About an hour ago I logged in at Huffington and found something that amazed me. It was by Sam Stein, a short piece based on an MSNBC report, and Stein includes the video.* Apparently, Bill Clinton was in Charlotte, North Carolina today, thumping for Hillary, and made the following statement to some reporters there:
"I think it would be a great thing if we had an election between two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interests of the country and people could actually ask themselves who is right on the issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."
Stein offers the following comments:
It's difficult to determine exactly what Clinton meant by this. Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said the former president was not implying that Obama didn't love America. As for "this other stuff," that Clinton referred to? He was talking about "the politics of personal destruction," said Wolfson. "He was lamenting that these kind of distractions 'always seems to intrude' on our politics."
Not everyone had the same interpretation. MSNBC, for example, was quick to suggest that the former president was implying there were doubts about Obama's patriotism, and that those doubts would play a role in the general election. Which seems, on its face, hardly a stretch.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Stein was enraged by this statement of Bill Clinton's, it will probably enrage most people who see it. The more you look at it, the worse it gets. One thing is certain: it wasn't a gaffe. For a gaffe is a blunder and a blunder this was not. Going with the MSNBC reading of it ---I agree with Stein that their reading isn't stretched---, it is an attempt to marginalize Barack Obama from here on out in this election. Shove him aside, to make way for Hillary and John McCain. Like someone casually sweeping some papers off his desk and onto the floor, to make room for something else. It is (and I really have to use the Bold tag for this next) just extraordinary. It's impossible that one of the "two people" he mentions, is Obama, for he's talking about the general election and of course not both Obama and Hillary will be running against McCain. The two people are his wife and the GOP nominee, who "love their country".
And are "devoted to the interests of the country...". This is where I get out the shotgun. The suggestion here---if subtle, it is only just barely that,---is that Obama may well have the interests of some country other than ours, at heart. There is no justifiable reason to mark Hillary and McCain out as loving their country and being devoted to its interests, and not make even a passing reference to Obama, unless you are trying to strike a contrast between Hillary and McCain on one side and Obama on the other. What other reading is there, not strained enough to snap, that makes sense? My readers may find one; I have not.
In a word, he was suggesting, by omission, that Obama doesn't love his country and that Obama is devoted to interests other than this country's interests. I'd bet the farm on this. What has happened? Here is my guess. It's a kind of tantrum. Things aren't going well for Hillary, and Obama is the reason they aren't. The Jesse Jackson innuendo from Bill didn't work; the muslim innuendo from Hillary didn't work; the Faraquan thing didn't work and the Ferraro thing didn't work. The Jeremiah Wright thing nearly worked but didn't quite. Nothing left to do now but pretend as if he either doesn't exist or he exists as some kind of traitor to his country. Unpatriotic. Anathama maranatha. One of ...Them. The Clintons are so used to getting their own way and they were so sure of the inevitability of Hillary's run for the nomination, that revenge is the only option. They are now engaged in a full frontal assault.
Which brings me to Hillary and whether she was in any way complicit in trying to marginalize Obama. I will just go out on a limb here and say: yes, she was. This is not like some of Bill's other overheated remarks, ones made on the trail while she was somewhere else, too far away to muzzle him as he barked and yapped. This is different. For it is almost identical to something Hillary herself did just before the Texas and Ohio primaries: she said that she has a lifetime of experience, that McCain has the same, then added: "And Barack Obama has a speech he gave in 2002." It was just her and McCain, Obama was not even of the same species. Recalling that statement of Hillary's and looking at the above of Bill's, you can see why someone might conclude that they are working as a team.
If I ever had any doubts about not wanting a Clinton co-presidency, they have vanished. Why would I, why would you, why would anybody want this arrogant, opportunistic, contemptuous, tantrum-throwing couple in the Whitehouse? They have rained down contempt on a fellow democrat, Obama, by preferring the GOP nominee to him; they have treated the party and everyone in it, from the high to the low, with contempt; and they are refusing to concede the nomination, digging their heels in, in the face of evidence mounting at every turn that she cannot beat Obama. Each new outrage makes me say, "This is it, it's the lowest, they can't get any worse." And I'm always wrong. In my view, the lowest blow delivered to Obama thus far, is this slimy---yes, slimy---insinuation that Obama doesn't love his country.----and worse.
I've gone pretty far here. I don't mean what I have put forward to be taken as anything more than a gut feeling I have. I have read these words of Bill's many times, I've watched the video five times, I have compared both to other statements made by Bill or statements made by those with close ties to the Clinton camp. That I am livid will be evident to all. I suppose it's the culminative effect, for we've had months of this kind of thing from the Clintons, and not the smallest grain of remorse, in either of them, for their systematic attempt to destroy not only a fellow democrat but a really fine man. Not the messiah, not a saint, not the answer to every problem we have, as too many of his supporters seem to believe, but just a really fine man.
* "Another Bill Clinton Moment On The Campaign Trail" Sam Stein The Huffington Post March 21 2008 04:23 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Video included.