Jeffrey Goldberg's interview with Hillary Clinton in The Atlantic marks the first time that Clinton has seriously broken with President Obama since retiring as Secretary of State. Clinton accuses Obama of failure in Syria and she protests his foreign policy, which is often summed up as "Don't do stupid stuff."

In an interview with me earlier this week, she used her sharpest language yet to describe the "failure" that resulted from the decision to keep the U.S. on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising.

“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said... This is what Clinton said about Obama’s slogan: “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”

This is the first of what I'm sure will be many breaks with the Obama administration over the next two years. It's not bad form from Clinton—she has plenty of positive things to say about President Obama, too—but it is a sign that she wants to redefine herself politically. She also comes out wholeheartedly in defense of Israel, which is what you expect to hear from a mainstream presidential candidate.