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The unity thing is proving something of a stubborn problem for the no longer officially dueling camps of Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. There've been reports in recent days of some die-hard Clinton supporters being less than supportive of the fellow who crunched her.
But confirmed Clintonite Terry McAuliffe says it's only one or two people. So that can't mean much. And there's probably hardly any Obama folks saying, "Remind me again why I should help pay the bills for the travel and events when she was always attacking Obama?"
But what happened Wednesday night was a little embarrassing.
After the two Democrats voted differently on the Senate's FISA retroactive surveillance O.K. bill, Obama flew Clinton from Washington to New York City on his plane for two fundraisers where they'd both appear together and she'd graciously introduce him and there'd be that cheek peck.
And Obama would repeat his eloquent thing about change and how George W. Bush is really the first two terms of John McCain or something and ask the folks for money and kinda push them toward retiring Clinton's campaign debt. Depending on the numbers you hear, her debts could be as large as $23 million or maybe "only" $10 million, which is like -- what? -- 20 speeches or something for her husband.
So The Times' Louise Roug was at the Hyatt in the crowd of 1,000 who'd each paid $1,000 (what a coincidence!) so they could also pay cash at the bar. She dutifully listened to his familiar, 30-minute talk about promise. The crowd applauded. "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" blasted out of the sound system and Obama bounced off the stage to work the rope line and shake hands, not looking nearly as weary as The Times story says he is.
But about two minutes later Obama bounces back onto the stage. (See the video below.) Waves his hands. Had he forgotten to mention about the jobs program?
The music stopped. Or maybe he neglected to praise his distant cousin Dick Cheney?
"Hold on a second," he shouted. "I got one more thing." Oops! It seems Obama had forgotten to mention the part about giving money to Hillary Clinton in the spirit of unity, the whole reason they were gathered there in the first place.
"Sen. Clinton still has some debt. And I could have had some debt -- if I hadn't won -- so I know the drill. There are many supporters of mine here who have not yet given something to help her retire that debt. I would be very grateful if you looked under your chair. I think there should be an envelope or a pledge sheet or something.
"If people would take the time not only to pick it up but put something in it and mail it back...that is part of the process of making sure that we're unified...Allright, turn on the music again. Let's keep on partying."
And so they did. In perfect unity, no doubt.
--Andrew Malcolm
Photo credit: CNN
Jesse Jackson should have long ago learned the dangers of speaking too bluntly with the media anywhere in sight (or, in the controversy that erupted today, a microphone anywhere near).
Jackson, before this year, laid claim to running the most noteworthy campaigns an African American  had waged for the White House. In the 1988, in fact, he was a major factor in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination -- he won 11 primaries and caucuses, briefly led in the delegate count in the early spring and was the last challenger standing against the eventual nominee, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.
The groundwork for this strong showing had been laid by his candidacy four years earlier. But his 1984 campaign remains best remembered for the flap over disparaging comments he made about Jews and New York City.
As recounted in this post on Washingtonpost.com, Jackson "referred to Jews as 'Hymies' and to New York City as 'Hymietown' in January 1984 during a conversation with a black Washington Post reporter, Milton Coleman.
Jackson had assumed the references would not be printed because of his racial bond with Coleman. But several weeks later Coleman permitted the slurs to be included far down in an article by another Post reporter on Jackson's rocky relations with American Jews. A storm of protest erupted ..."
A "storm" of protest hasn't yet greeted the revelation that Jackson -- ostensibly a Barack Obama supporter -- used crude language a few days ago as he waited to appear on Fox News Channel and, in a whispered aside to another guest, expressed his view that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has been "talking down to black people."
One very strong protest, however, was issued this evening by Jackson's son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois. The congressman's office e-mailed this statement (complete with three sentences boldfaced): "I'm deeply outraged and disappointed in Reverend Jackson's reckless statements about Senator Barack Obama. His divisive and demeaning comments about the presumptive Democratic nominee -- and I believe the next president of the United States -- contradict his inspiring and courageous career.
"Instead of tearing others down, Barack Obama wants to build the country up and bring people together so that we can move forward, together -- as one nation. The remarks like those uttered on Fox by Revered [sic] Jackson do not advance the campaign's cause of building a more perfect Union.
"Revered [sic] Jackson is my dad and I'll always love him. He should know how hard that I've worked for the last year and a half as a national co-chair of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. So, I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric. He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself."
On a lighter note, to check out what our friends at The Swamp aptly refer to as a "now-prescient Saturday Night Live cartoon" on an imagined Obama-Jackson-Al Sharpton dynamic, go here.
-- Don Frederick 
Read more Jesse Jackson, embroiled in a new furor, has been here before »
Eighteen months into a 22-month presidential campaign, actually his second time around, some might think presumptive Republican nominee John McCain would have learned to knock off the Iran jokes.
The Arizona senator got abundant grief last year for turning the words from the Beach Boys' tune “Barbara Ann” into “Bomb Iran,” and singing the altered chorus in response to a question from a man in South Carolina, who'd asked when the U.S. was going to send an “airmail message” to Iran.
But it seems the straight-talking Arizona senator can’t help himself.
Tuesday while waiting with his wife Cindy for cheesesteaks during a trip to Pittsburgh’s Primanti Bros., a restaurant famous for its thick sandwiches piled high with French fries, an Associated Press reporter asked McCain for comment on the news organization’s report that U.S. exports to Iran increased tenfold during the last seven years — with cigarettes ranking as the top export to Iran.
