That Hillary had a career in the Senate and was known and appreciated for being a hard worker — even John McCain after working with her in the Senate let slip in 2008 that Hillary would make a fantastic President! — already puts her in a better position than Obama in that regard.

I’ve actually looked and have yet to find evidence of Obama putting in (or being praised for) the kind of hard work that Hillary has become (in)famous for. The pattern for some time — the entirety of his career, one could say — appears to be make a speech, call a committee, tell them to get to work, and check in every now and then to see how it’s going. It’s my opinion that this hands-off approach has led to many of his Presidential disasters, especially when it comes to how he’s viewed as a Leader.

Thanks for the response.

I think you’ve reversed yourself on the point that aroused my interest. It seems that Clinton’s career in the Senate doesn’t give us much reason to think she would do better than Obama at getting legislation through Congress.

You raise a good point: at this moment support for Obama among Democrats remains high, although it has begun to slip in recent weeks. But it’s not clear that the slippage is translating into support for a Hillary candidacy among those Democrats who voted for Obama in 2008. However, there is polling evidence suggesting that progressives are disappointed in some of Obama’s policy decisions – that, seems to me, to be evidence of buyer’s remorse, if not evidence of support for Clinton as the alternative.

Going as far back as Arkansas when she was the Chair of the Rural Advisory Committee, she was (irritatingly) instrumental in bringing health care and emergency health care to the poor who lived in rural communities. She fought for a solid year against entrenched interests — and was often told to be a good wife and just shut the hell up by the wall of misogyny that met her — to make this happen and, to her credit and against the political/sexist odds — remember, Arkansas in the ’70s –, it did.

The Health Care Bill, as First Lady in 1993, was entirely in her hands. Unlike Obama, she didn’t fob it off to a committee and check in periodically to urge them to work faster. She was waist deep in information, surrounded by doctors and patients and hospital administrators, crafting the Bill page by page, again in the face of unrelenting criticism and outright vicious attacks. Yet, still, she created something which would have been more patient friendly than what Obama passed.

Had she allowed the Insurance Companies in the room — or even to sit at the head of the table like Obama did and, through their cronies in Congress, write the Bill –, there might not have been an ad campaign costing millions against it and it might have been allowed to come up for a vote. But she chose the counsel of doctors, patients, and hospitals, and paid for it politically in the end.

But no one questioned the back-breaking work she did and some even offered her credit, begrudgingly, for it.

In the Senate, which is more glacially procedural than most of us realize, many of the Bills she introduced or co-sponsored had to do with Children and Children’s Health, an obvious holdover from her years in Arkansas, though she was also a major force in extending Health Care to Reservists and National Guard members.

As Senator she was also the first New Yorker to ever sit on the Committee on Armed Services, an esteemed position on an important committee and an indication of the respect she had earned.

Though not rich in Bills — and, frankly, there aren’t many Senators who get much through to begin with, an indication of how ineffective our government can be –, it’s often publicly noted how impressed former detractors were with her hard work, her intelligence, her preparedness, and how well she worked with others, even those who used to despise her. No one questioned how hard she worked or the focus she brought to the issues in front of her.

So, those are a few brief examples admittedly from memory (so my apologies if I missed something or got a year wrong or something).

If you could find similar examples illustrating Obama’s acknowledged and impressive habit of working hard and being respected for said work in his 11 years as State Senator and his two years as US Senator — hell, I’d even take anecdotes from his time at Harvard –, I’d appreciate it.