Once the interest in Hillary Clinton’s tears had run its course, the political world quickly shifted its attention late yesterday to some odd remarks about Clinton, Obama, LBJ, and Martin Luther King.
First, a little context. At Saturday night’s debate, Clinton warned of the dangers associated with “false hope.” Yesterday, Obama told a New Hampshire audience that he rejects that kind of thinking, and alluded to the 1960s as an example: “Dr. King standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over the magnificent crowd, the reflecting pool, the Washington Monument, ‘Sorry guys, false hopes, the dream will die, it can’t be done, false hope.’ We don’t need leaders who tell us what we can’t do, we need leaders to tell us what we can do and inspire us.”
Asked to respond to Obama’s comments, Clinton told Fox News:
“I would point to the fact that that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in peoples lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished.”
There’s a video of the Fox News segment online.
I suppose there are a couple of ways to look at Clinton’s comments, some less flattering than others.
Josh Marshall thinks Clinton was comparing herself to LBJ, while making Obama JFK.
It’s an ambiguous statement. But her reference is to different presidents — Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, one of whom inspired but did relatively little legislatively and Johnson who did a lot legislatively, though he was rather less than inspiring. Quite apart from the merits of Obama and Clinton, it’s not a bad point about Kennedy and LBJ.
Now I know in writing this I’m going to get tons of emails saying I’m defending an indefensible statement, making excuses for her, etc. I’m not. It’s poorly worded, and easy to misunderstand. And it will be misunderstood. Her ‘false hopes’ line from the debate was one of the worst of the campaign. And you can read her realization of the dream point as putting a lot of focus on legislation and sort of discounting activism. But when I look at the actual words in this statement it just doesn’t match up with the line that’s circulating — that she was saying Obama’s King and she’s LBJ.
And taking the other side, among others, is Oliver Willis.
It’s not as if Lyndon Johnson couldn’t wait to sign the Civil Rights Act. He was right to do it and it changed the country. But there is no civil rights movement, there is no America as we know it today without the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. How could she say this? In my eyes, and the eyes of millions of people of all races and sexes, Rev. King is the greatest American who ever lived. He was not just a talker, which is what Sen. Clinton’s message seems to be here. MLK was the ultimate “doer”. The sterling example of what it means in America to stand up for what’s right by putting your life on the line.
How could she? How. Could. She.
I suppose it’s a matter open to some interpretation, but my inclination is to side with Oliver on this. The key part of the quote is this: “It took a president to get it done.” It fits into Clinton’s broader argument about “talk vs. action” — and in this context, it seemed Clinton was referring to King as someone who talked, while Johnson was the one who “got it done.”
The more charitable interpretation suggests that Clinton was comparing Obama to John F. Kennedy, though as campaign comparisons go, that may not be where Clinton wants to go, either.
Some of the errors that have taken Clinton off her game the last few weeks seem easily avoided. I think we can safely add this one to the list.