"Maybe that’s a way of killing them,” McCain responded. He quickly followed up: “I meant that as a joke, as a person who hasn’t had a cigarette in 28 years.”
After his wife corrected him –- it’s actually been 29 years since the veteran's last smoke -- McCain said he’d like to look into the Iran export issue more thoroughly and might have a better answer later.
-- Maeve Reston
Photo credit: Hasan Sarbakhshian / Associated Press
We all remember John McCain's "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" mini-aria, and many of us have caught McCain during his late-night talk show appearances. He can be funny (though the laughs at his reworking the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann" were far fewer than he may have anticipated). But can comedy kill the campaign?
Gawker has a piece (which includes some language inappropriate for this blog and which we want to warn readers about) on McCain's sense of humor and parallels to Ronald Reagan. It concludes McCain is no Gipper.
What strikes us as interesting is the issue of timing the piece raises. McCain made his "bomb Iran" joke more than a year ago -- before before his spectacular political collapse and resurrection. In many ways, McCain got a pass then. There was some backlash from people who likely wouldn't support McCain anyway, but the feeling was his campaign was moribund anyway, and the mini-flap quickly faded.
But what would happen if McCain cracked that joke now? Would that kind of stumble derail him? Or would it just further separate the pro-war from the antiwar votes?
Politics -- it's all in the timing.
-- Scott Martelle
Among the concerns some of Hillary Clinton female backers have with Barack Obama is the perception that he can slide into misogynist comments at the blink of an eye. And as we mentioned in an earlier post today, he made an odd, unplanned comment about women and heels during his Unity moment of rapprochement with Clinton. (The Swamp looks at Obama and John McCain on women's rights.)
This is from the transcript of the appearance: "[B]ecause of the campaign that Hillary Clinton waged, my daughters and all of your daughters will forever know that there is no barrier to who they are and what they can be in the United States of America. They can take for granted that women can do anything that the boys can do (cheers begin) -- and do it better, and do it in heels. I still (Obama laughs) -- I still don't know how she does it in heels."
Clinton laughed with him, but for a guy with some pretty good political instincts -- or who has at least hired people with good political instincts -- it was an odd verbal cul de sac to turn into. Remember, Obama caught some serious flak a few weeks back by dismissing a Michigan television reporter with a "sweetie." And he was criticized during a debate performance for another off-the-cuff comment about Clinton being "likable enough." Now he falls into the faux-joke of expressing amazement that a woman can outperform a man despite wearing heels.
That's not likely to go very far in mending fences with women already suspicious of him.
UPDATE: Tommy Vietor, Obama spokesman, says via e-mail that although Obama didn't cite Ann Richards, that was the genesis of his comment: "Sen. Obama was referencing Ann Richards' famous quote: 'Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.' Certainly Gov. Richards didn't mean [to] make that comment, as you described, as a 'faux-joke of expressing amazement that a woman can outperform a man despite wearing heels,' and it's disappointing that you'd draw that cynical conclusion."
Fair enough. But Vietor -- like many posters below -- missed the point of the blog item. For a candidate with past troubles with off-the-cuff comments on gender, it struck us as an odd comment. Some took offense; many did not (read the comments for a rather scathing discussion). Remember, this is a political blog, where we write about the political implications of campaign events and appearances.
-- Scott Martelle
On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.
Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.
Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.
In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.
His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.
His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.
Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."
Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.
The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.
Hillary Clinton was the clear front-runner; Barack Obama was just as clearly ...
Read more Top of the Ticket, the start of Year Two »
Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has been working overtime to finesse the nettlesome (for him) answer during one of the 5 million presidential debates in recent months that, if elected president, he would meet with the leaders of U.S. enemies without preconditions during his first year in office.
The answer has proved hugely problematic for Obama because it first gave Sen. Hillary Clinton and now Sen. John McCain openings to attack him as a foreign-policy naif.
So Obama and his surrogates are doing what one does in Congress: They are revising and extending his remarks to willing media ears, trying to fuzz the edges, as Frank James explains on the Swamp.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Is this another Bosnian sniper incident, where a Democratic candidate for president describes a scene involving some personal courage, but later videotape shows that maybe perhaps it wasn't really quite all like that exactly?
Sen. Barack Obama, the leading Democratic candidate for his party's nomination, is very fond of telling receptive audiences the story about how last May he walked right into the automotive lion's den of Detroit and told those industrialists they were going to have to shape up, change the way they do things and start making more fuel-efficient vehicles to protect our environment.
"And I have to say," the straight-talking Obama tells his chuckling followers, "that when I delivered that speech, the room got really quiet. [Laughter] Nobody clapped."
Well, in honor of Obama's return campaign visit back to Michigan this week, someone -- perhaps Republicans, perhaps someone closer to home politically -- assembled videotape of Obama's oft-told tale and spliced it side by side with videotape of that actual Detroit speech.
You'll never guess what. The room wasn't quiet at all. Obama, in fact, got a loud round of applause. And at the end of his address the camera's view of him at the podium is partially blocked because the audience of local businesspeople and automotive executives was rising to give him a standing ovation.
(UPDATE: Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman, has provided numerous contempoary independent news accounts of the candidate's Detroit speech. They describe the audience as presenting a standing ovation at his introduction but only delivering "polite" or "light" applause during it, along with selected quotes from some audience members praising his courage or consistency in delivering the message about better mileage.)
