Obviously, we’ve never seen a political dynamic in this country in which a president’s spouse also ran for the White House. On a related note, we’ve also haven’t seen a former president take an active and assertive role in his party’s nominating process, directly attacking one of his party’s leading candidates during the primaries.
It’s led to a very awkward political environment in Democratic circles.
There was some talk among the chattering class last year about whether Bill Clinton would be a hindrance for Hillary Clinton. I always found the speculation rather silly — BC left office as the most popular president in decades; his stature has only grown since; and he commands widespread admiration in Democratic circles. If anything, HRC was the immediate frontrunner precisely because of goodwill towards her husband.
But I have to admit, I’ve been surprised, not only by the former president’s unusually aggressive posture towards Barack Obama over the last month or so, but by the party’s discomfort with Bill Clinton’s conduct. Michael Tomasky noted the other day:
I don’t know who on this planet has the stature to go face-to-face with Bill Clinton and look him in the eye and tell him he behaved in a discreditable fashion. His wife? His buddy Vernon Jordan? Whoever it is, someone had better stop him. He campaigned against a fellow Democrat no differently than if Obama had been Newt Gingrich. The Clinton campaign may conclude that, numerically and on balance, Bill helped. But, trust me, to the thousands of committed progressives who supported him when he really needed it, who went to the mat for him at his moment of (largely self-inflicted) crisis but who now happen to be supporting someone other than his wife, he’s done himself a tremendous amount of damage.
Tomasky’s hardly the only one. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter reported that “prominent Democrats,” including Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, believe Bill Clinton’s conduct has been “inappropriate,” and have “told their old friend heatedly on the phone that he needs to change his tone and stop attacking” Obama.
Over the weekend, Josh Marshall, an admitted fan of the former president, described his own discomfort in “seeing the man who is in many respects still the de facto leader of the Democratic party, certainly its elder statesman, inject himself as an attack dog into a intra-party contest. I think it’s damaging to him and more importantly I think it’s damaging to his party.”
Given all of this, Obama now apparently feels comfortable enough to start pushing back — gingerly — against the former president.
In a “Good Morning America” interview recorded yesterday and aired this morning, Obama described his willingness to “confront” Bill Clinton, which he said is necessary given the circumstances.
For those of you who can’t watch videos online, the clip shows Obama saying, “You know the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling. He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts — whether it’s about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas. This has become a habit, and one of the things that we’re gonna have to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he’s making statements that are not factually accurate.”
Like the rest of the race, it’ll be interesting to see where this goes. There’s simply no way the Clinton campaign will scale back the former president’s campaign efforts, and it’s also unlikely the former president will hold back in his criticisms of his wife’s principal Democratic rival. Obama’s campaign, meanwhile, is in the untenable position of effectively running against two political powerhouses — Bill and Hillary Clinton — at the same time, even though only one is actually a candidate.
Will BC be able to dial it down a notch? Will Obama help or hurt himself if he forcefully challenges the former president? Will Dems be turned off by the Clinton campaign’s good-cop/bad-cop routine? Will HRC benefit or suffer from the two-against-one dynamic?
Stay tuned.