{"id":14843,"date":"2008-03-10T12:40:03","date_gmt":"2008-03-10T16:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14843.html"},"modified":"2008-03-10T12:40:03","modified_gmt":"2008-03-10T16:40:03","slug":"clinton-continues-to-hammer-obama-on-commander-in-chief-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/clinton-continues-to-hammer-obama-on-commander-in-chief-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Clinton continues to hammer Obama on ‘commander-in-chief’ test"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last week, as the Clinton campaign has ratcheted up<\/a> its praise of John McCain in relation to Barack Obama, the candidate and her team have offered themselves just a little bit of wiggle room.<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton, for example, told reporters on Monday, “I have a lifetime of experience I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he made in 2002.” On Wednesday, addressing what she described as passing the “commander-in-chief threshold,” Clinton added, “I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy.”<\/p>\n

Now, if pressed, Clinton could point out that she never explicitly<\/i> said Obama came up short, she simply praised McCain’s and her own background. The implication was overwhelmingly obvious, but Clinton came just shy of saying Obama isn’t ready for the presidency.<\/p>\n

It appears the campaign has since dropped the pretense.<\/p>\n

Chief Clinton strategist Mark Penn told<\/a> Ryan Lizza that independents and Republicans who had supported Obama are beginning to “get more of a sense that he’s not ready to be Commander-in-Chief.”<\/p>\n

Clinton spokesperson Howard Wolfson, in a conference call this morning, added<\/a>, “[W]e continued to believe that Senator Obama has not passed the key commander-in-chief test at least at this point<\/i>.”<\/p>\n

This is more than a little tiresome. But as it turns out, none other than Bill Clinton came up with an interesting perspective on all of this.
\n
\nStepping back for a moment, the issue of the Clinton campaign’s criticism of Obama’s commander-in-chief abilities have taken on increased salience lately for a few reasons. First, Clinton inexplicably keeps praising John McCain’s background and abilities, needlessly undermining party unity and messaging. Second, if Republicans attack Obama on his commander-in-chief abilities, it’s predictable. But when a Democrat does it, the attack has a different kind of credibility.<\/p>\n

And third, it’s rather awkward for the Clinton campaign to keep insisting that Obama is unfit to lead while at the same time arguing that Obama would make a great addition to Clinton’s presidential ticket.<\/p>\n

Wolfson tried to thread the needle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said that the possibility of Obama as veep is not something that she is “prepared to rule out at this point,” adding: “At the same time we continued to believe that Senator Obama has not passed the key commander-in-chief test at least at this point.”<\/p>\n

A bit later in the call, Wolfson was pressed on this question, and said:<\/p>\n

“Senator Clinton will not choose any candidate who has not at the time of choosing passed the national security threshold. But we have a long way to go until Denver, and it’s not something she’s prepared to rule out at this point.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, Obama can’t meet the threshold in March, but he might be able to in August? How’s that exactly?<\/p>\n

Bill Clinton’s answer<\/a> was more helpful.<\/p>\n

[G]iven the Clinton camp’s implicit argument that Obama is not ready to be commander-in-chief or handle a 3:00 am phone call, [Bill] Clinton was asked why then would she consider Obama for the No. 2 spot. “That’s politics,” Clinton said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is, indeed. It’s also the first subtle admission that the Clinton campaign doesn’t actually mean all this talk about Obama and the “commander-in-chief threshold,” but they’re making the attack anyway because they think it might work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last week, as the Clinton campaign has ratcheted up its praise of John McCain in relation to Barack Obama, the candidate and her team have offered themselves just a little bit of wiggle room. Hillary Clinton, for example, told reporters on Monday, “I have a lifetime of experience I will bring to the […]<\/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-14843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14843","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=14843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}