There were no departure ceremonies after the speech because of sniper reports. Far too dangerous for that. It was all he could do then to duck his head and just run for the vehicles. See for yourself below.
-- Andrew Malcolm
A small but very surprising gaffe by the leading Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, Wednesday during a visit to an automotive plant in Michigan. These photo ops are staged by every presidential campaign for the precise purpose of having TV cameras film their candidate walking, looking and learning something somewhere.
But although the media are absolutely essential to the staged event's success, the campaigns really don't want them messing up their political plans with interruptions or questions. If the cameras only have pictures, that's all the stations can broadcast.
Answering reporters' questions distract from the pleasant photos and could change the subject away from the day's political message. What if they ask him/her about West Virginia or doing poorly among blue-collar Democratic workers like those waiting to shake his hand up the line?
Peggy Agar of Channel 7 TV news in Detroit was with her cameraman at the Sterling Heights, Mich., plant jockeying for position as Obama walked around the facility, trying like all the others in the invited press mob to lob a question in and get the candidate actually talking on-camera instead of merely looking.
Suddenly Obama was walking right toward her. "Senator," Agar addressed him, "how are you going to help the American auto worker?"
"Hold on one second, sweetie," the presidential candidate said, sticking out his right arm as if to ward her off. "We're gonna do a press avail."
Sweetie?
"This 'sweetie,'" Agar noted acidly in her broadcast report, "never did get an answer to that question." Later, the station said Obama had left an apology on the reporter's phone, admitting he had a problem calling women "sweetie" and saying he intended no disrespect.
If there's no disrespect intended, why wouldn't he have used it during, say, one of his debates against Sen. Hillary Clinton? "Now, Sweetie, you're not describing my health care plan accurately." How would that go over?
Alas for Obama, his comment was already captured on tape. Here it is.
--Andrew Malcolm
Ah, Oregon. The beautiful Northwest. Rain. Trees. Clouds. Rain. Friendly territory for Sen. Barack Obama, the leading contender for the Democratic Party's long-disputed presidential nomination.
So there he was in Beaverton today at the start of a two- day swing through Oregon, virtually ignoring his remaining Democratic opponent, what's-her-name from New York, as part of his new strategy to act like the actual nominee while she flails around way behind in numbers.
Naturally, this being the Northwest where everything is not ruined quite yet, his staff had Obama visit an eco-friendly company, Vernier Software & Technology, that makes products for science teachers. He could get education in there too, see?
In his prepared remarks Obama was ready to start blasting Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, to show the Illinois Democrat is moving on to the general election campaign.
But first the freshman senator had to go through all the....
Read more Barack Obama wants to be president of these 57 United States »
Just look at his face!
Doesn't William Jefferson Clinton look absolutely delighted with his wife's Democratic presidential primary victory in Indiana?
Sure the Clinton campaign (Hillary's) had hoped to do much better in North Carolina. It is difficult to put a happy face on a 14-point thumping down there by Sen. Barack Obama. But at least she tried -- "Thank you, Indiana!" -- even though Hillary didn't know when she gave her victory speech how close her opponent would come by night's end (1%) to pulling out a win in the Hoosier State as well.
Bill Clinton has arguably been helpful to his wife's now 15-month White House effort. The crowds are supposed to love him. And many do. But he's often stepped on her message, creating unwanted news of his own to detract from hers. In South Carolina, his controversial racial comments may well have cost her badly in that state's primary, and they might have hurt her again Tuesday in next-door North Carolina, where 9 out of 10 blacks voted against the wife of the man so popular with African Americans that he was once called the first black president. Instead, they voted for the man who may well be the first black president.
Professional political packagers often mute the sound on TV to just watch the real message seeping out from the moving pictures on screen. President Ronald Reagan's communications crew once sincerely thanked CBS correspondent Leslie Stahl for a devastatingly critical news report she'd done on his senior citizen programs because the pictures showed Reagan talking amiably with numerous fellow seniors.
Last night, as the Clinton campaign did after her disappointing third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, the senator's political packagers let her down by allowing her husband (and daughter) onstage with her.
To be sure, by this point in virtually any presidential campaign, it is difficult for all but the most intimate staff to tell a candidate what he/she should do, so sold on themselves have the candidates become by hundreds of adoring crowds and the automatic subservience of virtually everyone around them. It is particularly hard to say "No!" to an ex-president and an ex-first lady who both think she should be president.
But Bill's glum puss, standing there right behind her, competing for the eyes of every television viewer everywhere, throughout the candidate's remarks visibly contradicted virtually every hopeful, positive word she said. As a veteran and successful campaigner for himself, he could know better.
It was the same after her Iowa defeat. (See photo below) There she was onstage before an immense banner -- "READY for Change!" -- and an enthusiastic crowd of fans who, however, went largely unseen on TV in the darkness in front of the stage.
And as millions of Americans at home watched the one-time frontrunner valiantly argue her case, what did everyone actually see? About two dozen glum faces of disappointed campaign workers surrounding her, no doubt invited there to share the spotlight and offer moral support.
But they looked more like an oversized grieving family at a memorial service (in fact, look how many are wearing black), including a whole pack of faces familiar from the 1990s -- Bill and Chelsea and, directly by Clinton's right elbow, Madeline Albright!
This is READY for change? Living reminders of the turbulent Clinton past. While running against the fresh face and rhetoric of the triumphant Obama?
