{"id":14382,"date":"2008-01-28T09:15:03","date_gmt":"2008-01-28T14:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14382.html"},"modified":"2008-01-28T09:15:03","modified_gmt":"2008-01-28T14:15:03","slug":"keeping-the-big-dog-on-the-porch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/keeping-the-big-dog-on-the-porch\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping the Big Dog on the porch?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, the day before Barack Obama’s easy victory in South Carolina’s presidential primary, the NYT noted that the Clinton campaign had every intention to keep Bill Clinton in “attack mode<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Advisers to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton say they have concluded that Bill Clinton’s aggressive politicking against Senator Barack Obama is resonating with voters, and they intend to keep him on the campaign trail in a major role after the South Carolina primary.<\/p>\n

The benefits of having Mr. Clinton challenge Mr. Obama so forcefully, over Iraq and Mr. Obama’s record and statements, they say, are worth the trade-offs. […]<\/p>\n

Mr. Clinton is deliberately trying to play bad cop against Mr. Obama, campaign officials say, and is keenly aware that a flash of anger or annoyance will draw even more media and public attention to his arguments…. They also see benefits in Mr. Clinton’s drawing the ire of the Obama camp, predicting that there will be a voter backlash against Mr. Obama if the former president looks like a victim in the cut-and-thrust of the race.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That was the day before the primary. The day after, the campaign has come to a very different conclusion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign team, seeking to readjust after her lopsided defeat in South Carolina and amid a sense among many Democrats that Mr. Clinton had injected himself clumsily into the race, will try to shift the former president back into the sunnier, supportive-spouse role that he played before Mrs. Clinton’s loss in the Iowa caucuses, Clinton advisers said. […]<\/p>\n

After a week of all-out campaigning by Mr. Clinton in South Carolina, where Mrs. Clinton came in a distant second to Mr. Obama, there is also fresh concern among some advisers that Mr. Clinton’s visibility has dented her argument that she has the best experience for the job. […]<\/p>\n

Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, a leading supporter of Mrs. Clinton, said on Sunday that Mr. Clinton was going to pull back. “He’s got to,” Mr. Rangel said. “The focus has got to get back on Hillary. For all that he cares about his wife, this has to be her election to win, and it’s become too much about his role.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Scaling back, however, may not be easy.
\n
\nFirst, it seems the Clinton campaign has been struggling with this question for several weeks now. Before the Iowa caucuses, BC played a very high-profile role on the campaign trail. After HRC’s third-place finish, the former president’s role was scaled down. In Nevada, BC’s role was escalated again, and expanded even more in South Carolina. Now, the campaign is talking about reversing course, once again. Usually, these guys are a little more disciplined and a little less haphazard in campaign strategy.<\/p>\n

Second, as much as I respect and admire Bill Clinton’s many, many strengths, he’s tough to muzzle. If the plan is to keep him on the campaign trail, but as a positive advocate instead of an attack dog, there’s always the risk that BC will get asked a question about Obama, and he just won’t be able to help himself. It leads to problems like the one we saw on Saturday with BC’s Jesse Jackson comparison, which was universally panned as the wrong thing to say.<\/p>\n

That said, if the campaign is serious about shifting BC’s role, I think it’d be a step in the right direction. From my perspective, HRC is a very capable candidate, with a compelling campaign pitch. BC, for all he brings to the campaign, has begun to distract from his wife’s message.<\/p>\n

…Democrats said it was not clear whether the effects of Mr. Clinton’s high profile could be brushed away by having him modulate his campaign style. They said Mr. Clinton had upset some of the central themes of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, including her appeal to women and her assertions that her time in the White House during the 1990s amounted to vital experience rather than a link to a presidency defined as much by scandal and partisan divisions as by its successes on fronts like the economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday, the day before Barack Obama’s easy victory in South Carolina’s presidential primary, the NYT noted that the Clinton campaign had every intention to keep Bill Clinton in “attack mode.” Advisers to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton say they have concluded that Bill Clinton’s aggressive politicking against Senator Barack Obama is resonating with voters, and […]<\/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-14382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14382","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=14382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}