We heard from the beginning that Bill Clinton was a great asset for Hillary. I never really believed that. It now turns out that he was only a liability. Remember that the former Rarely is it mentioned that Bill Clinton was instrumental in the Democrats losing control of Congress in 1994. He was also to blame for Gore not winning the White House in 2000:
It is hard to miss the irony: the man from Hope is now trying to figure out how to tamp it down. But that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the spot in which Bill Clinton finds himself today, as his wife's presidential campaign fights for its life in Ohio and Texas. What is harder to figure out is how much of the blame for her predicament belongs to him. "I think he just did her such damage," says a friend and supporter, expressing a sentiment that many feel privately. "They'll never see it that way, because they can't. And he has no self-knowledge. This has magnified all his worst traits."
Everyone around Hillary Clinton always recognized that Bill would be a mixed blessing for her campaign. Back in the pre-Obamamania days, her supporters assumed that no one could draw crowds, bring in money or ignite the base like the only Democratic President since F.D.R. to win re-election. Bill was considered the sharpest political strategist of his generation. And as public approval for President George W. Bush sank lower and lower, the Clinton years, for all their drama, were looking better and better. Yet there was always the worry about whether Bill would be able to stay within the constrained, derivative role of the candidate's spouse. The biggest fear was that he would shine too bright, burn too hot, consign the candidate to his shadow.
[...]On the campaign trail, Bill's way of grabbing the spotlight has reminded voters of what they didn't like about the last Clinton presidency and what might be wrong with the next one. Lobbyist and former Texas Lieut. Governor Ben Barnes, long a prolific donor to the Clintons and other Democrats, says the former President is — as everyone knew he would be — his wife's most powerful weapon. The problem is, says Barnes, who now supports Obama, "that gun kicks as bad as it shoots."
In Iowa, Bill Clinton shaded his own nuanced record on the war, saying he "opposed Iraq from the beginning"; in New Hampshire, the criticism he got for that didn't stop him from blasting Obama's claim of steadfast opposition to the war as a "fairy tale." He twisted Obama's observation that Ronald Reagan had changed the country to make it appear that the Illinois Senator had praised Reagan's ideas. And Bill churlishly diminished Obama's sweeping and historic primary victory in heavily African-American South Carolina by pointing out that Jesse Jackson had also won the state. Liberal columnist Jonathan Chait wondered, "Were the conservatives right about Bill Clinton all along?"
Nowhere did it get worse than in South Carolina. A Clinton campaign official says Bill "hijacked the candidacy in South Carolina. It was appalling to watch it." In the week before the primary, his attacks on Obama put the former President in the news more times than any of the Republican candidates, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism; during a debate in Myrtle Beach, Obama complained, "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes."
No comments:
Post a Comment