By the next week in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton or her communications advisors had learned their lesson. Click on Read More below to see that photo.
Read more Hillary and Bill Clinton in defeat and victory: When pictures tell the story »
In his highly praised and closely critiqued speech on race in America in Philadelphia last month, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama took 37 minutes to dissect his views on race in America and the need for improved dialog and his controversial relationship with his outspoken pastor of two decades, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ.
As the leading candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Obama was under extreme and mounting pressure to distance himself from the inflammatory remarks of Wright.
They included denunciations of America, appearing to suggest the United States invited the 9/11 attacks and charging that the federal government invented the AIDS epidemic to commit genocide against people of color.
Obama said he had not heard the worst comments and did not specify which Wright remarks he was describing, but "condemned" the "statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy." So proud is the Obama organization of that now partially inoperative address that as of last night it was still offering a DVD of the speech in return for a minimum $30 campaign donation.
At the same time Obama also said of Wright: "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community."
Tuesday, after Wright's speech and news conference in Washington, Obama did just that. "The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.
"They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs.
"And if Rev. Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either."
Obama's complete news conference remarks are published below after the jump, along with a third poll question. And as always on The Ticket, the comment line is open for dialogue.
Click on Read more.
--Andrew Malcolm
Read more Is Obama wrong or Wright? Vote here »
A spokesman for the presidential campaign of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has criticized The Ticket for making a "false and childish accusation" in an item Thursday that the candidate's one-fingered gesture during a speech that day might have been the finger aimed at his Democratic Party opponent instead of an innocent finger aimed at brushing his cheek or scratching a scratch.
As displayed in a video clip, Obama was criticizing Washington for its gotcha politics in general and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton specifically as being "in her element" there. As he mentions her name, he brushes his cheek twice with the middle finger of his right hand.
Ticket readers were invited to make their own interpretations of the gesture. Thousands read the item and viewed the video and a frame from it. And numerous other blogs and websites discussed the matter in the past day.  More than 500 readers left comments, a majority strongly criticizing the blog for asking the question. Those comments are available at the bottom of the previous item.
In an e-mail this afternoon Ben LaBolt, an Obama campaign spokesman, agreed with those commentors and said, in total:
"This is outrageous. The Ticket should be embarrassed for making this
false and childish accusation. It's absurd and untrue."
Asked to elaborate, LaBolt said, "I think my comment covers it. There's nothing to explain."
A spokesman for the Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
--Andrew Malcolm
This is one of those political moments that really needs few words.
We'll no doubt hear much more about this incident in coming days.
Right now, we'll just leave this video for Ticket readers to view and judge for themselves. It's Sen. Barack Obama, according to the caption on YouTube posted just minutes ago, speaking to a friendly crowd in Raleigh, N.C., today.
He's talking critically about his opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, and the kind of distasteful gotcha politics that occur in Washington. And he says, "That's all right. Sen. Clinton looked in her element."
Watch the video right then. The presidential candidate raises his right hand to seemingly scratch his cheek.
He doesn't use his whole hand though. Just one finger. Briefly. A couple of strokes. He pauses. He smiles slyly as the crowd begins to mumble and then he tries, somewhat distracted, to continue his remarks, smiling as the buzz spreads through the crowd.
He'll no doubt deny it later, but that mischievous smile seems to confirm plenty. And the crowd sure sees something.
(UPDATE: A new item has been posted on the Obama campaign's reaction to this issue, calling it "absurd and untrue.")
-- Andrew Malcolm
Will the taint of the late 1960s and early '70s -- at least as it affects mainstream politics -- ever fade?
Barack Obama, who was grade-school age during the peak of the counter culture, could be excused for muttering that question to himself after Wednesday night's debate in Philadelphia on ABC-TV.
Throughout much of its first half, the faceoff with Hillary Clinton must have seemed like a root canal for him -- and no more so than when his links (however tenuous) to an extremist from the days when radicalism was often the norm on college campuses was explored.
 As we noted in a running blog on the debate, questioners Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos were in a no-win situation. After a period when it seemed there was a debate every other day, almost two months had passed since the last one.
Gibson and Stephanopoulos could have ignored the various furors that have flared -- and been thoroughly covered -- over that time. But they would have been widely scorned had they done so.
So they raised the expected topics (and, as a result, have been widely scorned anyway): Rev. Jeremiah Wright's rants; the non-existent sniping in Bosnia; "bittergate."
The unexpected came when Stephanopoulos, under what he termed "the general theme of patriotism," asked Obama about "a gentleman named William Ayers (pictured above and, as a young man, below). He was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He's never apologized for that."
Ayers and his even more notorious wife, Bernadine Dohrn, were on the lam ...
Read more Barack Obama finds himself haunted by the '60s »
Have you ever been at, say, a football game and you notice the TV camera turn toward the crowd in Section 14?
And suddenly what seemed like a fairly normal group of people -- except for the two fat guys with no shirts -- turns completely bonkers: waving, displaying ESPN signs, pointing to their sweatshirts, holding up one finger (no, the forefinger) and yelling things that n o one will hear because there's no microphone within 50 yards?
That kind of disease must be spreading these days to those people who are handed a microphone. There's something about holding one of those electronic voice-amplifiers in your hand and looking out at a political crowd that turns on the stupid lobe in many a frontal cortex.
