Former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first elected black Governor and an Obama supporter, is out with an op-ed in Politico Monday that argues for a drastic shakeup of the current administration in order to prime the pump for a difficult 2012 presidential reelection campaign.
The first step, Wilder argues, is to replace gaffe-prone Joe Biden as Vice President with battle-tested Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
An idea that was heavily pushed in 2008, before then-candidate Obama selected Biden as his running mate, Wilder argues that the first 18 months of Biden's vice presidency have been unproductive and filled with "too many YouTube moments."
And, while "Biden has continued to undermine what little confidence the public may have had in him," Wilder contends that Secretary of State Clinton has only excelled.
"Clinton has been nothing but a team player who has earned good marks since being asked to serve as secretary of state. She has skillfully navigated the globe and been tough and commanding when the moment called for it (with Iran) and graceful and diplomatic when situations required (navigating complex relations with Russia, Pakistan and China)."
The restructuring of the 2012 ticket, Wilder writes, would revive Obama's prominent and popular campaign themes of "audacity" and "change," and could provide the President with serious reinforcement among working-class voters, a demographic that he has been losing ground with amid the financial crisis in the first year-and-a-half of his presidency.
Liz Peek over at Fox News proposed a similar scenario in June, writing that Hillary could provide some much needed "excitement among core Democrats" as Vice President. Furthermore, Peek says, if Obama were to get reelected with the help of Clinton, it would put her perfectly in line for a 2016 presidential run of her own.
Others have suggested that someone, and perhaps Clinton herself, might mount a primary challenge against Obama if his popularity continues to lag, though most have played this scenario off as incredibly remote, and ultimately unlikely to faze the President in his quest for reelection in 2012.