Has it ever crossed your mind that maybe Hillary Clinton might have made a better President than Barack Obama?

It’s sure crossed my mind a lot lately, as we’ve seen Obama flounder so badly on health care, on the bank bailout, on foreclosures, and on the jobs front.

Now I’ve got no brief for Hillary Clinton. She’s a centrist Democrat on domestic policy, and a very hawkish one on foreign policy. I wasn’t a big fan of hers during the primaries. I never cared for her politics. I was sick of the Clinton dramarama. And Obama at least held out the remote possibility of something better.

But I always admired her toughness, something that Obama has in such short supply.

And she would have had none of the foolishness about bipartisanship that Obama has had, foolishness that looks more and more like crippling naivete.

Remember back in the campaign, when she mocked Obama’s invocation of bipartisanship by saying: "The sky will open. The lights will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect!"

She was criticized for being harsh, or as the sexists put it, “shrill.”

But she was right, especially when she added: “Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions at how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear.”

She also made the case that she could take a punch and keep on fighting, and she called into question Obama’s willingness to play hardball.

Today, her critique rings clearer than ever.

She knew the Republicans wouldn’t let any Democratic President “turn the page” on partisanship, and she was prepared to slug it out.

But not Obama. He still isn’t.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine. To subscribe for just $14.97 a year, just click here.