We've had so many examples this election season of folks whose egos seem to get amplified instead of their IQs. And they come out with amazing words that the immediate crowd might cheer. But pretty soon, thanks to the Internet and blogs like this, their words get read or heard by others.
And they find themselves apologizing in very embarrassing circumstances.
The latest is Geoff Davis, a Kentucky representative few beyond Paducah ever heard of until today, when his Saturday night....
Read more Boy, why all the speaking gaffes by Geoff Davis and others now? »
 For days now we've all been reading about how bitter or not bitter small-town Pennsylvanians are.
All three major remaining presidential candidates -- Sens. John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who started this whole thing by blabbing on in some ill-expressed psychobabble at what he thought was a closed fundraiser in the smallest of small towns, San Francisco -- have been trying to use bitter to their own political advantage.
Big shock there!
Clinton and McCain have bitterly attacked Obama over his bitter remarks and he admits he could have said it bitter.
Besides the fact that, yo, even Pennsylvania's large cities are small towns, the Keystone State has had its say.
Now, it's time for the rest of us to weigh in. Vote away.
And if your ballot requires further explanation, use the Comments section below.
--Andrew Malcolm
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she cannot imagine why former President Bill Clinton would have resurrected the saga of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s tale of arriving in Bosnia amid "sniper fire."
"He may have been having a late-night adult moment," the San Francisco Democrat said during an interview Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."
Attempting to explain his wife’s admittedly misspoken overstatement about the circumstances surrounding her landing in Bosnia in 1996, the former president suggested last Thursday that it’s only natural that candidates get tired on the campaign trail: "Some of them, when they’re 60, they’ll forget something when they’re tired at 11 o'clock at night, too."
Never mind that the senator had related the same tale a few times, and not only at night. Maybe Bill Clinton (who's 61) was showing his 60 side as well, Pelosi said with a laugh.
Sen. Barack Obama says he too has misspoken, ...
Read more Bill Clinton's "late-night adult moment" -- and other campaign code words »
Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana is a staunch supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, but even he seems to think that Sen. Barack Obama is getting a bum rap over those controversial comments the Illinois senator made in San Francisco -- you know, the ones where he described many people in small-town America as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
These remarks, Bayh told host Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition," "have given the Republicans a stick to beat us with."
"I like Barack Obama," Bayh said. "I think he's a good person. But ...
Read more A Hillary Clinton supporter defends Barack Obama, sort of »
On a day when American foreign policy, primarily the Senate hearings on the Iraq war in which all three presidential candidates paraded their views for the cameras, is on the line, Sen. Hillary Clinton says she's "somewhat shocked'' and "speechless'' over Sen. Barack Obama's assertion that he has more expertise in the matter than she.
As reported here Monday, Obama met with supporters at a Sunday night fundraiser in San Francisco after his Saturday night appearance in Montana.
The freshman Illinois senator was asked about his thoughts on a potential running mate and provided a classically inarticulate quote that the Clinton camp and possibly John McCain's vice presidential pick will have some fun with later in the year.
Obama said: "I would like somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I'm not as expert on. I think a lot of people assume that might be some kind of military thing to make me look more commander in chief like. Ironically, this is an area -- foreign policy -- is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Sen. Clinton or Sen. McCain."
The account of his closed-door fundraising talk, first reported by Huffington Post, made for some spirited public talk Tuesday morning on "FOX and Friends," when Democrat Clinton, who ventured into the Republican-friendly TV camp, was asked about Obama's statement.
"Well I’m somewhat shocked by that since I don’t see any evidence of it,'' Clinton said.
"This is kind of hard to square with his failure to ever have a single policy hearing on the only responsibility he was given, chairing the European and NATO subcommittee (of) the foreign relations committee."
"I don’t know. I’m speechless,'' she added. "Making an assertion like that belies the facts and the record.''
--Mark Silva
Mark Silva writes for the Swamp of the Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau.
Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, warned again Sunday that Democratic superdelegates need to choose between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton before July 1, saying that party disunity could sink their chances in a  year when Democratic presidential candidates have started with advantages.
"The only thing that’s going to make John McCain president is disunity among Democrats," Dean said on CBS’ "Face the Nation," referring to the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
Dean insisted that the Democrats have other factors working for them. ...
Read more Howard Dean to superdelegates: Lasting Democratic discord will elect John McCain »
Next time you run into President Bush, don't be asking him for any phone numbers. He seems to have a problem at times with some digits.
Friday in New Jersey after one of his forums on housing, he was giving out the toll-free number for a mortgage relief hot line -- 1 (88) 995-HOPE. Anyone dialing that number, of course, gets one of those annoying whistling alarms and is informed that the call cannot be completed as dialed.
On a nearby wall the correct number was displayed -- 1 (888) 995-HOPE. And the president corrected himself.
But it wasn't 3 a.m. and the president wasn't in the White House at the time. So everything is OK.
-- Andrew Malcolm
It's our policy here at The Ticket to admit when we make a mistake. And, boy, did we make a doozie the other day when we reported that CBS News videos contradicted Sen. Hillary Clinton's hair-raising account of her bullet-riddled arrival in Bosnia in 1996.
In numerous speeches during this campaign season she has described her party making a harrowing landing on the embattled airfield. Passengers, she recalled, were forced to run with their heads down for the safety of nearby vehicles, which apparently had to be kept a safe distance away in order for people to have to heroically run to them. "That is what happened," candidate Clinton said emphatically.
