New York Senator Hillary Clinton today conceded her husband may have crossed the line in his aggressive campaigning against her chief rival for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination but has an explanation: love and fatigue made him do it.
Hillary Clinton admitted Sunday her husband Bill’s hard-charging campaign tactics had gone overboard, but chalked the ex-president’s fiery broadsides up to love and a chronic lack of sleep.
A day after rival Barack Obama trounced her in the South Carolina primary, the former first lady also mounted a vigorous defense of the two Clinton White House terms, which Obama has said did not spark transformational change.
Clinton was asked on CBS television’s “Face the Nation” whether her husband was “out of control” after he took the Illinois senator, and the media to task, during a foul-tempered week-long campaign.
“You know, my husband has such a great commitment to me and to my campaign,” the New York senator said.
“He loves me just like, you know, husbands and wives get out there and work on each others’ behalf.”
But wait: Bill Clinton insisted over the weekend that he was “99.99 percent” accurate in his campaigning and wasn’t doing negative campaigning. Is there some conflict here?
She blamed the tensions of the tight battle for the party’s presidential nomination
“Maybe he got a little carried away. You know, that comes with a hard-fought election,” she said.
“It also comes with sleep deprivation which, you know, I think is marking all of us, our families, our supporters,” said Clinton, who herself is running low on sleep, as she jets back-and-forth across the country.
Clinton is correct about the pace of the campaign.
American political campaigns have always demanded nearly superpower stamina from their candidates. But the kinds of things that Bill Clinton is now being accused of (misrepresenting facts, seemingly raising the race card before the vote and raising it right after the vote, lecturing working reporters who ask tough questions and putting words in their mouths) are not what you generally see from successful candidates. And in the history of the United States there has been no example yet of a former President who has cast off the majesty of having served in the Oval Office to lower himself into the political trenches and come across to many (including some top Democrats) as if he’s a ward heeler in a big city political machine.
But, yes, love does do foolish things…
Illustration is Kiss V by Roy Lichtenstein
UPDATE: We don’t usually link to The Drudge Report, but this is what he now has at the top of his site:
NYT LEAD MONDAY: Hillary’s campaign will try to ‘shift former President Bill Clinton back into positive, supportive-spouse role’ he played before her loss in Iowa… Developing…
Kennedy For Obama: Intends to campaign aggressively with Western trip this week, followed by appearances in Northeast… Kennedy upset over attempts by Clinton campaign to highlight Obama’s race and distortions of statements, record… made views known in call with former president…. Developing…
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.