President Barack Obama plans to deliver a high-profile job reference for Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, arguing that a long — and in his view, overlooked — career in public service has rendered her the most qualified candidate in history.
“I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America,” Obama will say in his convention speech, according to excerpts released by the White House.
In what the White House expects will be the largest remaining television audience of his presidency, Obama hopes to use Clinton’s record as the central argument for her candidacy — and suggest her rival’s record represents just the opposite.
Obama’s three previous Democratic convention speeches have, in succession, launched his national career, thrust him into the Oval Office and secured him a second term. His his fourth marquee convention address is meant to ensure those earlier efforts weren’t for naught.
Wednesday night and during a heavy campaign schedule this fall, Obama plans to argue not only for the Democratic nominee, but for the progressive policies that he’s spent the last eight years enacting — an agenda that will depend largely on his successor to maintain.
Obama will refer to the Republican nominee by name roughly half-a-dozen times, according to officials familiar with his remarks.
But he intends his remarks to be a positive vision of America.
“As I’ve traveled this country, through all 50 states; as I’ve rejoiced with you and mourned with you, what I’ve also seen, more than anything, is what is right with America,” he will say. “I see people working hard and starting businesses; people teaching kids and serving our country. I see a younger generation full of energy and new ideas, unconstrained by what is, and ready to seize what ought to be.”
The address has been in the works for weeks, officials said, beginning with thematic conversations that produced an initial draft last Monday. Six drafts later, Obama feels comfortable with the 30-minute address.
After a full run-through at a mock podium erected in the White House Map Room on Wednesday, aides said Obama didn’t determine a second rehearsal was necessary.
In his remarks, Obama plans to draw on his long and complicated relationship with Clinton, which began as a rivalry but has evolved into what the pair hopes can become the first elected Democrat-to-Democrat presidential transition in modern history.
He’ll also argue that Clinton in uniquely prepared for the Oval Office.
“You know, nothing truly prepares you for the demands of the Oval Office. Until you’ve sat at that desk, you don’t know what it’s like to manage a global crisis or send young people to war. But Hillary’s been in the room; she’s been part of those decisions,” he’ll say, according to excerpts. “Even in the middle of crisis, she listens to people, and keeps her cool, and treats everybody with respect. And no matter how daunting the odds; no matter how much people try to knock her down, she never, ever quits.”
In pre-convention interviews, Obama has been frank about his relationship with Clinton, admitting they aren’t “bosom buddies.”
“We don’t go vacationing together,” Obama said during a CBS interview Sunday. “I think that I’ve got a pretty clear-eyed sense of both her strengths and her weaknesses. And what I would say would be that this is somebody who knows as much about domestic and foreign policy as anybody.”
“She’s not always flashy. And there are better speech-makers,” he said. “But she knows her stuff.”
White House officials said Obama viewed his task as vouching for Clinton’s attributes as a public servant, which he believes is overlooked by Americans. Aides in the West Wing and at Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn coordinated late last week to hammer out Obama’s message, which will include touting her work with children, and her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat.
Using his popularity
An ABC News/Washington Post poll this month showed Obama’s approval at 56% — the highest point since early in his first term.
“Fifty-six percent is very high in this day and age,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s former senior adviser and current CNN senior political analyst. “This is the first time we’re going to have a president actively campaigning for a nominee of his own party. And it’s a popular president.”
Many top Republicans skipped their party’s convention last week, fearing links to Trump. But Democratic convention organizers had a wealth of willing speakers, programming prime-time speeches from high-profile and well-liked Democrats like Obama, Vice President Joe Biden (who also speaks Wednesday), first lady Michelle Obama, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
President George W. Bush skipped his party’s 2008 meeting and wasn’t a major presence on the campaign trail for Sen. John McCain. Obama, conversely, is expected to spend most of October on the campaign trail for Clinton, working to encourage the coalition of voters — formed of young people and minorities — to vote this time around.
But Obama remains polarizing among Republicans, and it’s unclear how well his approval ratings will translate to votes for Hillary Clinton.
Biden, who himself toyed with a presidential run last year, plans to offer an economic argument for a Hillary Clinton presidency during his speech ahead of Obama ?Wednesday night.
The vice president “will reflect on his experience over the last eight years and over his career,” said a Biden aide, adding that he will “outline why Secretary Clinton is the only candidate with a record of standing up for the middle class.”
The first lady’s speech on Monday drew instant praise for its unifying message and heartfelt description of life in the White House. An Obama aide said the powerful reception to his wife’s address spurred the President to stay up into the early morning hours working on his own speech.
Obama and Trump have an unusually acrimonious personal history for a president and one of his potential successors.
Trump’s extended questioning of Obama’s citizenship pushed the White House to release the President’s birth certificate. Later it led to a cutting public takedown of Trump that left the real estate tycoon fuming.
The resentment has only amplified during this year’s campaign. Amid his takedowns of Obama’s record, Trump has cast darker aspersions about Obama’s ties to Islamic terrorism.
“One of the weird things about politics is sometimes we tolerate things that we would never tolerate in any other field or in our personal life,” Obama told NBC News on Tuesday. “We wouldn’t expect somebody to repeatedly say things that were demonstrably not true and somehow get a pass.”
Among his team’s reference points: the speech Obama delivered at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston. That address launched Obama on a path to the White House — though he says he doesn’t go back and rewatch the tape.
“I look so young. I laugh sometimes when I see it,” he told NBC. “I think, I can’t believe I got elected to anything at that point. I look like I just got out of college.”
The speech, officials say, will act as a bookend for an increasingly reflective commander in chief.
“I am the first to admit that when I spoke in 2004, when I ran in 2008, my hope, my expectation, was that we could lift up all that common ground and create a new way of doing business in Washington and a new political tenor, a new political tone that was more respectful and more practical and trying to solve problems. And that hasn’t happened,” he told NBC. “But it doesn’t keep me from wanting to keep on trying.”