The news video, which we included in our Ticket item and you should probably review again here, to see how seemingly real film can be doctored so seamlessly, appeared to show the First Lady and her daughter Chelsea calmly walking across the tarmac at Tuzla Air Base, greeting a little girl reading a poem and bravely visiting with American troops near the front lines of that ethnic strife.
WARNING: Some of this war footage is graphic and may be disturbing to some readers. .Some cynics suggested Clinton was exaggerating the danger and importance of her travels in order to bulk up her credentials of experience to be able to answer the White House phone at 3 a.m. And last night Jay Leno joked that Clinton was supposed to be his guest, but she got pinned down by sniper fire and couldn't make it.
But now we know that peaceful video, which also showed Sinbad trying to be funny in the face of imminent death and Sheryl Crow fearlessly strumming a guitar, had to have been doctored to mask the gunfire and excise the bloody carnage surrounding the brave Mrs. Clinton.
The Ticket has now obtained two videos of the actual visit -- one just above here and another awaiting after you click the Read more line down below.
These film clips obviously show the real wartime conditions that the future Democratic presidential candidate endured on her road toward the nomination. And you have to hand it to the one-time Cubs-now-forever Yankees fan. Not once, does she flinch amid the explosions.
View second video below by clicking on the Read more line.
Read more Newly-found videos show Clinton narrowly escaped death in Bosnia »
Some signs this morning that black support for Sen. Hillary Clinton is fracturing. The New York Times reports that in an interview Rep. John Lewis, a very influential black Georgia Democrat who endorsed Clinton last fall, has decided to switch to Sen. Barack Obama.
In a similar report early Friday the Associated Press was more cautious, quoting Lewis as praising Obama's campaign and inspiration but stopping short of unendorsing Clinton for the Illinois senator. Either way, the apparent erosion presages serious trouble for the New York senator's camp.
Speaking of endorsements, Sen. Barack Obama seems to have gotten one from a possibly unwelcome place. Daniel Ortega, the Soviet-backed Nicaraguan leader whose Sandinista forces battled U.S.-supported Contras there in the 1980s, says he sees "revolutionary" change coming to the United States in the persona of Obama.
Speaking of Obama's candidacy, Ortega, who was ousted in a 1990 election and then returned to the presidency in an election last year, says Obama forces "are laying the foundations for a revolutionary change."
Ortega, who's apparently seen Obama's large campaign rallies, said he has ''faith in God and in the North American people, and above all in the youth, that the moment of great change in the U.S. will come and it will act differently, with justice and equality toward all nations.''
And despite polls showing most U.S. Latino voters support Sen. Hillary Clinton, Ortega called Obama a spokesman for the millions of impoverished Mexicans and Central Americans who've migrated to the United States in search of a future. These statements will be especially helpful for the Illinois senator in places like Arizona.
Meanwhile in Houston, where the Texas primary is set for March 4, Obama spokesmen still struggle to convince viewers that a scene captured by a TV news crew occurred in an unofficial Obama volunteer campaign office. Last week the camera filming joyous post-Super Tuesday Obama volunteers inadvertently showed a prominent wall decoration: the Cuban flag overlaid with a picture of deceased communist guerrilla leader Che Guevara.
Protests erupted immediately. In an on-camera interview with Channel 26 this week, Maria Isabel, who runs the office, was to explain the communist icon's presence, when she developed sudden second thoughts and ran off-camera.
 TODAY'S POLITICAL PANDER PRIZE goes to former Gov. Mike Huckabee, who's still campaigning for the Republican nomination as Sen. John McCain continues to collect GOP endorsements. (Mitt Romney did his party duty Thursday and quietly got in line for 2012.)
Huckabee was in Wausau, Wis., where several people cheer for the Green Bay Packers. These fans apparently include a reporter for WJFW, obviously a real news professional who publicly promised Huckabee his vote if he'd don a Packers tie.
Huckabee, known more as a baseball fan (St. Louis Cardinals), said to do that would be the ultimate in pandering. And then he did it. Hey, you get votes any way you can when you're that far behind.
Then Huckabee, along with The Times' James Rainey, headed for....
Read more Ticket Takings: No cute dogs today but lotsa politics »
Over the weekend there was an as yet little-noticed incident in Bridgeton, Mo., just outside St. Louis. Sen. Hillary Clinton addressed a town hall meeting there and was taking questions from the audience.
One elderly woman rose and was asking the Democratic candidate about a rumored economic union among the United States, Canada and Mexico that is widely discussed, feared and abhorred among conspiracy fanciers. The woman said the president planned to implement the secret agreement in 2010.
Then the woman called the president "Bush the bastard."
The Democratic crowd immediately roared its approval.
Sen. Clinton nodded her head slightly and smiled.
Then, she proceeded to ...
Read more Questioner calls Bush 'the bastard,' Hillary Clinton smiles »
The bitterness of ex-president Bill Clinton's scorched earth march to the sea across South Carolina lingers not just in the chilly relations between his wife, Hillary, and Sen. Barack Obama, and apparently in the votes of thousands of South Carolinians. There was considerable criticism of Bill Clinton for injecting race into the race, which Obama easily won 2 to 1.
But now some of Clinton's supporters are suggesting he was not seeking to marginalize Obama as an old-fashioned hopeless black candidate, but that it was actually reporters who injected race and the Rev. Jesse Jackson into Clinton's post-election analysis.
