily on his economic record.
"Jobs jobs jobs," she said on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" last month, when asked what Bill Clinton would do in the White House. "Nobody did it better, created more jobs, helped incomes rise. I want every bit of advice he can give me about how we do the same going forward."
Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, said that the central focus of her campaign has been increasing wages and creating good jobs, and that she would not outsource that effort.
"As she has repeatedly said throughout this campaign, Secretary Clinton is interested in having President Clinton focus on places that have experienced substantial job loss and economic dislocation, like coal country and some inner-cities," Merrill said, adding that "she has put forward an ambitious agenda for serving economically distressed communities" and "looks forward to having President Clinton be a part of these efforts."
While Hillary Clinton has devoted much of her time in the Democratic primary to speaking out against the effects caused by parts of the 1994 crime bill and a 1996 overhaul of the welfare system that cut federal assistance to the poor by nearly $55 billion over six years, she can now more safely embrace the Bill Clinton years, Democrats said.
"What we've seen for decades is that the broader electorate thinks the 1990s went pretty damn well," said Matt Bennett, a former aide to Bill Clinton and senior vice president for public affairs at Third Way, a centrist think tank. "Did they love every single thing? Of course not."
Hillary Clinton's advisers said the upside of using the former president, particularly in the general election, would far outweigh any potential personal baggage that he brings — and that Trump plans to exploit.
Polls show that voters have a better opinion of Bill Clinton than either Hillary Clinton or Trump, with 56 percent of registered voters viewing him positively, according to a CNN/ORC poll in February.
If Hillary Clinton leans on her husband for economic advice, the former president may need to update his approach.
To address the growing income inequality and middle-class wages that have remained virtually stagnant for the past 15 years, Hillary Clinton, in her current campaign, has put forth an economic agenda that is more populist and reliant on government than Bill Clinton's centrist approach of deficit reduction and welfare reform.
"Bill Clinton is well aware that the economy has changed since the 1990s," said Alan B. Krueger, a professor of economics at Princeton University and a former chairman of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers who has advised Hillary Clinton. "He would recommend policies that would strengthen the economy, especially for the middle class, in the current environment."