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2 against 1 in Clinton vs Obama
24/01/2008 09:56 - (SA)
Washington - In 1992 Bill Clinton vowed Americans would get "two for the price of one" if they elected him with wife Hillary at his side. Now it is two against one as the Clintons gang up on Barack Obama in the US Democratic
presidential race.
Bill Clinton, whose eight years as president in the 1990s
are remembered fondly by many Democrats despite the drama of
his Monica Lewinsky scandal, has gone from top dog to attack
dog on the campaign trail on behalf of his wife.
The former president went negative against Obama in New
Hampshire early this month, angrily accusing the news media of
not looking more deeply into the "fairy tale" of Obama's record
on Iraq as an Illinois senator.
In South Carolina this week, he is trying to make Obama pay
for comments he made last week in Nevada about the late
President Ronald Reagan, a Republican icon held in disdain by
many Democrats.
Obama had said Reagan "changed the trajectory of America"
and that the Republicans over the past 10-15 years were "the
party of ideas" because they were challenging conventional
wisdom.
"I thought he was running against me for a while there in
Nevada when he said that Republicans had most of the new ideas
and you had to challenge the conventional wisdom of the '90s,"
Clinton told reporters in South Carolina. "I thought we
challenged the conventional wisdom of the '90s."
'Triangulation'
An Obama supporter and ex-presidential candidate himself,
former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley said Bill Clinton is
conveniently ignoring his own presidential past of
"triangulation," adopting some Republican ideas in order to get
re-elected in 1996.
"It was indeed in the Clinton administration ... that the
whole concept of triangulation took place, which means
appearing to be Republican to enough people to get elected, and
that's what happened," Bradley told MSNBC.
"So Barack Obama isn't supporting the ideas of Republicans.
Bill Clinton actually took the ideas of Republicans and used
them in a Democratic way to get re-elected," Bradley said.
Will relying on Bill backfire on Hillary?
Bill Clinton's attacking role has gotten many political
experts wondering whether New York Senator Hillary Clinton's
reliance on her husband will sooner or later backfire on her in
her drive to become the first woman US president.
"Clinton's current role confirms my ongoing reservations
about whether the nation can deal with two presidents in the
White House - one of them elected and the other retired," said
Linda Fowler, a professor of government at Dartmouth College in
New Hampshire.
Democrats hold a natural advantage this year with many
Americans fatigued of the two-term George W Bush White House,
but the Bill Clinton role is an intangible that could affect
voter thinking, experts believe.
America has never had to deal with a former president
re-entering the White House as a spouse.
"It does raise some questions about what a Clinton White
House will look like and the power Bill will have," said
presidential historian Thomas Alan Schwartz of Vanderbilt
University in Tennessee.
Obama frustrated
The onslaught from not one but two Clintons has clearly
frustrated Obama, who would be America's first black
president.
At an acrimonious debate on Monday night in South Carolina
ahead of Saturday's Democratic vote there, Obama resurrected a
line used by many critics to describe the Clintons, that they
will say anything to get elected.
"No, he's not getting to me," Obama told NBC's Today show
on Wednesday. "It's just that, I think, in the Clinton
campaign, they have had former President Clinton delivering a
bunch of inaccurate statements about my record. So, naturally,
I've got to make sure that those are corrected."
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