The Obama-Bill Clinton Thing
All along, below the radar of contesting Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama has been matched up with her husband in a battle of both substance and style that reflects generational differences.
Now, at the end of Jeremiah Wright Week, as Obama is out there doing TV interviews to stop his slide in the polls, the contrasts with Bill Clinton are coming into sharper focus.
In his speech on race in Philadelphia, Obama tried to put the Wright YouTube clips into context–an admirable trait in a president but treacherous for a candidate, as it soon proved to be.
Contrast this with Bill Clinton’s Sister Souljah moment in 1992. Granted, Clinton had no previous connection with her, but, after her inflammatory rhetoric about white people after the Los Angeles riots, he didn’t hesitate to make political points by condemning her for black racism at a meeting of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.
That’s what politicians do. But Obama, by trying to address the issue of race seriously before Wright’s antics forced his hand, has been politically wounded by not throwing his pastor to the media wolves as soon as the issue surfaced.
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