A few days ago, I wrote a post about Obama complaining about the Clintons’ tag teaming him and lying about his past record and current statements. My response was “welcome to the Republicans’ world, Senator.” The Wall Street Journal also has noted in an editorial today how Barack Obama is seeing the Clintons’ nastiness for the first time and is shocked by it:
One of our favorite Bill Clinton anecdotes involves a confrontation he had with Bob Dole in the Oval Office after the 1996 election. Mr. Dole protested Mr. Clinton’s attack ads claiming the Republican wanted to harm Medicare, but the President merely smiled that Bubba grin and said, “You gotta do what you gotta do.”
We’re reminded of that story listening to Barack Obama protest his treatment by the now ex-President Clinton on behalf of his wanna-be-President wife. “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,” Mr. Obama told a TV interviewer. “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.”
Now he knows how the rest of us feel.
The Illinois Senator is still a young man, but not so young as to have missed the 1990s. He nonetheless seems to be awakening slowly to what everyone else already knows about the Clintons, which is that they will say and do whatever they “gotta” say or do to win. Listen closely to Mr. Obama, and you can almost hear the echoes of Bob Dole at the end of the 1996 campaign asking, “Where’s the outrage?”
Other Democrats also are finally beginning to see the Clintons for who and what they are. Andrew Sullivan has a post about the WSJ’s editorial and includes an email from a Democrat reader who is finally beginning to see the truth about the Clintons:
As a strong supporter of the Clinton(s)’ presidency in the 1990s, watching the ‘two-headed monster’ in action now has been illuminating, and I think an important eye-opener for a lot of Democrats. For the life of me during the 90s, I couldn’t understand the partisan vitriol, the absolute intensity of the right-wing hatred for Bill and Hill. I always thought it would take historians to decipher it. Now, I realize that it was at least partially due to their lapses into dishonesty, their no holds barred approach to political warfare, and yes a certain je ne se quoi about their style which often makes you want to wring their necks. Clinton Derangement Syndrome, including the insane impeachment, wasn’t due entirely to right-wing hysteria.
No kidding.
