Saturday, June 02, 2012

Clinton Divides Democrats Again

“I don’t belong to any organized party,” said the 1930s cowboy sage Will Rogers, “I’m a Democrat.”

Now Bill Clinton is back to help Barack Obama’s reelection and remind us of his genius for monkey-wrenching his own party (see Lewinsky, Monica/Lieberman, Joe et al in 1998).

On the one hand, the Comeback Kid is in Wisconsin to support the recall of caveman Gov. Scott Walker but, on the other, he’s dropping a small bomb on the Obama campaign by praising Mitt Romney’s business record:   

“I don’t think that we ought to get into the position where we say ‘This is bad work. This is good work.’ The man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold.”

Of course, the former President soon walks back the praise, but not before being thanked  by Romney and reminding Obama’s Chicago campaign mafia of an old expression, “If you have Bill Clinton for a friend, you don’t need an enemy.

There are echoes here of the 2008 primary fight, in which Hillary’s husband embarrassingly assumed the role of partisan hack in trashing his wife’s opponent before finally getting on board the Obama bandwagon.

Whether or not Romney’s Bain record is a campaign issue is for the President’s handlers to decide but without public prodding from his Party’s Grey Eminence, who depends on Wall Street financial support for so many of his other current efforts to improve the world.

If Will Rogers were still with us, he wouldn’t be surprised at far we’ve gone beyond his dictum, "Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke."

The joke is on us all.

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