{"id":14978,"date":"2008-03-22T11:20:21","date_gmt":"2008-03-22T15:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14978.html"},"modified":"2008-03-22T11:20:21","modified_gmt":"2008-03-22T15:20:21","slug":"bill-clinton-and-the-candidates-who-love-this-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bill-clinton-and-the-candidates-who-love-this-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Clinton and the candidates ‘who love this country’"},"content":{"rendered":"

As much as I like and admire Bill Clinton, I’ll be the first to admit that on a couple of occasions during this campaign, he’s said some things he shouldn’t have.<\/p>\n

The reaction to this<\/a>, however, seems excessive and off-base.<\/p>\n

Former President has made yet another comment ripe for interpretation as a swipe at Senator Barack Obama. NBC reports on his musing about a general election fight between Senators John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton:<\/p>\n

“I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country,” he said in Charlotte, N.C. “And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.”<\/p>\n

The remark comes amid criticism that Mr. Obama did not adequately disassociate himself from comments by his pastor that some see as unpatriotic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because delivery can sometimes matter as much as text, the Huffington Post has the video<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen some suggestions that this was an instance in which the former president was attacking Obama’s patriotism. As critics see it, Bill Clinton was calling his wife and McCain the candidates “who love this country,” and by omitting Obama, he was implying that Clinton’s rival doesn’t<\/i> love this country.<\/p>\n

I realize that everyone’s on hair-trigger alert here, but the former president’s quote was pretty innocuous, and hardly worth getting excited about.
\n
\nThere’s just nothing striking about the comments. He said Clinton and McCain are patriotic Americans who can face off in a campaign about issues. It wasn’t a shot at Obama; it wasn’t about Obama at all. I suppose one, if they were really anxious to parse the words and raise a fuss, could make a variety of inferences, but there’s really no rational need to do so. At face value, his comments were harmless.<\/p>\n

It makes reactions like these<\/a> excessive.<\/p>\n

A retired Air Force general on Friday compared former President Bill Clinton to Joseph McCarthy, the 1950s Communist-hunting senator, after Mr. Clinton seemed to question Senator Barack Obama’s patriotism.<\/p>\n

The general, Merrill A. McPeak, a former chief of staff of the Air Force and currently a co-chairman of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign, said he was disappointed by comments Mr. Clinton made while campaigning Friday in Charlotte, N.C., for his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. […]<\/p>\n

General McPeak said of Mr. Clinton’s statement: “It sounds more like McCarthy. I grew up, I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I’ve had enough of it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For goodness sakes, let’s take a deep breath, shall we? Clinton’s remarks were reminiscent of McCarthy? Please.<\/p>\n

When Bill Clinton dismissed Obama’s South Carolina victory by highlighting Jesse Jackson’s success in the state in the 1980s, I thought it was probably the dumbest thing the former president has said throughout the campaign. Saying his wife and McCain love their country isn’t even in the same league.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we can save the outrage for real outrages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As much as I like and admire Bill Clinton, I’ll be the first to admit that on a couple of occasions during this campaign, he’s said some things he shouldn’t have. The reaction to this, however, seems excessive and off-base. Former President has made yet another comment ripe for interpretation as a swipe at Senator […]<\/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-14978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14978","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=14978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}