Bill Clinton Questions Obama's Experience
Bill Clinton is now getting involved in the talk about whether Barack Obama, his wife's chief rival, is experienced enough. In an interview with Bloomberg's Al Hunt, Bill said that it's not a fair comparison between Obama's experience and his own in 1992, when he was the same age as Obama is now.
"I was the senior governor in America," he said. "I had been head of any number of national organizations that were related to the major issue of the day, which is how to restore America's economic strength."
Rather, he said Obama's experience is much like his own back in 1988 — when he decided not to run for president. "I came within a day of announcing, because most of the governors were for me and I had been a governor for six years," said the former president. "And I really didn't think I knew enough and had served enough and done enough to run."
Comments (17)
stlounick wrote on September 29, 2007 4:15 PM:Internal Clinton polls must be showing Obama making headway on experience. Where's the poll in Iowa showing Obama ahead? Isn't that newsworthy?
dcshungu wrote on September 29, 2007 4:31 PM:If Elizabeth Edwards or Michelle Obama can pontificate at will, I suppose WJC, as HRC's hubby, can do the same without this being interpreted as a push of the 'panic button' by TeamHillary...
..or it could simply be that this a calculated move to capitalize on HRC's recent surge to deliver le coup de grâce by unleashing the Top Dawg...
DonnaG wrote on September 29, 2007 4:51 PM:Well, I guess Obama could have responded with a laugh, but instead he responded by quoting Bill Clinton. What I copied below is direct from the NYT Caucus site, which, unlike EC, has the fuller story:
"This morning, when Barack Obama – with some ceremony and a bit of mystery – delivered the latest of his ongoing riffs rebutting the suggestion, by Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Mr. Clinton, that he does not have the experience to be president.
Mr. Obama announced that he was going to quote what another former candidate running for president who had been criticized for not having enough experience had said in response to the charge.
“He said, ‘The same old experience is not relevant: You can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience,’ ’’ Mr. Obama said. He than paused for a dramatic moment to answer the question for anyone in the audience who had not figured it out.
“Well, that candidate was Bill Clinton,” he said. “And I think he was absolutely right."
There is more to what Obama had to say on that site, as well as an actual video of Bill Clinton's fuller speech, the points of which certainly point to everything in Obama's resume as 'the right kind of experience'.
Jeremy wrote on September 29, 2007 8:58 PM:Hasn't Obama held elected office longer than Hillary? Maybe Bill is hinting at Dodd endorsement???? There's really no comparison between Obama's track record of legislative accomplishment at both the state and federal level with Hillary. Obama comes out way ahead.
vwcat wrote on September 29, 2007 11:37 PM:Bill sounds like he has his shorts in a twist because the most Hillary had coming out to see her at a rally in NY was 2,000. Obama pays a visit to Hillary's turf and 25,000 come out to see and hear him.
that has to sting! ouch.
But, it points up to the fact that Hillary's numbers are most likely inflated and as hard as the msm tries to build her up as our nominee right now, you cannot erase the fact that even when she brings Bill along, they cannot bring out half as many people as Obama himself can.
You do have to wonder what the real story is but, concidering the massive grassroots support of all ages, ect., for Obama, Hillary is not as inevitable as she tries to convince everyone she is.
The race is much closer and Obama is much stronger then the media would have us believe.
If he thought she was on cruise control we wouldn't have seen him make three national media forays in one week one to tell us "don't worry she'll be the president"
Tomorrow in Oakland two events half a block from each other. Obama Northern CA campaign office grand opening party at 1
Hillary will attend a block party at 4
The heat is on
Eric, it's so nice to see that you've become a fan of the margin of error calculation. I hope these same caveats will be pointed out with Hillary's next numbers.
What I get out of this poll is that Obama has a slight edge amongst the most involved voters. More interesting, Richardson is in a very odd spot...80 some odd percent are would vote for a Hispanic president, but only 30ish percent think America is ready for one. That is mind blowing, and bodes poorly for a Richardson surge in Iowa. In my opinion, that means we're down to 3 viable candidates in Iowa.
Thank you Bill. Nothing could have signaled the panic you all must feel more.
I guess all 5 Sunday News Shows in one day wasn't all the Beltway led us to believe it was cracked up to be.
slcathena wrote on September 30, 2007 8:54 AM:bah, sorry, have too many EC windows open at the moment...that reply was supposed to be on another thread.
elrapierwit wrote on September 30, 2007 10:00 AM:The thing that I find completely ironic about Bill's remarks is that Hillary is the one who does not even have comparable experience to what he had in 1988, when accordingly to him, he had insufficient experience.
I hope that Barack picks up on this point.
