Image-Damaged Bill Clinton Will Be Used Sparingly By Obama Presidential Campaign
June 6th, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
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A report in the New York Daily News suggests that former President Bill Clinton, whose red-faced outbursts and angry comments peppered with inaccuracies and controversy-sparking assertions are believed to have hurt his wife’s Presidential campaign, may have exploded himself out of a large campaign role in presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama’s battle for the White House.
According to the report, Clinton may be used sparingly by the Obama campaign because he’s now considered too much of a loose cannon and doesn’t have the same image he had as when the campaign season started:
The Obama camp is preparing to embrace Hillary Clinton enthusiastically - but they’re reaching for the 10-foot pole to keep her rabid husband at bay.
Bill Clinton’s erratic and increasingly sulfuric behavior on the campaign trail has perplexed senior Barack Obama campaign officials trying to figure out how to deploy him in the fall campaign.
While the former President’s political skills are extraordinary, some senior Democratic and Obama officials - and Hillary Clinton aides - believe he is now simply too toxic to be a high-profile surrogate.
“Before all the controversy there were plenty of things he could have done, but he’s definitely a liability now,” a Democratic operative with close ties to Obama Nation told the Daily News.
“She will campaign her heart out and be a huge asset for Obama,” the source predicted. “But he needs to just stay out of it.”
The report says that — in the ironies or ironies — Bill Clinton could wind up playing the same role for the Democrats that President George Bush now plays for the Republicans: he can be useful at fund raising events but will not be given a blank check to go out on the stump and campaign for his party’s candidates as he wishes.
A senior Obama adviser, however, said Bill Clinton and Obama were likely to appear together in rural areas, where blue-collar white voters favored Hillary overwhelmingly.
“He could have been a great attack dog on [John] McCain,” the source lamented. “He was rehabilitated, a total rock star, leader of the Democratic Party and an elder statesman. All of that is gone. There’s a lot of consensus on that in the party.”
It’s clear that this report is a kind of send-a-message-to-Bill since, as it notes, the Obama campaign is now in quintessential reach-out-and-acknowledge-your-formal-rivals mode. When asked by reporters about Bill Clinton, Obama notes that he’s a major talent.
But it’s clear that the Obama campaign has concluded that a little bit of a potentially red-faced Bill Clinton goes a long, long way — and that some supporters of Hillary Clinton think her husband has even scuttled her chances of being on the ticket as Obama’s running mate.
Some Hillary partisans believe the former President’s outbursts not only certified his reputation as a gifted loose cannon - they doomed his wife’s chances of becoming Obama’s running mate.
“He poisoned it for her,” a senior Hillary campaign adviser told The News.
As noted here on TMV before, part of Bill Clinton’s problem is imagery.
He remains idolized by many Democratic partisans, but his political stock with many Democrats has gone down due to his behavior in the primaries. He remains anathema to many Republicans. But while most ex-Presidents see their image grow once they leave office as they become symbolic of the office of the Presidency, Bill Clinton morphed into becoming one more strident, spinning member of a political machine — someone more like a screaming guest on Sean Hannity’s show than an ex President.
Some analysts and experts are still trying to explain Bill Clinton’s behavior. Some think it was his highly emotional reaction to his wife seeking the big prize. Others think it was frustration since he and his wife were a bit out of sync with 21st century politics and changes in both the general electorate and the Democratic party. Still others argue that Bill Clinton was negatively impacted by his open heart surgery.
Regardless of the true explanation, in Campaign 2008 Obama campaign will want to use the “good part” of the “good Bill Clinton” in Obama’s campaign — and keep the other one locked up tightly in Al Gore’s famous “lock box.”
This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 5:35 am and is filed under Bill Clinton, Elections, Democratic Party, Newsweek Blogitics, Negative Campaigning, John McCain, Barack Obama, 2008 Elections, Democrats, Republicans, Hillary Clinton, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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