Posted by Josh Gerstein
Mon, 14 Jan 2008 at 9:03 AM Permalink
In an interview Monday, President Clinton mounted a less-than-vigorous defense of comments a prominent supporter of Senator Clinton's presidential bid, Robert Johnson, made which many interpreted as a reference to Senator Obama's admission of drug use during his younger years.The interviewer, Roland Martin of WVON-AM in Chicago, played Mr. Johnson's statement Sunday in which he praised the Clintons for having "been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood - and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in the book…" Mr. Martin sounded incredulous about Mr. Johnson's subsequent denial, in a statement issued by the Clinton campaign, that he was referring to drug use by Mr. Obama. "When you listen to that tone and the inflection, he was not talking about community organizing. It seems to me very clear what he was implying," Mr. Martin said.
"Ironically, this is the first time I've heard it, what you just said," Mr. Clinton said. "I listened to it on the tape and I think we have to take him at his word."
Mr. Clinton then launched into a defense of his "fairy tale" comments from New Hampshire which had not been raised at that point. The former president also sharply criticized Mr. Obama and his top adviser, David Axelrod, for statements suggesting that Mrs. Clinton's stance on Iraq made the death of assassinated Pakistani leader benzir Bhutto more likely. "That's a lot worse than anything Bob Johnson implied or said," Mr. Clinton said. "I don't believe anybody even asked Senator Obama about it. 'Oh you say she's responsible for something like that, that's fine.'
"Mr. Clinton then lit into the Obama campaign for its "overtly racist" opposition research piece labeling Mrs. Clinton as a senator from India "(D-Punjab)." Pressed further on Mr. Johnson's comments, Mr. Clinton retreated a bit, disclaiming any advance knowledge of his remarks on the part of the campaign. "Bob Johnson said what he said yesterday. Nobody knew what he was going to say. It wasn't part of any planned strategy."
Mr. Clinton also said campaign officials did not plan for the Attorney General of New York, Andrew Cuomo, to use the term "shuck and jive" in what appeared to some to be a reference to Mr. Obama's campaign, but which Mr. Cuomo said was a general comment about campaigning techniques in New Hampshire and Iowa. "Certainly, nobody had any advance notice of anything Attorney General Cuomo said," Mr. Clinton said.
Mr. Martin insisted that Mr. Johnson's denial was implausible. "Anybody listening can know what he was talking about—he wasn't talking about community organizing," the host said. "That's something between Bob Johnson and Barack Obama," Mr. Clinton eventually said, seeming to give up on defending the remark. "I think the psychological tensions on everybody are considerable. There are a lot of people who are supporting Hillary who always wanted to vote for an African-American for president. There are a lot of people who are supporting Barack who always wanted to vote for a woman for president," he added later. "It's not surprising that these sort of things will happen….They just happen. I think it's important not to overreact to them."
A series of callers to Mr. Martin's program following Mr. Clinton's call were deeply skeptical of his explanation and harshly critical of Mr. Johnson. One even doubted the former president's statement that he hadn't heard Mr. Johnson's comments, since the words were read to him on another program earlier in the day. Mr. Martin said Mr. Clinton seemed to be saying he had not previously heard the tape of the comments. It took more than an hour to hear a caller defend Mr. Clinton, even tangentially.
Mr. Clinton complained he had been the subject of sharp opposition research attacks by the Obama campaign over his business dealings with the Teamsters and reinvestment in minority communities. "It was a hard hit, man. I didn't say a word about it. And nothing happened to anybody who called Hillary the senator from Punjab," the former president said. "What they're trying to do both of them is figure out how they air their disagreements in a totally new and uncharted field loaded with minefields where people are nervous about is somebody playing the race card or the gender card or whatever," Mr. Clinton said. "I think we should just take what they say on the merits….I'm really proud to be in a party where you've got a woman and an African-American fighting out their differences of opinion."
