The upcoming primaries in Ohio and Texas are widely-considered as critical for Senator Hillary Clinton to regain momentum against Senator Barack Obama. So, just as he surfaced after his wife lost Iowa and began a series of controversial personal attacks on Obama, Bill Clinton is back in the negative campaigning saddle again.
And, as this news report shows, his statements don’t hold up to scrutiny. ABC News’ Political Punch:
ABC News’ Sarah Amos reports that former President Bill Clinton — despite myriad promises he would stop assailing his wife’s opponent given how it has backfired on her — upped his harsh attacks today in Tyler, Texas.
“There are two competing moods in America today,” Clinton said. “People who want something fresh and new — and they find it inspiring that we might elect a president who literally was not part of any of the good things that happened or any of the bad things that were stopped before. The explicit argument of the campaign against Hillary is that ‘No one who was involved in the 1990s or this decade can possibly be an effective president because they had fights. We’re not going to have any of those anymore.’ Well, if you believe that, I got some land I wanna sell you.”
The only problem is: it’s an inaccurate statement:
ABC News’ Sarah Amos is traveling with the former president and transcribed his comments.
For the record, in the 1990s, Obama was a civil rights attorney, community organizer, and was in the Illinois state senate.Presumably, by “any of the good things that happened” in the 1990s, Clinton is referring to the things he did as president (except for the ones his wife now distances herself from, such as NAFTA).
Sometimes, it sure feels like the former president’s defense of his legacy gets in the way of his campaigning for his wife.
And PP had an update that’s instructive:
UPDATE: Obama campaign spox Bill Burton tells ABC News in response, “It appears that the man who once told us ‘Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow’ has changed his tune and is now singing ‘Yesterday’ everywhere he goes.”
Since The Bill Clinton issue arose before, you have to conclude that given the high stakes in these upcoming primaries, if he is making statements like this and continues to make them in coming weeks, it will mean they’re condoned by Mrs. Clinton’s top campaign command, or by Mrs. Clinton — and probably part of a repeat strategy.
It would signal that the Clintons are unofficially going back to what occurred in New Hampshire: after Hillary Clinton lost in Iowa, the two moved on to New Hampshire. Bill Clinton went negative there, got soundly condemned in many quarters, but Hillary Clinton won the primary.
You wonder what ever happened to Bill Clinton’s political instincts. By making statements that tell only part of the story — and one clearly inaccurate (unless you consider civil rights work irrelevant) — he is losing some credibility and certainly giving pause to voters who may have no problem with Mrs. Clinton in the Oval Office but don’t like what they’re hearing from Mr. Clinton and don’t want him in it as an unofficial co-President.
But there is a silver lining: at least this time Mr. Clinton didn’t play the race card.
UPDATE: Feb. 16, 2008 a.m. A new Dallas Morning News story reports that Bill Clinton is now avoiding attacks on Obama:
On a campaign swing through East Texas on Friday, Bill Clinton said over and over that he has nothing against Barack Obama.
“I’m not against anybody,” he told an overflow crowd in the student center at Tyler Junior College. “I’m for Hillary.” Later, he added: “If you disagree, you have another very attractive choice.”
The former president, admitting that Texas looms as a make-or-break state for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential hopes, scrupulously avoided attacks on Mr. Obama – attacks of the type for which he was roundly criticized after the Jan. 26 South Carolina primary.
Mr. Obama’s campaign unveiled new TV and radio ads in Texas while the Illinois senator campaigned in Wisconsin and secured a key labor endorsement, from the Service Employees International Union.
Mr. Clinton acknowledged that Mr. Obama is widely perceived as the “new and different” Democratic candidate – or, as he said in Texarkana, the candidate who “excites more Americans.” He noted that he campaigned for Mr. Obama when he ran for the U.S. Senate from Illinois in 2004.
But, Mr. Clinton said, his wife’s superior ideas and her years of experience in and around public service simply make her the better choice.
“If you’re looking for a change agent … she’s your candidate,” he said. As a New York senator, he said, she has shown an ability to work with Republicans and to win in rural counties where the GOP usually dominates.
Meanwhile, there has been lots of blog discussion on the re-emergence of Bill Clinton as a campaign story. Read the reaction HERE.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.