« Candidates of the future
Breaking News: California Supreme Court Rejects Stay »



Jimmy Carter Warns Obama: Don’t Pick Clinton For Vice President (UPDATED)

June 4th, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Print Print

_8C064BB7_6394_47CF_B03D_59E09E647292_.gif

Former President Jimmy Carter has a warning for Democratic presumptive Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama: Don’t pick Hillary Clinton as your Vice President.

Those who argue Clinton should be on the ticket think she’d be a great asset — helping divided Democrats to combine two voting coalitions…the best of both worlds. Carter sees the flip side of it: having Clinton on the ticket would combine the worst of two worlds.

Barack Obama should not pick Hillary Clinton as his vice-presidential nominee, former president Jimmy Carter has told the Guardian.

“I think it would be the worst mistake that could be made,” said Carter. “That would just accumulate the negative aspects of both candidates.”

Carter, who formally endorsed the Illinois senator last night, cited opinion polls showing 50% of US voters with a negative view of Clinton.

In terms that might discomfort the Obama camp, he said: “If you take that 50% who just don’t want to vote for Clinton and add it to whatever element there might be who don’t think Obama is white enough or old enough or experienced enough or because he’s got a middle name that sounds Arab, you could have the worst of both worlds.”

Carter, who insisted that he would have been equally against an Obama-Clinton pairing if the former first lady had won the nomination, made the remarks in an interview with the Guardian’s Weekend magazine, to be published on Saturday. The interview was conducted before the final round of voting last night confirmed Obama as the party’s presumptive nominee.

Carter’s clout is limited within the Democratic party since he is not exactly the epitome of either electoral success or a successful President. In fact, if he is looking better and better to some these days, it’s mostly because President George Bush is now considered by some historians to be a bigger failure as President than Carter was.

Jimmy Carter’s greatest stature has come in his role as a caring former President who has worked to help the poor and whose image improved once he lost office. He’s the flip side of Bill Clinton who in his divisive campaigning for Hillary Clinton and red-faced explosions aimed at disagreeing voters and reporters has morphed from a controversial but respected ex-President into a cross between a political machine ward heeler and someone who desperately needs yoga lessons or a CostCo case full of tranquilizers. Or duct tape.

Even so, in this case, Carter is saying what some pundits have suggested: that having Clinton on the ticket could be a calculated risk in more ways than one.

For one thing, Clinton would have to take back a lot of what she and her husband said about Obama — a task perhaps not too difficult in 21st century America where political principles sometimes have a shelf life as long as three-day-old ripe bananas. And then there would be the issue of Obama running for change and a new kind of politics and having a retro-90s politician on the ticket.

The one prediction you can make: if Obama and other top Democrats decide Clinton shouldn’t be on the ticket it won’t be because they hang on Jimmy Carter’s every word with him as a respected senior Democratic party statesman. Carter’s comment merely acknowledges the 500 lb. donkey that seems to be ignored as it’s sitting in the room…

Cartoon by Sandy Huffaker, Cagle Cartoons

UPDATE: Former Clinton adviser and present Clinton nemesis and Fox News analyist Dick Morris is also urging Obama to nix the idea:

Putting Hillary Clinton on the ticket for vice president creates a ménage-à-trois. Bill will be the unexpected roommate. Even if a President Obama can discipline Hillary and get her to play second fiddle, there is not the remotest chance that he can get the former president to accept such rules. Even if Bill Clinton wanted to rein in his newly prolific public expressions of rage and frustration, there is doubt that he is any longer capable of doing so.

Hillary, who likely desperately wants to be tapped for vice president, is going about it in exactly the wrong way. She seems to be demanding a kind of coalition government between herself and Obama, a definition of the vice presidency not likely to appeal to the president. It reminds me of 1980 when there were discussions of a ticket with Reagan as the presidential nominee and former President Gerald Ford as the vice president in a coalition government where the VP would have extraordinary powers.

Read it all.



This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 9:38 am and is filed under Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Democratic Party, Newsweek Blogitics, Elections, Barack Obama, 2008 Elections, Democrats, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 10 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    It's not often I agree with Carter, but he's right on this one. The time when that union of forces could have worked to the Dem nominee's advantage has passed.
    • ^
    • v
    Lord Almighty what a mess this is for the democrats.

    Obama: 1,750

    Clinton: 1,624.5



    Neither candidate won the number of delegates needed. Hillary won the popular vote by a smidge I understand. Obama won more states and early on she was hurt bad by GOP'ers who just wanted to be sure she was not the next president. However in states where the Democrats are strongest she won and won big.

    Now the leaders of the party are showing up and saying vote for Obama. Pelosi and Reid and Dean. It is perfectly clear that the party wants to swing farther left and that they have grown weary of Clinton.

    There is no way Obama picks Clinton. The party itself is more divided then is the gop. The war stupid. Remember the war. Every candidate to ever seek office has always had the same message....