Thanks to our colleague Jake Tapper over at ABC News, we have the entire transcript of that controversial exchange between Clinton and reporters. As we occasionally choose to do here at the Ticket, we've laid out a longer conversation so readers can soak up the context and full impact of the politically spoken words. Now, you can make your own judgment as to who brought the Rev. Jackson into the conversation:
Bill Clinton: Wow. Hi, Everybody.
Reporter: How’s it going for you this morning, Mr. President?
BC: Oh, good. You know, I like election days and I think it’s interesting they vote on Saturday here. It makes it easier for working people to go. You know, there’s really not much you can do to change a lot of votes, but by stirring around, you may induce people who are for you to go ahead and vote when they might not have.
Reporter: You proud of what you’ve done here in South Carolina?
BC: Oh yeah, we’ve done our best, and we’ve had, I particularly have enjoyed, you know, my role here has been almost exclusively to go around and do town meetings and answer questions, that’s most of what I’ve done, and I’ve really enjoyed that. I think it’s been immensely impressive to me to see in the audiences whether they were predominantly African American, predominantly....
Read more In his own words: Bill Clinton on Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson »
Former President Bill Clinton attended a service today marking the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Apparently, it went on for a while.
--Andrew Malcolm
DETROIT -- One of Mike Huckabee's biggest assets on the campaign trail is glibness. The guy talks, people laugh. But some jokes just don't work.
In a speech before some 600 people at the Detroit Economic Club Friday, Huckabee made followers of his own faith the butt of an odd joke. "People have wondered why my campaign has done what it's done and, without a whole lot of money, gotten where it's gotten. And some people say, 'Oh, it's the evangelical vote.' Well, I hope that they'll be with me. The one thing I know about evangelicals, particularly my brand, Baptists, only thing you can count on them to be is divided. [laughter] Where two or more Baptists gather together there's at least seven different opinions. [lighter laughter] When people say, ' Are all the Baptists behind you?' I say, 'Well all the Baptists are active in my campaign. Half active for me. Half active against me. But that's about all I can say about 'em." [slight titter]
Not the kind of gag the former Arkansas governor would likely want to use again.
-- Scott Martelle
What the Hill happened to her?
Hillary Clinton had everything on her side, it seemed. Name recognition. A nationwide network of political contacts from a generation of party work. Dozens of endorsements, albeit from aging singers, pols and athletes. A vaunted political operation from her husband's numerous successes. Her popular husband himself. A detailed grasp of policy. A steely determination. A sharp, calculating mind. More than $100 million. And, until Thursday night, a sense of inevitability about her Democratic nomination and even coronation as the next president, the first first lady to do that, and a triumphant return to the White House.
Now, BOOM! That's gone. She blew it.
But how?
Turns out, a lot of those alleged advantages were actually negative baggage. Every presidential election is about change. She tried to persuade a record 239,000 Iowan caucusgoers that she was the change agent, the anti-Bush, who would end the Iraq war but probably, maybe, likely not bring all the troops home right away. Then she tried to talk about our future by talking about her past.
Her "experience" was being first lady at the end of the last century, though the documentary proof of her active policy involvement remains locked in an Arkansas library. Then, the New York Times discloses...
Read more How Hillary Clinton blew it »
As the old year faded away today and the hours until the crucial Thursday Iowa caucus dwindled, a cautious Hillary Clinton was taking no chances with unplanned questions. She's reverted to her "Don't ask" policy of recent days when she refused to take questions, especially when they concerned one of her supporters, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, dissing the Iowa caucus process.
But she was more than happy to talk about risking her life on first lady missions during her husband's presidency.
The Ohio governor has been traveling around Iowa in recent days positively brimming with such good cheer you wonder why he doesn't just move to the Hawkeye state. “It is wonderful to be in the great state of Iowa," he says to crowds including The Times' Seema Mehta.
"I think Ohio and Iowa have much in common. We have wonderful people, salt of the earth folk who know how to work hard, who are patriotic, who care for their family and their community, support their churches, contribute to charity. I am so pleased and proud to be here as the governor of the state of Ohio.” And then he introduces his favorite senator from New York, Clinton.
Unfortunately from a public relations point of view, Strickland said something else....
Read more Clinton says she risked her life as first lady »
Reversing the no-question approach she had adopted mid-week, Hillary Clinton invited queries from voters at a campaign stop Friday in Story City, Iowa. But the change was short-lived.
She took three questions before leaving her first campaign event of the day. But at two later stops, the Q-and-A was dispensed with. Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said she was running behind schedule as the day proceeded.
After she had finished her speech in Story City, Clinton told her audience that the best questions she gets tend not to be those asked for all to see.
"I want to meet as many of you as possible and have a chance to hear from you," she said. "I often hear the best stories and the best questions one-on-one.''
Of course, when she takes questions while working the rope line -- with campaign songs typically blaring in the background -- it is difficult for the media to hear the exchanges.
Clinton's three questions in Story City dealt with education, the cost of the Iraq war and depleted uranium. Carson said he anticipated more opportunities for audience questions before the Iowa caucuses next Thursday.
One of Clinton's main rivals in the state, John Edwards, put out word -- perhaps with a contrast in mind -- that he is open to as many questions as voters want to ask as next week's big day nears. His campaign, in fact, not only announced that voters were welcome to ask him questions directly at rallies, but they could pose them through a new website or by phoning his Iowa headquarters.
