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Bill Clinton Strikes Again?

March 21st, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

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He makes another statement praising the likely Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain and his wife Senator Hillary Clinton — but this time singling them out as as two people who love their country. Is another name omitted? READ DETAILS HERE.

Was he implying that Senator Barack Obama isn’t in the same category? Clinton — who was not accused of being vague in most of his political statements as President — seems to be making a lot of statements during this campaign that have what some can take as having an unstated lingering-and-clear implication. A statement that goes just far enough to deny that there was any intent to make the implication.

Even if you give Bill Clinton the benefit of the doubt, the fact is that he will be one of the very few Presidents in American history who left office and shrunk a bit. He has gone from being perceived as former President with all of the majesty of that office to essentially just another political operative making a pitch. Former Presidents — such as Richard Nixon and another President unpopular when he left office, Harry Truman — usually live to see the public mellow as they develop auras of living history.

What’s puzzling is how Mr. Clinton thinks that if Hillary Clinton wins he’s going to put the party back together again with the bitterness that statements such as this will generate among Obama supporters — even if the interpretation is flat-out wrong. But, then, Clinton has been in politics long enough so that he generally knows what he is saying and how some will take it.



This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 7:46 pm and is filed under Bill Clinton, Newsweek Blogitics, Negative Campaigning, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, 2008 Elections, Democrats, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 9 Comments

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    I just don't understand how they think this will help. Hillary did this with her infamous "Commander in Chief threshold" comment and now Bill patriot-baits Obama like a Hannaity-clone. Does he think this will help Hillary among Democrats? Or is hoping to poison Obama among Democrats so he'll lose and she can run in 2012.

    It's time for the Superdelegates to put an end to this. Obama showed he could handle the Wright issue with class and dignity. Bill Richardson noticed. It's time for the other party elders to do the same. Hillary's camp thinks there's only a 10 percent chance she can win. So why is she still in it?

    The Democratic Party needs to work on unifying for the general election. There are, understandably, a lot of hard feelings and bitterness among HRC supporters. I don't blame them. This was a very hard-fought race and it got ugly down the stretch. But it's time we rally around the nominee.
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    What’s puzzling is how Mr. Clinton thinks that if Hillary Clinton wins he’s going to put the party back together again with the bitterness that statement such as this will generate among Obama supporters —

    And what is equally puzzling is how Barak Obama thinks he is going to put the party back together again and make the republicans forget their agenda and adopt his.

    This is the most cornball Election I have seen in my near 60 years of life on this planet. It is not driven by rational thought. It is driven by two power hungry partisan groups who are using surrogate battles to inflict hate upon each other in the true and sincere belief that only their side has any hope of uniting the country.
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    I'm a pretty strong Obama supporter, and I just don't see any intent of malice on Pres. Clinton's part. Enough with the outrage, parsing of every single statement, looking for controversy.

    Obama himself said it better tham I can:
    We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel .... We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card... That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time."

    I'm as guilty of the strained outrage as the next guy or gal who reads political blogs, and occasionally it is deserved.

    But not this time.
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    Yeah, I'm with ya Mike. I get carried away some times too. I like the Clintons. I'd vote for them in a heartbeat if Hillary won the nomination. I'm a loyal Democrat and I want to take back the White House from a 3rd Bush Term.
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    I'm not sure I see intent either. Then again, I wouldn't put it past him. (and I'm undecided, but NOT voting for a Democrat)
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    Bill was such a patriot when he almost ended his Presidency with Monica. These two have no shame, and that is why many favor Obama. Obama isn't part of the ugly twenty years of Bush-Clinton.
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    Yeah... I think this one is a stretch, but I wouldn't put it past Bill Clinton.
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    Both Clintons, Obama and his wife and MCCain and his mother (remember her appearances?) are all actors in a political arena. What they say and do is necessarily and rightfully analyzed in that way.
    The problem with analyses arises when they categorize politicians, separating the usual suspects (everything they do is suspect and/or malicious) from the honest brokers (everything they say and do is apolitical and ethically pure).
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    Providing context in defense of Obama has never been matched by providing contextt for either Clinton.
    Hillary did not invent nasty politics; she is a survivor of it. That's context. What does one learn in the school of hard knocks?
    Bill is a husband as well as a politician. It's quite possible, IMO, that he is driven by a feeling htat he owes Hillary for the pain he cuased her and the damage the Monica episode did to her political aspirations. That's context.

    These are human beings we are assessing during the elction process.
    None of them can escape the limitations and flaws of being such.

    BTW, how is this different from Obama's praise of Republican success in producing ideas? Couldn't that be seen as a swipe at Hillary's 'old' politics?
    I thought Hillary's criitcism of that was misguided , and I think seizing on every word Bill speaks is equally misguided.
 
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