These are all the hot topics around the “Inside Politics” table this week:
1. What Obama’s trip to India reveals about his SOTU agenda
President Obama says he’s on the offensive, and he has certainly unveiled an ambitious list of proposals in the weeks leading up to the State of the Union speech Tuesday night.
But Julie Pace of The Associated Press notes that his schedule contradicts his rhetoric as he crosses into one of the indisputable stages of a lame-duck presidency: nonessential foreign travel.
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It has been more than a month now since Hillary Clinton held a public event, but that doesn’t mean she is taking a break from politics. To the contrary. As has been widely reported, the former secretary of state is building a 2016 campaign team that looks very different from her 2008 high command.
Her husband’s former chief of staff — John Podesta — is leaving the Obama White House to lead “Team Hillary.” And two veterans of the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns will serve as Clinton’s top strategist and chief media adviser.
The biggest question is whether Clinton has been using this down time to hone her campaign rationale — to answer liberal critics who say she is too cozy with Wall Street or Republican critics who label her more about the past than the future. But while awaiting her return to the public stage on Wednesday, even senior Republicans — and those Democrats pushing to draft Elizabeth Warren — concede her 2016 staff recruits are top notch.