He can point out that he not only does not have the 'wrong kind' of experience but that it is his rival for the presidency who matches the experience Bill had in 1988 relative to his must longer legislative and elected office experience.
john mccutchen wrote on September 30, 2007 10:14 AM:Well I guess we know who's really running for president but since Bill has place his running mate's experience at issue:
1. Sponsor Great Health Care Debacle 1993
2. CoSPonsor GOP Takeover of Congress
3. Matron Lincoln Bedroom
4. Co-sponsor Greatest Strategic Disaster in US HIstory (until she decided to run for the Democratic nomination) 2002-2006
The Bums Rush Back to the Future
Is Hillary Clinton the New Old Al Gore?
By FRANK RICH
AJM wrote on September 30, 2007 10:53 AM:
THE Democrats can't lose the White House in 2008, can they?
Some 13 months before Election Day, the race's dynamic seems immutable. Americans can't wait to evict the unpopular president and end his disastrous war. As the campaign's poll-tested phrasemaking constantly reminds us, voters crave change above all else. That means nearly any Democrat might do, even if the nominee isn't the first woman, black or Hispanic to lead a major party's ticket.
The Republican field of aging white guys, meanwhile, gets flakier by the day. The front-runner has taken to cooing to his third wife over a cellphone in the middle of campaign speeches. His hottest challenger, the new "new Reagan," may have learned his lines for "Law & Order," but clearly needs cue cards on the stump. In Florida, even the most rudimentary details of red-hot local issues (drilling in the Everglades, Terri Schiavo) eluded him. The party's fund-raising is anemic. Its snubs of Hispanic and African-American voters kissed off essential swing states in the Sun Belt and moderate swing voters farther north.
So nothing can go wrong for the Democrats. Can it?
Of course it can, and not just because of the party's perennial penchant for cutting off its nose to spite its face. ....
the scariest thing about Obama is his confession that at first he did not understand this thing about experience: the voters meant with national issues.
John McCutchen wrote on September 30, 2007 2:44 PM:There's so much red meat on Millary my arteries clog just thinking about it.
The Nepotism Tango
By MAUREEN DOWD
Maybe it’s fitting that a woman who first sashayed into the national consciousness with an equation — “two for the price of one” — may have her fate determined by the arithmetic of dynasty.
The town is divided into two camps: those who think that, after 16 years of Hillary pushing herself forward, the public will get worn out and reject her, and those who think that, after 16 years of Hillary pushing herself forward, the public will get worn down and give in to her
I'll have to take up tofu
Let's ride this mutha on experience and judgment
elrapierwit wrote on September 30, 2007 5:03 PM:More Dowd:
This process is not going to serve her well,” one said, adding: “She’s going to be essentially saying, ‘Elect me president after I’ve spent the last 16 years in your face. And you didn’t like me much when I was there last. Give me eight more years so I can be a presence in your life for 24 years.’”
Others do not underestimate her relentlessness. As Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, once told me: “She’s never going to get out of our faces. ... She’s like some hellish housewife who has seen something that she really, really wants and won’t stop nagging you about it until finally you say, fine, take it, be the damn president, just leave me alone.”
That’s why Hillary is laughing a lot now, big belly laughs, in response to tough questions or comments, to soften her image as she confidently knocks her male opponents out of the way. From nag to wag.
.
When asked by Tim Russert at the New Hampshire debate about the d-word, as Poppy Bush calls it, Hillary replied: “I’m running on my own. I’m going to the people on my own.”
Without nepotism, Hillary would be running for the president of Vassar.
I think Robert Reich got it right. He would know as Bill's former Secretary of Labor.
"Bill Clinton was 46 when he was elected president in 1992 – the same age as Barack Obama is now. But Clinton has questioned Barack Obama’s readiness to become president – arguing that by the time he himself ran in 1992 he had far more experience than Obama. He also states that when he decided not to run in 1988 (when he was “closer to Senator Obama” in experience) he didn’t think he “knew enough and had served enough and done enough to run” at that point in his own career. While I can understand Bill Clinton’s eagerness to undermine his wife’s most significant primary opponent, he is not, I believe, completely ingenuous. I happened to talk with him in 1988 before he decided not to run, and also in 1991 before he decided to run the following year. His calculation at both times was decidedly rational and entirely political, based on whether he could win.
But more to the point, it strikes me as unfair to claim that Obama lacks relevant experience for the presidency. When he ran in 1992, Bill Clinton had been the governor of a small, rural southern state; as such, he had only limited experience with national issues and no foreign policy experience to speak of. Incidentally, at this point in the 2008 presidential election, Hillary Clinton has served as an elected official in the U.S. Senate for not quite eight years, and before that a First Lady in the White House. Obama has so far held elective office for almost twelve years, at both levels of government – first as an Illinois state senator and then as a U.S. Senator."
John McCutchen wrote on September 30, 2007 10:30 PM:Bill Stop Shilling for Your Wife
