{"id":13735,"date":"2007-11-28T08:25:38","date_gmt":"2007-11-28T13:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13735.html"},"modified":"2007-11-28T08:25:38","modified_gmt":"2007-11-28T13:25:38","slug":"bill-takes-hillary-off-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bill-takes-hillary-off-message\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill takes Hillary off-message"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was only three words — “from the beginning” — but Bill Clinton managed to cause quite a stir<\/a> yesterday while campaigning on behalf of his wife’s presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

During a campaign swing for his wife, former President Bill Clinton said flatly yesterday that he opposed the war in Iraq “from the beginning” — a statement that is more absolute than his comments before the invasion in March 2003.<\/p>\n

Before the invasion, Mr. Clinton did not precisely declare that he opposed the war. A week before military action began, however, he did say that he preferred to give weapons inspections more time and that an invasion was not necessary to topple Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n

At the same time, he also spoke supportively about the 2002 Senate resolution that authorized military action against Iraq.<\/p>\n

Advisers to Mr. Clinton said yesterday that he did oppose the war, but that it would have been inappropriate at the time for him, a former president, to oppose — in a direct, full-throated manner — the sitting president’s military decision.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The advisers’ line may not be entirely helpful — it suggests Bill Clinton opposed the war from the outset, but we just didn’t know about his opposition.<\/p>\n

In context, Clinton was talking about Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, and the ways in which lost federal revenue affected financing for the military: “Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning, I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers.”<\/p>\n

The problem, of course, is that Clinton has a reputation for trying to straddle the fence on contentious questions, hoping to be “all things to all people.” The “from the beginning” reinforces the narrative — and takes Sen. Clinton’s campaign off-message.
\n
\nIn 2003, for example, the former president said<\/a>, “I supported the President when he asked the Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” On the other hand, as Hillary Clinton’s campaign documented<\/a> nicely, Bill Clinton delivered a speech less than a week before the war began, in which he urged patience. “I’m for regime change too, but there’s more than one way to do it,” he said. “We don’t invade everybody whose regime we want to change.”<\/p>\n

I’m afraid none of this is helpful to Sen. Clinton’s campaign.<\/p>\n

After all, Bill Clinton supported the 2002 AUMF resolution, supported regime change, argued that Saddam Hussein had WMD, but opposed the invasion when it happened. As far as he’s concerned, that qualifies as opposing the war “from the beginning.” But therein lies the rub — Hillary Clinton shared her husband’s views on all of those same questions. Does that mean that Hillary Clinton also opposed this war “from the beginning”?<\/p>\n

Probably not, but that’s effectively the bottom line of the argument.<\/p>\n

There seems to be an understanding in the political world — in order to qualify as opposing the war “from the beginning,” you had to oppose the war resolution in 2002, and then forcefully speak out against the conflict (as Al Gore did) in 2003. That’s the standard, and neither Hillary Clinton nor Bill Clinton meet it.<\/p>\n

But, and this is important, that’s not a deal-breaker<\/i>. John Kerry voted for the AUMF resolution five years ago, and he went on to win the nomination. John Edwards voted for it, too, and he was Kerry’s running mate. Chris Dodd, an articulate opponent of the war now, voted the exact same way. I’d argue that it’s a mistake to use that one vote as a litmus test, automatically rejecting any candidate who was wrong at the time.<\/p>\n

But part of this includes being honest. It’s okay to make a mistake, just own up to it and work to set things right. That’s<\/i> the real standard for the Democratic presidential candidates, not a debate over parsing the word “oppose.”<\/p>\n

And all of this, of course, takes the Clinton campaign off-message, refocusing attention on 2002 and 2003, which is the opposite of what the senator wants.<\/p>\n

I don’t doubt for a second that Bill Clinton is wildly popular, and a real asset to his wife’s presidential campaign. But he’s going to have to be disciplined on the stump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was only three words — “from the beginning” — but Bill Clinton managed to cause quite a stir yesterday while campaigning on behalf of his wife’s presidential campaign. During a campaign swing for his wife, former President Bill Clinton said flatly yesterday that he opposed the war in Iraq “from the beginning” — a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}