In attacking Barack Obama, the ex-President has gone past embarrassing into his own kind of seductive swiftboating.
Is there any difference in twisting the record of someone who opposed the Iraq war from Day One on behalf of an opponent who voted for it from smearing a man who fought and bled in Vietnam to benefit someone who dodged serving there?
More and more leading Democrats, including John Kerry, are complaining, but perhaps even worse than the cheap politics to which Bill Clinton has lowered himself is the insult of treating voters as too stupid to see through what he is doing--of wooing them like bimbos who will swallow anything.
In our sound-bite age, all politicians invert the truth occasionally, but it has become a modus operandi for the former President who once explained his distortions in the 1996 election to opponent Bob Dole with a smiling, "You gotta do what you gotta do."
Now, when political figures and reporters comment on his behavior, Bill Clinton gets testy as he did with a CNN correspondent who raised a question that led a former South Carolina Democratic chairman to compare his attacks to those of Lee Atwater, Karl Rove's mentor. "Shame on you," the prospective First Spouse says.
The ex-President must be even less charmed by ABC News' Jake Tapper's exegesis of how both Clintons tortured Obama's words about Ronald Reagan in a Las Vegas interview into meanings that were clearly not there.
But Bill Clinton seems exhilarated by it all. "I know you think it's crazy," he told a South Carolina crowd, "but I kind of like to see Barack and Hillary fight. They're flesh and blood people and they have their differences--let them have it."
The Clintons are letting Barack Obama "have it" with a truthiness that would make George W. Bush blush. As someone whom most Americans once respected and many admired said recently on the campaign trail, "Give us a break!"
I never respected Bill Clinton.
ReplyDeleteHis presidency only looks good in hindsight because George Bush is the worst president in America's history.
The Clintons fight dirty. Have we forgotten? They are a couple of old warhorses who want to rule the world again. Hillary stood behind Bill, put up with his philandering, and waited her turn. They didn't count on Obama being a strong threat, and now Obama must be exterminated. That is what Bill is doing. He is exterminating the threat to Hillary.
Bill is not concerned about making an ass of himself. They want the presidency, and if they get it, what they did to get it does not matter.