Opinion: Hillary Clinton’s words and voice, John McCain’s message
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If you answer the phone today and it’s that familiar voice of Hillary Clinton, don’t assume she’s calling on behalf of Barack Obama.
Just as the Democrats sought to turn Vice President Dick Cheney’s completely shocking endorsement of his party’s presidential nominee to their advantage this weekend, the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign is using some of Clinton’s old remarks about Obama against him.
As reported (and predicted) in The Ticket last winter during the long, hard-fought Democratic primary season, Clinton uttered some harsh words about the slim record of actual accomplishment by Obama -- and now those words have returned to the fray in Republican hands.
On that frigid March Monday morning, the day before Clinton clobbered Obama in the Ohio primary, the New York senator rose before dawn to shake hands at a Toledo factory gate. Then, to insert herself in the news cycle, especially in Ohio, before spending the next several daylight hours on a plane enroute to Texas, she held a media availability.
The Times’ Louise Roug was there as Clinton got off a fresh 42-word zinger that she would repeat often in various forms the rest of the way until her concession in June:
‘I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. Sen. John McCain has a lifetime of experience that he’d bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.’
As The Ticket reported in June, Clinton and McCain do have a strong, little-noticed friendship, stemming from their common membership on the Armed Services Committee and McCain befriending the former first lady and newly elected senator when she first arrived in that notorious old boys club in 2001. It’s a friendship the pair has had to hide for obvious partisan reasons in recent months.
Sunday, however, the McCain campaign unpacked those winter words of Clinton’s and began hundreds of thousands of robo-calls to targeted households around the country using the same Clinton thoughts and her own voice:
‘In the White House there is no time for speeches and on-the-job training. Sen. McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign and Sen. Obama will bring a speech that he gave in 2002. I think that is a significant difference.’
Of course, Clinton is now thoroughly supporting Obama, as her spokeswoman rushed to point out Sunday. But those words might fall on a few sympathetic ears in some bitter, small-town households across Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Which would be the political point.
Speaking of the Midwest, we have two campaign videos for you this morning, one from Ohio and the other from Pennsylvania. One of McCain, the other of Obama, examining their Sunday campaign remarks and what their plans are for today.
Both are fighting over the region’s cruciual electoral votes. Click on the ‘read more’ line below to see the two videos.
--Andrew Malcolm
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