Opinion: Oh, boy! Obama camp announces ‘big role’ for Bill Clinton in fall
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A campaign spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama today told a reporter that ex-President Bill Clinton would play a ‘big role’ in the upcoming general election campaign.
This could be the usual unity hoo-haa leading up to Friday’s joint Obama-Hillary Clinton appearance in, of all places, Unity, N.H. This, after their joint appearance in Washington on Thursday before many of her top fundraisers.
Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki did not reveal to Bloomberg reporter Kristin Jensen how the campaign might use the former president.
‘A unified Democratic Party is going to be a powerful force for change this year, and we’re confident President Clinton will play a big role in that,’ Psaki said.
Not that there would be any political conniving among fellow Democrats because the Republicans are so collectively evil and any personal party ambitions must take second place to that or be seen to anyway.
But can you imagine all the conceivable subversive subplots inherent in the husband of the defeated Democratic candidate campaigning for the man who beat her? And if Obama just happens to lose, the door to 2012 is wide open for, oh, look, the Clinton wife again.
Of course, both Clintons want to appear to work hard for ...
... Obama, now that they’ve stopped suggesting that his South Carolina primary victory was a fluke like Jesse Jackson’s and saying, ‘Shame on you, Barack Obama!’
Even during the vicious closing days of the primary season when Sen. Clinton was desperate for Democratic support, as The Ticket noted here, she obviously refrained from attacking her close friend, John McCain, by name, targeting instead the Republicans or the Bush administration.
At times she even praised McCain as well experienced to be president on Day One while Obama ‘has a speech he gave in 2002.’
Bill Clinton has been largely silent since the primaries’ end, mentioning Obama only in passing in a recent Miami speech. Hillary Clinton said all the right things in her ‘I-give-up’ speech and has held conference calls urging supporters to switch to the freshman Illinois senator.
But a number of Clinton’s longtime supporters like Haim Saban have opted out of the ‘Now we’re helping Obama’ effort.
And Bill is gonna have to be a whole lot more disciplined out there on the wild rodeo speaking stumps mouthing the message of his wife’s vanquisher than he was speaking on behalf of his own spouse.
Many days from January 2007 until The End, when he wore that funereal black suit to the surrender, he walked all over her intended campaign theme of the day by creating distracting news through yet another angry confrontation over something else.
How much control will the Chicago Obama crowd have if it really does give Bill Clinton a ‘big role’? Can’t wait to watch this. If they show up with a knife, you show up with a gun.
One measure of Hillary’s profound appreciation for Bill Clinton’s campaign months of ‘help’ was that she left him completely out of her online campaign photo book, 20 double pages of pictures that did include Chelsea but had no room for hubby. Thanks, hon.
-- Andrew Malcolm