Mr. Clinton refused to say whether he would vote for Mr. Obama or John Edwards if the race came down to them. "I don't think that that's fair to get me into that," the former president said. He did say he considered Mr. Obama more qualified than any of the Republicans seeking the White House.
Mr. Clinton also appeared Monday morning on the syndicated Tom Joyner Morning Show, where the former president suggested Mr. Obama was benefiting from an unfair double standard. "We have been much kinder to him than he has been to her," Mr. Clinton said.
www.ruffcommunications.com
Showing posts with label Iowa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iowa. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
From the Back of the Pack By DAVID BROOKS October 19, 2007
From the Back of the Pack
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: October 19, 2007
Rindge, N.H.
The first thing you notice about Mike Huckabee is that he has a Mayberry name and a Jim Nabors face. But it’s quickly clear that Huckabee is as good a campaigner as anybody running for president this year. And before too long it becomes easy to come up with reasons why he might have a realistic shot at winning the Republican nomination:
First, Republican voters here and in Iowa are restless. That means that there will be sharp movements during the last 30 days toward whoever seems fresh and hot.
Second, each of the top-tier candidates makes certain parts of the party uncomfortable. Huckabee is the one candidate acceptable to all factions.
Third, Huckabee is the most normal person running for president (a trait that might come in handy in a race against Hillary Clinton). He is funny and engaging — almost impossible not to like. He has no history of flip-flopping in order to be electable. He doesn’t seem to be visibly calculating every gesture. Far from being narcissistic, he is, if anything, too neighborly to seem presidential.
Fourth, he is part of the new generation of evangelical leaders. Huckabee was a Baptist minister. But unlike the first generation of politically engaged Christian conservatives, Huckabee is not at war with mainstream America. As a teenager, he loved Jimi Hendrix, and he’s now the bass player in a rock band that has opened for Willie Nelson and Grand Funk Railroad.
Fifth, though you wouldn’t know it from the past few years, the white working class is the backbone of the G.O.P. Huckabee is most in tune with these voters.
He was the first male in his family’s history to graduate from high school. He paid his way through college by working 40 hours a week and getting a degree in two and half years. He tells audiences that the only soap his family could afford was the rough Lava soap, and that he was in college before he realized showering didn’t have to hurt. “There are people paying $150 for an exfoliation,” he jokes. “I could just hand them a bar of Lava soap.”
His policies reflect that background. At the recent Republican economic debate, he was the candidate who most vociferously argued that the current economy is not working for the middle class. As the others spoke, he thought to himself: “You guys don’t get out much. You should meet somebody who’s not handing you a $2,300 check.”
He condemns “immoral” C.E.O. salaries, and on global trade he sounds like a Democrat: “There’s no free trade without fair trade.” (Polls suggest most Republican voters are, sadly, with him on this).
Sixth, he’s a former governor. He talks about issues in a down-to-earth way that other candidates can’t match. For example, he’s got a riff on childhood obesity that rivets the attention of his audiences. He asks them to compare their own third-grade class photos with the photos of third graders today. Then he goes down the list of the diseases that afflict preteens who get Type 2 diabetes.
“The greatest challenge in health care is not universal coverage,” he argues while introducing his health care plan. “It’s universal health. A healthy country would be less expensive to cover.”
Seventh, he’s a collaborative conservative. Republicans have tended to nominate heroic candidates in the Reagan mold. Huckabee is more of an interactive leader. His Legislature in Arkansas was 90 percent Democratic, but he got enough done to be named among the nation’s top five governors by Time.
He endorses programs that are ideologically incorrect for conservatives, like his passion for arts education. He can’t understand how the argument over the size of the S-chip funding increase became an all-or-nothing holy war. He also criticizes the Bush administration for its arrogance. “There was a time when people looked up to the U.S. Now they resent us, not because we’re a superpower but because we act like one.”
Huckabee has some significant flaws as a candidate. His foreign policy thinking is thin. Some of his policy ideas seem to come off the top of his head (he vows, absurdly, to make the U.S. energy independent within eight years).
