Now Bill Clinton has a very different set of criteria for what makes someone Presidential material: pretty much the exact opposite of what he was running on back in 1992. Mr. Clinton is enraged that people aren't carrying Hillary on their shoulderd straight to the White House, but -- even though the HRC campaign was obviously caught flat-footed by Obama's popularity -- the Big Dawg claims to have seen it coming:
HANOVER, NH -- Although the presidential ambitions of Sen. Hillary Clinton have been bruised in recent days, former President Bill Clinton isn't surprised.
"This campaign is playing out exactly as I thought it would," Clinton told a crowd of students gathered at Dartmouth College Monday night. "All the pundits, as usual, are wrong. I always [told Hillary] 'You'll have a hard time winning the primaries, but if you get nominated, you'll win the general election by a wide margin'."
Toward the end of the event, Clinton grew heated when discussing the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama. He suggested that the basis of Obama's campaign rested solely on the fact that he's a good speaker, a charistmatic campaigner and Obama's claim that he's consistently been against the Iraq war.
"This is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen," said Clinton. He rejected Obama's argument that the Illinois senator has always been against the war in Iraq (and to a greater degree than Sen. Clinton) and accused Obama of running a negative campaign.
"Did you like it when he called Hillary the senator from Punjab? Did you like that?" he asked a student. "The idea that one of these campaigns is postiive and the other is negative -- when the reverse is true -- ... is a little tough to take."
This is a bitter man talking -- even though he apparently saw alllll of this coming.
I'd stipulate that none of the campaigns have been as pure as the driven snow -- not that of my preferred candidate, Edwards, or Obama's either. But it's insane for Bill Clinton to claim that the HRC has been positive compared to Obama's. Good God.
His myopia is making him say silly things, and that's a shame. I understand that Bill Clinton feel's his wife's pain right now, and he's doing his best for her. But in the process he's tarnishing his own legacy, acting out, and playing the part of a cheap political hack.
He's also damaging the Clinton brand, which is too bad considering the good he's done since leaving office. Here's hoping that he quits being Mark Penn's brother-in-hackery soon, whatever the fate of Hillary's campaign -- win, lose, or fight to the convention.
I also don't think he's doing her a damned bit of good, by the way. It's obviously a situation without parallel, since HRC is the spouse of a former President running for the same office. But a lighter touch would have made more sense. If the strategy for an HRC victory ever depended on Bill Clinton pushing back on her opponents, it was doomed from the start anyway. It makes people take her less seriously, and it's a serious misread of what mood the country is in, cerca 2007.
And that is: change. Lots of it.
("Change." Sound familiar, Bill? Anything echoing through the years, there?)
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[UPDATE: Changed title of diary from Bill Clinton: Obama campaign the "biggest fairy tale I've ever seen" to current title after a few posters pointed out that the article I'm linking misinterpreted Bill Clinton's remarks in the their headline.
Bill was apparently talking more specifically about Obama's anti-Iraq War stance with his "biggest fairy tale" remark... also a dumb remark, in my opinion, but less of a generalized, nasty rant.
Thanks to those who helped clarify.]
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