-- Peter Nicholas
As she races through Iowa in the days before next week's caucuses, Hillary Clinton is taking few chances. She tells crowds that it’s their turn to “pick a president,’’ but over the last two days she has not invited them to ask her any questions.
Before the brief Christmas break, the New York senator had been setting aside time after campaign speeches to hear from the audience. Now when she’s done speaking, her theme songs blare from loudspeakers, preventing any kind of public Q&A.
She was no more inviting when a television reporter approached her after a rally on Thursday and asked if she was “moved’’ by Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Clinton turned away without answering.
Her daughter, Chelsea, had the same reaction when a reporter approached her with a question.
Hillary Clinton’s no-question policy didn’t sit well with some of the Iowans who came to see her speak.
“I was a little bit underwhelmed,’’ said Doug Rohde, 46, as he left a rally at a fire station in Denison. “The message was very generic -- and no questions.’’
Clinton campaign officials said that she may take questions in the coming days. But her focus is on seeing as many voters as possible before the caucuses next Thursday -- and spotlighting the messages she wants to deliver.
Spokespeople for her two main rivals in the Hawkeye State -– John Edwards and Barack Obama -– said the candidates would continue fielding questions as they troll for support.
(UPDATE: For an amusing update, click here.)
-- Peter Nicholas
DES MOINES -- You know the campaign days are getting long when you watch a candidate as practiced and smooth as John Edwards freeze up right before your eyes.
Edwards was partway through his standard stump speech here this afternoon after receiving Iowa First Lady Mari Culver's endorsement when he hit what seemed to be the public speaker's version of a marathon runner's "wall" -- the point at which the body seems to say, "Let's just go home and sit on the patio for awhile and forget about all this running foolishness."
A central element of Edwards' speech is the recitation of a litany of political decisions that he says came about because of the inordinate influence of corporations on national policy, beginning with trade agreements like NAFTA that Edwards says have cost millions of American jobs while enriching corporations "because big corporate America was for it."
"Why don't we have universal health care? Because drug companies and insurance companies were against it. Why don't we have cheaper prescription drugs? Because the drug companies and their lobby are against it. Why do we have the ... the ... what's the name I'm looking for?" Then he turned to people at the edge of the stage, including his wife, Elizabeth, and said: "What's the name of?" and someone said Blackwater. "Blackwater! Couldn't think of the name. I was going to say Blackwell!" Then Edwards was back in the groove. "Why do we have Blackwater, paid mercenaries, to roam around in Iraq making 10 times what our men in uniform make?"
We're guessing there will be a little napping done on the bus ride to the next event.
-- Scott Martelle
We're ever so sorry to have to point this out, but there sure seem to be an awful lot of apologies flying around in this presidential campaign. Everybody who is anybody is publicly saying how sorry they are about something or other.
Yesterday after the last Republican debate in Iowa, Mike Huckabee walked right up to Mitt Romney and apologized for his question about Mormonism that some took as criticism to appeal to evangelicals.
As he was doing that, Billy Shaheen, husband of the former governor and co-chair of Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign, was publicly expressing his concern that Barack Obama's acknowledged youthful drug use would be pounced on by Republicans next year if the Illinois senator was the Democratic nominee. As Shaheen well knew, such a reminder, coming as that party's race tightened to a dead heat in state polls, could also be seen as quite possibly helping Clinton.
Under a barrage of criticism by day's end, Shaheen expressed regret for his remarks.
Today, Shaheen resigned from Clinton's campaign, repeating regret for his unauthorized remarks, admitting the mistake and relinquishing his role as state co-chair. And as he was doing that, Hillary Clinton walked up to Obama at Washington's Reagan National Airport and apologized for what Shaheen had said, which her campaign has also said was unauthorized.
Then later today, to take advantage of all the attention to apologies, Fred Thompson's campaign issued "heartfelt apologies" of its own to Huckabee for "some references we've made about his record as governor of Arkansas."
The clever apology, however, was also as insincere as it could be, merely an opportunity for Thompson's deputy communications director, Karen Hanretty, to sarcastically repeat her boss's criticism of Huckabee for offering in-state college tuition rates to illegal immigrants, supporting an end to the Cuban embargo and raising some Arkansas taxes.
"We (also) apologize," Hanretty's statement continued, "for telling reporters that a BA in Biblical Studies from Ouachita Baptist University doesn't, in fact, make Huckabee more qualified to fight the war on terror than say...Fred Thompson."
Geez, sorry we brought all this up.
--Andrew Malcolm
Hillary Clinton's state poll numbers are heading south for the winter. Barack Obama reaped a publicity, fundraising, volunteer and poll bonanza over the weekend with his Oprah offensive. There are reports of internal Clinton staff dissension. The Republicans didn't even mention her in their debate yesterday.
One of her chief financial bundlers has been indicted. She continues stonewalling over release of her first lady papers which would -- or perhaps would not -- support her claim of sufficient experience to become chief executive. Two Iowa staffers got canned for forwarding e-mails alleging Obama is Muslim. She got caught planting questions at a public forum.
With precise Clintonian calculation, her New Hampshire co-chair went blabbing about Obama's past drug use yesterday, saying he feared Republicans would make it an election issue next year but actually doing that himself right now. Gee, must have been a slip of the tongue.
Her popular husband keeps talking about himself on the campaign trail and stepping all over her campaign's messages and making corrections that dominate another day's news and then claiming, typically, that the press misconstrued | |