    Hillary does not exemplify Barak Obamas message of change and that the DNC has embraced. They want the Clintons gone.
    • ^
    • v
    Carter's clout may be limited in the US, but it carries a lot of weight with me.

    In addition to his objections to a Clinton VP post, I would add that this would make it a troika presidency, 2 Clintons hogging the show, plus a diminished Obama.fighting to get attenton.
    A vey bad scenario for Obama and for Democrats and for the nation.
    • ^
    • v
    If Carter says it's a bad idea, it all of a sudden looks better to me. The "some historians" who think Carter is better than GWB are all ultra-left wiggies like Zinn, Hertzberg of the New Yorker, Wilentz, and other committed paleo-Dems. [It's way too early for GWB & with Carter, the cement is getter as hard as it can get.]

    I do agree in the end, however, with Morris [and neocon] that Bill would be the walking-talking skeleton in an Obama Administrations closet if Hillary were up the road in Observatory Circle.

    But now the Obamaniacs have to play whack-a-mole with both McCain [who is sidling centrist-ways] and Hillary's fierce partisans who think she was robbed. And who votes percentage-wise more than Obama's partisans...... Hillary's.

    Jimmy Carter’s greatest stature has come in his role as a caring former President who has worked to help the poor and whose image improved once he lost office.

    Hmmm.....I have some well-watered land just west of here I'd like to sell the author of this sentence.

    Does anyone note that networks & even cable news [except Larry King] won't even interview the failed peanut farmer [among other resume stumbles] nor will any US paper give him an interview? He has to go to the Guardian or Independent to pop up out of his hole & spew more silly blather.
    • ^
    • v
    "networks & even cable news [except Larry King] won't even interview the failed peanut farmer [among other resume stumbles] nor will any US paper give him an interview?""

    I commend the 'failed peanut farmer' (even though he continues to successfully farm) for his refusal to attend to his personal wealth in favor of trying to help those in need.

    That Carter is not often interviewed adds to his credit. I wouldn't rely on the likes of movie stars and self-promoting screaming pundits for anything. of importance.
    Should we ask George Clooney to set our foreign policy?

    Sometimes failure to sway is more a reflection of those someone fails to sway,
    In many ways, Carter has simply been ahead of his time, and the dinosaurs revolt.
    Conservation. Humanitrian aid by nations. Insurance for mental illness, etc.

    When I see a dinosaur herd on the march, I go in the opposite direction.

    i have no particular beef with Bush, Sr, but I do note the contrast. He has looked up from managing his investments (in oil) only when his son's reputation needed a boost.
    • ^
    • v
    Carter, whatever his faults, put solar panels on the White House and spoke out --in a cardigan-- calling on Americans to turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater. He was years ahead of the energy crunch and had we listened, we'd be 30 years farther along on the path we must now embark upon; conservation and renewable energy.

    Reagan took down the panels and canceled the tax credits for consumer "good carbon behavior."

    And he's right about Obama/Clinton. Combining their negatives does not make sense. Better to give her a role in the new administration consistent with her talents, perhaps Health and Human Services or Ambassador to Israel.
    • ^
    • v
    Carter deserves the Ahmedinnerjacket Meddling In Others' Affairs Award this year.

    Hillary Clinton is as far left as Obama, just posing as more safe and sane to snatch as many swing voters as possible (even though her and his agendas are almost identical). Obama could choose her as VP and say "she's a strong choice, as strong as Cheney in that role while I'm even stronger in mine" but I think the far-lefties (who have adopted Obama) would have none of it. (Do they really fall for her "centrist" masquerade?) Clinton would want too much power (in the 1990s she was already worse than Cheney has been, not counting things done outside this nation's borders) and would she be willing to take orders? The only reason for her to take the job is to find something useful to go to after leaving her Senate seat, as she never did "represent" New York (just exploited the E-Z-Exploitable there) but just got that Senate seat as her Presidential springboard. The Vice Presidency is the other traditional springboard besides a governorship, and who wants her to be governor? (Not even New York, I suspect.) As VP she still can seek the Presidency again, though it's a long shot. Note that it's not beyond (or beneath) her to run against Obama four years from now. (How that would affect Presidential-Vice Presidential relations in 2011-2012 would be interesting.)

    Other than staying a Senator (Why?), or becoming Vice President, what else would Hillary Clinton do? As oversized Washington's "machine" consists of an unofficial, unelected community in power, the answer probably lies there rather than in an Obama adminstration. A Cabinet post, any Cabinet post, just looks like a demotion of the Queen, a forced abdication. She could become a lobbyist, but I don't think this is what is going to happen. Instead, she might find a long-term future in the Washington establishment in power where it counts in another arm of the unofficial government in DC. That is, replacing Howard Dean to lead the Democratic Party. Something that powerful (if unofficial) may be her only choice.
    • ^
    • v
    Maybe Carter can write a new Israel-bashing book with Robert Fisk and hold a widely publicized book signing outside AIPAC's headquarters. I bet we'd even see a clearly shown copy of the book's cover on this Web site as well as on teevee.
    • ^
    • v