But Huckabee is something that the party needs. He is a solid conservative who is both temperamentally and substantively different from the conservatives who have led the country over the past few years.
He’s rising in the polls, especially in Iowa. His popularity with the press corps suggests he could catch a free media wave that would put him in the top tier. He deserves to be there.
www.ruffcommunications.com
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: October 19, 2007
Rindge, N.H.
The first thing you notice about Mike Huckabee is that he has a Mayberry name and a Jim Nabors face. But it’s quickly clear that Huckabee is as good a campaigner as anybody running for president this year. And before too long it becomes easy to come up with reasons why he might have a realistic shot at winning the Republican nomination:
First, Republican voters here and in Iowa are restless. That means that there will be sharp movements during the last 30 days toward whoever seems fresh and hot.
Second, each of the top-tier candidates makes certain parts of the party uncomfortable. Huckabee is the one candidate acceptable to all factions.
Third, Huckabee is the most normal person running for president (a trait that might come in handy in a race against Hillary Clinton). He is funny and engaging — almost impossible not to like. He has no history of flip-flopping in order to be electable. He doesn’t seem to be visibly calculating every gesture. Far from being narcissistic, he is, if anything, too neighborly to seem presidential.
Fourth, he is part of the new generation of evangelical leaders. Huckabee was a Baptist minister. But unlike the first generation of politically engaged Christian conservatives, Huckabee is not at war with mainstream America. As a teenager, he loved Jimi Hendrix, and he’s now the bass player in a rock band that has opened for Willie Nelson and Grand Funk Railroad.
Fifth, though you wouldn’t know it from the past few years, the white working class is the backbone of the G.O.P. Huckabee is most in tune with these voters.
He was the first male in his family’s history to graduate from high school. He paid his way through college by working 40 hours a week and getting a degree in two and half years. He tells audiences that the only soap his family could afford was the rough Lava soap, and that he was in college before he realized showering didn’t have to hurt. “There are people paying $150 for an exfoliation,” he jokes. “I could just hand them a bar of Lava soap.”
His policies reflect that background. At the recent Republican economic debate, he was the candidate who most vociferously argued that the current economy is not working for the middle class. As the others spoke, he thought to himself: “You guys don’t get out much. You should meet somebody who’s not handing you a $2,300 check.”
He condemns “immoral” C.E.O. salaries, and on global trade he sounds like a Democrat: “There’s no free trade without fair trade.” (Polls suggest most Republican voters are, sadly, with him on this).
Sixth, he’s a former governor. He talks about issues in a down-to-earth way that other candidates can’t match. For example, he’s got a riff on childhood obesity that rivets the attention of his audiences. He asks them to compare their own third-grade class photos with the photos of third graders today. Then he goes down the list of the diseases that afflict preteens who get Type 2 diabetes.
“The greatest challenge in health care is not universal coverage,” he argues while introducing his health care plan. “It’s universal health. A healthy country would be less expensive to cover.”
Seventh, he’s a collaborative conservative. Republicans have tended to nominate heroic candidates in the Reagan mold. Huckabee is more of an interactive leader. His Legislature in Arkansas was 90 percent Democratic, but he got enough done to be named among the nation’s top five governors by Time.
He endorses programs that are ideologically incorrect for conservatives, like his passion for arts education. He can’t understand how the argument over the size of the S-chip funding increase became an all-or-nothing holy war. He also criticizes the Bush administration for its arrogance. “There was a time when people looked up to the U.S. Now they resent us, not because we’re a superpower but because we act like one.”
Huckabee has some significant flaws as a candidate. His foreign policy thinking is thin. Some of his policy ideas seem to come off the top of his head (he vows, absurdly, to make the U.S. energy independent within eight years).
But Huckabee is something that the party needs. He is a solid conservative who is both temperamentally and substantively different from the conservatives who have led the country over the past few years.
He’s rising in the polls, especially in Iowa. His popularity with the press corps suggests he could catch a free media wave that would put him in the top tier. He deserves to be there.
www.ruffcommunications.com
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