Carney: Clinton ‘likely to embrace’ Obama foreign policy

Hillary Clinton is “likely to embrace” President Obama’s record on foreign policy as a presidential candidate because she helped create and execute it, former press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday.

“She was secretary of State for President Obama for four years and she understands that record will be part of what she runs on,” Carney, hired Wednesday as a contributor to CNN, told the network. “Her time as secretary of State is something she should be proud of, and the president’s record on foreign policy is something she is more likely to embrace than anything because she was a big part of it.”

{mosads}Earlier this summer, Clinton suggested in an interview with the Atlantic that Obama’s restrained approach to the civil war in Syria had created a vacuum that enabled the rise the Islamic State terror group.

She also criticized the president’s frequently cited foreign policy mantra of “don’t do stupid stuff,” saying the motto was not “an organizing principle” worthy of “great nations.”

Although a spokesman for the former New York senator said the comments were not intended as an attack, and Clinton said subsequently she was proud to have served with Obama, those close to the favorite for the 2016 Democratic nomination sought again this week to draw a distinction between their foreign policy leadership style.

“You never want to be a Monday morning quarterback on these issues because who knows how things would ultimately turn out, but Obama has been passive on these issues,” one former Clinton aide told The Hill. “She would have taken a more aggressive approach.”

Carney told CNN that Clinton “will figure out if she decides to run” how to balance embracing and distancing herself from the president.

The former White House spokesman described Obama as “certainly close to former Secretary Clinton and to President Clinton.”