Via Marbury fascinating stuff about Obama and Clinton (Bill) :
Obama's political identity was formed in part through opposition to Clinton, as a president and a personality. Where President Clinton was a trimmer and a compromiser, Obama would be a bold Reagan-style reformer (hmm). Where Clinton was a natural politician, who loved and lived for the game of politics, Obama would disdain Washington and its ways. Where Clinton was undisciplined and messy in his professional and personal lives, Obama would be self-controlled, precise, punctual.
(You could, by the way, say pretty much the same about Bush and his relationship with Clinton. Both the presidents that succeeded Clinton were extremely keen on not being Clinton. Which is surprising when you consider that Clinton was a relatively popular and successful president.)
What strikes me as odd is that Obama doesn't really value Clinton's advice, and seems very wary of him. Although he occasionally meets with Clinton or plays golf with him, you get the sense that he is doing so for the sake of the pictures, and the reassurance that it brings a large part of the Democratic base. I say it's odd, because Clinton is so clearly worth listening to. First, just as an ex-president. Second, as a genius-level analyst of politics, not just in the grand strategist sense - how to win the positioning battle versus the Republicans - but as someone who has an unparalleled ability to understand voters and articulate their fears and aspirations.
It's almost as if Obama fears being overwhelmed by Clinton's personality, or infected by him somehow - as if he might come back from that round of golf demanding all-night pizza sessions with his aides and eyeing up the intern.
More broadly, I think this is symptomatic of a blind spot in Obama's personality: he has a suspicion of disorder, even when it is creative. He likes everything to be just so; organised, thought-through, and planned, down to the last detail. The problem for him is, that's impossible when you're talking about an organisation the size of the US government, a war on the scale of Afghanistan, or a vast ecosystem like the one that constitutes US healthcare.
I made the point at the beginning of Obama's presidency that he represented Clintonism with a biracial face. I haven't changed my mind, the problem is that we are in 2012 and that Obama isn't Obama because he got 'there' too soon. and by faking it brilliantly.