Starting Gate: Bill Breaks Out
The former president has already gotten himself and his candidate into trouble in this campaign. See: his comments in South Carolina – equating Barack Obama's position on Iraq (if not the candidate himself) to a "dream;" shrugging off Hillary Clinton's loss in South Carolina by dismissively reminding reporters that Jesse Jackson also won there and getting into a red-faced argument with a journalist in New Mexico.
When the fallout from those incidents began to hit critical mass, the campaign sent him off to campaign purgatory, using his often immense political talents to travel the hamlets and back roads of mega-states like Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania and Ohio and any other out-of-the-spotlight locations they could find. Clinton even declared himself the campaign's "rural hitman."
The strategy appeared to be working. The former president stayed out of trouble while tirelessly evangelizing for his wife, giving people whose last glimpse at any president was 30 years ago, if ever, a chance to feel part of the big show. It was all going to plan – until last night.
Stumping in Indiana yesterday, Bill Clinton decided to once again visit an issue which the Clinton campaign thought they may have put behind them – the candidate's discredited claim that she came under sniper fire while visiting Bosnia as First Lady. Not once, but twice, the former president brought the issue up all on his own.
Here's what Clinton said in Booneville, Indiana: "A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me. But there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995. Did y'all see all that? Oh, they blew it up."
"Let me just tell you," he continued, "the president of Bosnia and General Wesley Clark -- who was there making peace where we'd lost three peacekeepers who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way -- both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flak jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went they were covered by Apache helicopters. So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony."
He continued: "Now I say that because, what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops. And I think she was the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you would've thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them when they're 60 they'll forget something when they're tired at 11 at night, too."
Aside from the fact that Clinton was revisiting an issue his wife's campaign would rather everyone forget about, he was rewriting history more than a little bit. Clinton had actually made the claim several times, not just once. In one instance, she repeated the claim at a morning event, and not just as a throw-away line. And does his excuse that those who are 60 sometimes forget things when they're tired at 11 at night do much to reassure anyone that his wife is the person you want answering that 3 am phone call? In sports parlance, the containment broke down.
Polishing The Glass Ceiling: After Elton John said he was "amazed at the misogynistic attitude of some of the people in this country" during Wednesday night's fundraiser for Clinton, the candidate was asked whether she agreed with the idea that she's had a harder time in the campaign due to her gender. "I don't know how I'd assess what role it's playing," Clinton responded. "I mean, look, you can't ignore the fact that gender and race are embodied in our two candidacies. We are who we are. And that produces reactions of all kinds in people. But at the end of the day, people have to decide who would be the best president."
Power To The Shareholders: Obama today will propose a plan to give shareholders a say in the pay of corporate executives. The plan would require corporations to hold nonbinding votes by shareholders on the compensation packages given to executives. "This isn't just about expressing outrage," Obama said in a statement. "It's about changing a system where bad behavior is rewarded so that we can hold CEOs accountable, and make sure they're acting in a way that's good for their company, good for our economy, and good for America, not just good for themselves."
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