Bill Clinton to Obama: You’re Not Ready!

30 September 2007 |permalink | email article

C42 is moving at flank speed to ensure that Hillary wraps up the Democratic nomination by the end of January.

He’s the 800-pound donkey on the primary trail – compulsive and irrepressible – in reaffirming the Clintonian equation “buy two and get one free.”

In three weekend interviews Clinton resurfaced anew to push her inevitability as the nominee, a tactic that helps with primary voters because of his popular presidency.

He dissed Barack Obama’s experience, telling Al Hunt of Bloomberg TV in an early weekend interview that Hillary’s chief challenger had about as much experience as the Arkansas governor had when he decided not to run for president in 1988. Clinton said that he had far more experience when he ran in 1992.

Hunt, the longtime savvy political editor at the Wall Street Journal, read Clinton a line from Mrs. Clinton’s biography in which she recalled that some people initially dismissed her husband in 1992 as “too young and inexperienced.” He noted that some view Obama the same way this time.

The Obama camp’s reaction was tart: “America needs a president who made the most important foreign policy decision of a generation based on what was right for America, not the politics of the moment.” Hillary’s camp did respond.

You have to wonder whether the aggressive husband and wife efforts to will a third Clinton term through tight media control may become counterproductive.

Two stories about the Clintons in one of the nation’s most prominent magazines, only one of which saw print, has raised what the Washington Post called questions about journalistic integrity and hardball political tactics.

GQ killed a long article on infighting among aide to Hillary Clinton, a move that came after the magazine began work on a cover story on the philanthropic efforts of Bill Clinton in Africa.

Her camp told GQ that running the Hillary piece would endanger the piece on Bill – another example of how his magnetic star power on behalf of her can be effective in orchestrating consent.

Is it, as Chris Matthews mused on MSNBC, “journalistic fascism?”

On “Meet the Press” today, an ebullient Clinton answered softball questions from Tim Russert while acknowledging implications of the major legacy issue.
In Hillary’s case, he said, “she embarked on a different career path after leaving the White House…and is well suited” to be president. 

924