Posted on 02/22/2007 6:50:55 PM PST by neverdem
POLITISCOPE
Clinton Faces (Not So) Friendly Fire
By John Mercurio, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007
Take a good, hard look at Bill Clinton. When the 2008 Democratic primary is over, the former president (and would-be first husband) might look a lot different.
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The battle between Bill Clinton's wife and Barack Obama could have a far-reaching impact on the former president's long-term legacy. |
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Since the earliest days of his first term, Clinton has been a favorite GOP piñata and fundraising tool. But for the first time since he entered the White House in 1992, Clinton's record as president will be openly scrutinized, dissected -- and yes, criticized -- in a Democratic primary. That race, especially the battle between his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., could have a far-reaching impact on the former president's long-term legacy, particularly among two crucial groups of voters: women and blacks.
In some ways, Bill Clinton has only his wife to blame for such threats to his legacy. After all, he is (arguably) a semi-innocent bystander in his wife's brewing fight, the indirect target of anti-Hillary salvos fired by Democratic rivals, who can justify their criticisms by noting her efforts to own policy achievements compiled by her husband's administration.
Such critiques could come at great risk in a party still overflowing with adoring Clinton fans. But strategists from opposing camps believe it's a deep quiver from which to launch arrows, as long as those arrows are carefully chosen and fired with precision. Democrats may be unlikely to accept criticisms of Clinton's record on the economy or civil rights, for example, but they're willing to consider challenges on issues like campaign finance, health care, ethics, some aspects of foreign policy and, of course, his personal behavior.
"It's been papered over for a while. But disagreements have been there since day one," one Obama strategist said this week. "This is a fight some Democrats have wanted to have for years."
The earliest and most aggressive practitioner of this tactic has probably been former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who partly blames faulty WMD intelligence from the Clinton administration for his "wrong" vote authorizing the Iraq war in 2002. "I went back to former Clinton administration officials who gave me sort of independent information about what they believed about what was happening with Saddam's weapons programs. They were also wrong," Edwards said Feb. 4 on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And based on that, I made the wrong judgment."
But the most blatant example erupted Wednesday when Clinton's camp was drawn into a feisty tussle with Clinton-turned-Obama supporter David Geffen, who decried the political dynasties that have run the country for the past 18 years. (Geffen's relations with the Clintons soured in early 2001, when the president refused to pardon American Indian activist Leonard Peltier, a convicted murderer of two FBI agents.)
In an interview with the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, Geffen, a member of Obama's finance team who co-sponsored a glitzy Beverly Hills fundraiser for him Tuesday night, said he's supporting Obama because he's "inspirational" and "he's not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family.... I'm tired of hearing James Carville on television." (Subscription Required)
He said the Clintons lie "with such ease, it's troubling."
Geffen also hit Bill Clinton below the belt. "I don't think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person," he said in a thinly veiled reference to Clinton's personal indiscretions.
Hillary Clinton's campaign hit back, hard and fast, calling Geffen's remarks a "slash and burn" slam on the senator "and her family" that Obama should repudiate. "While Sen. Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign's finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband," said Clinton campaign communications director Howard Wolfson.
Camp Obama was only too delighted to turn up the volume. "We aren't going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters," Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs fired back. "It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when he was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln Bedroom."
The spat, played out in a series of statements released to the media, continued.
Other Democratic candidates have taken a different tack, attempting to criticize Hillary while praising Bill and, in doing so, trying to put some distance between the two Clinton legacies. Perhaps no one is more motivated to follow this strategy than New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the only former Clinton Cabinet member in the 2008 race. His decision to run suggests he doesn't feel particular loyalty to either Clinton and indicates he may feel free to throw barbs her way. He said recently that while he has great respect for Bill Clinton and worked well with him in various administration posts, he was never personally close to Hillary.
"And I do know cases where he is calling individuals who he thought were supporting Sen. Clinton, and they're supporting me," Richardson told the Albuquerque Tribune this month.
For her part, Clinton on Wednesday personally chose to respond to Geffen by, well, standing by her man. "You know, I believe Bill Clinton was a good president," she said in Nevada, to cheering applause from an audience of union members. "I'm very proud of the record of his two terms."
-- John Mercurio is a NationalJournal.com contributing writer and a senior editor of The Hotline. His e-mail address is jmercurio@nationaljournal.com.
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bttt
Clinton refused to pardon two killers of FBI agents? I'm impressed.
Thanks for the ping.
Whoa, for a minute there I thought someone took some shots at him, literally.
With a semiautomatic gun ban already filed for this session of Congress, we don't need that sort of thing to happen. Besides it would make him a sympathetic figure, and probably push Her Highness right into the White House, and then, if we didn't already have it, we'd have that gun ban as the law.
If she's so smart, how could BJ fool her about 50 times??
Pray for W and Our Troops
Thanks for the ping!
You're right of course... this list could go on and on... perhaps it's time for a reprint of Barbara Olson's book on Hillary. But unless the Dems continue to deify Bubba's 8 years in office -- and ignore all the wasted opportunities and neglect (sleep through any preparations for the War on Terror; ignore the looming crises in Social Security and Medicare; cashier the peace dividend by slashing the US Military and slashing the CIA intelligence gathering budget), all they have to look back on as far as presidential leadership is Jimmy Carter and LBJ.
Let's face it: this is a pathetic political party -- more a gathering of freaks, special interests, victims of all types and stripes. They'll overlook almost anything and everything to preserve the believe that BJ Clinton was a hero. But you're right: the list could go on and on and on.
Ronald Reagan was the first president to have a degree in economics and who ACTUALLY KNEW WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT WHEN HE ADVOCATED ECONOMIC POLICIES. He was the ONLY president to have a degree in CLASSICAL economics, and the ONLY president to have served as the president of a union, let alone as both a union president who fought communists and a governor of a state, the LARGEST state.
Shouldn't we hear from PajamaMama on the witch-Obama drama?
She's not responding. Maybe she went to Grand Bahama to ride a llama named Rama?
Interesting. I didn't know about Reagan's education in economics. The left, would no doubt view that as a severe handicap.
She's not responding. Maybe she went to Grand Bahama to ride a llama named Rama?
Um, if you hung a bell around his neck would you have to call it a Rama-llama ding-dong??
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(this is me ducking under my desk)
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