Former President Bill Clinton is back in the political news again, raising eyebrows in various venues. He has raised more eyebrows in Campaign 2008 than a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon….
The latest eyebrow raiser: he says he can’t campaign for Democratic Presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama right now because of the Jewish holidays. (Someone needs to inform John McCain, Obama, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin that they’re all offending Jewish voters…)
The first recent eyebrow-raiser was on the David Letterman Show when the former President’s perceptible lack of enthusiasm for Obama was duly and loudly noted by top comedian Chris Rock who came on later — in a segment that has been posted on blogs far and wide and gained popularity on the Internet.
That set Clinton up for sarcastic dismemberment by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd who wrote about Clinton’s raise of the GOP ticket:
Besides talking about what a great man John McCain is on “The View” and “David Letterman,” Bill praised Palin at his Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York and will receive her there on Thursday.
“I come from Arkansas. I get why she is hot out there,” he said authoritatively, adding: “People look at her, and they say, ‘All those kids. Something that happens in everybody’s family. I’m glad she loves her daughter and she’s not ashamed of her. Glad that girl’s going around with her boyfriend. Glad they’re going to get married.’ ” He said voters would think: “I like that little Down syndrome kid. One of them lives down the street. They’re wonderful. … And I like the idea that this guy does those long-distance races. Stayed in the race for 500 miles with a broken arm. My kind of guy.”
On “The View,” he said he understood that some women might vote for Palin on the basis of gender, even if it was against their economic interest.
“You can’t tell someone else that the ground on which they make their voting decision is irrational,” he said primly.
Well, actually you could, if you weren’t still sulking and plotting for 2012.
What’s going on with Bill Clinton?
Many recent analysis reports have painted the portrait of a famous husband still outraged that his wife Hillary Clinton lost the nomination and by the fact that he ended the campaign having been accused by not just Obama supporters but some pundits and TV talking heads of having played the race card. Clinton has angrily denied the latter.
The problem for Clinton: if Obama loses by a thin margin, there will be a lot of Democrats pointing the finger at him for not just offering tepid support of Obama but praising the Republican ticket. To some more paranoid Democrats, that’ll seem like a round about way of expressing covert support for the Republican ticket, even though Clinton couples such statements with predictions that Obama will win and should win.
It’s hard to believe the Bill Clinton of 1992 would be so politically-sloppy as to set himself (and his wife) up for having a whole wing of his own party against him.
But, then, this is 2008 — and the Bill Clinton of 1992 would never have allowed himself to fall into a trap where opponents looking for an opening could accuse him of playing the race card, either.
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.