Bill Clinton

Hillary Clinton has begun to ask her influential backers to be in Washington on May 14 for a meeting at her home, according to a major fund-raiser. Separately, the fund-raiser said, Bill Clinton will be speaking with top donors this afternoon on a conference call.

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Bill Clinton, making a late plea for votes on his wife's behalf here yesterday, asserted that "academic study after academic study" had shown the former first lady to be the victim of "the most slanted press coverage in American history" during this campaign.

Though it was not clear exactly what studies he was referring to, Clinton appeared especially irked by criticism of the senator's proposal to offer consumers a summer 'holiday' from gasoline taxes.  read more »

In her embrace of a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax – an idea that virtually every credible economist agrees is a gimmick – Hillary Clinton is making the same bet that delivered her husband to the Democratic nomination 16 years ago: that voters prefer promises of free candy to the truth.

In 1992, with the country mired in an economic slump, Bill Clinton made a middle-class tax cut the centerpiece of his presidential campaign.  read more »

Stop it! Stop asking me about Hillary’s pantsuits, or any other aspect of her personal style! If you persist, I swear to God I will stuff Mrs. Clinton into a Balenciaga bubble dress with matching gladiator spike-heeled boots, and then you’ll be sorry.

Every 20 minutes I get a jangling call from an earnest hack looking for quips about the fashion choices of the presidential candidates. These content generators are hell-bent on viewing the current political jousting match through the lens of la mode: What do I think of Hillary’s pink blouses?  read more »

The Massachusetts Democratic primary, along with nearly two dozen other primaries and caucuses, was held on Feb. 5. Hillary Clinton won it by 15 points, one of her best showings anywhere this year, and Michael Dukakis voted in it—but he won’t say for whom.

“I voted for a candidate, yeah,” is about all Mr. Dukakis, the state’s former governor and a lifelong resident of Brookline, will say.

Mr. Dukakis has maintained an adamantly neutral public stance throughout the campaign, hoping instead to sell both candidates and their campaigns on the need for assembling a massive grassroots organizing effort—a captain and six block leaders in all 200,000 precincts in the country—for the fall. But he also said that Barack Obama will probably be the nominee and the race decided by early June, and possibly much sooner, with primaries in Indiana and North Carolina on tap next week.  read more »

Tomorrow night marks the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, D.C. Members of the press corps (including some Media Mob contributors who are already on their way—note low posting rate today!) will have a chance to clink glasses with the president and his cabinet and remind themselves that despite five years of war, an economy some are already calling a Depression, and a painful slog of an election season, it's all in good fun. L'chaim! To us!

This year's event will be emceed by CBS Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson, whom the W.H.C.A.'s president (and ABC News correspondent), Ann Compton, is really excited about: "Craig Ferguson is a fresh take on late night TV. As a new citizen, a first-time uncommitted voter and someone who has looked at American politics from the outside, I am looking forward to his unique take on our system."

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Jessica Silk, a wavy-haired, freckled grad student in public health, was sitting at the Organic Grille in the East Village on a recent sun-drenched afternoon, picking at a healthful seitan wrap. “Sometimes I think we can smell one another in a crowd, and not because we have snacks,” she said.

Ms. Silk, 27, was talking about former fat kids, of which she is one. Have you ever noticed how New York is simply swimming with these psychologically fragile souls? You can see it in the careful attention to what’s on their plates ... their slavish devotion to daily exercise routines ... and the slightly nervous look that creeps into their eyes now, as bikini season looms.  read more »

This weekend brought two reminders that what happens in politics is often, more than anything, about the past.

On Friday, Robert Reich formally endorsed Barack Obama, a decision that was greeted as noteworthy since Reich was an old Oxford chum of Bill Clinton’s and served as the 42nd president’s first labor secretary. He also scored a date with a young Hillary Rodham back in 1966, when, as the freshman class president at Dartmouth, he asked Hillary, his counterpart at Wellesley, to meet him for “a presidential summit” in Hanover. (There was no second date.)  read more »

The Obama campaign just announced that Robert Reich, who served as Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, is endorsing Barack Obama.

Here's part of what Reich wrote (where else?) on his blog:

I believe that Barack Obama should be elected President of the United States.

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It looks like all the “whining” taunts have finally gotten to the Obama campaign.

It’s not so much that they’re denying that Obama has attempted to profit from a sense that he was victimized during Wednesday night's debate as much as it is an attempt to note that the tactic has been standard operating procedure for both Bill and Hillary Clinton since the beginning of this year’s contest.  read more »

Bill Clinton’s crimes against his wife’s presidential bid, generally in the form of deceptive or merely ill-considered comments that have thrown her campaign off-message, have been well documented.

There was the flap back in November when he claimed that he’s opposed the Iraq war “from the beginning,” even though—like his wife—he was silent while President Bush marched the country to war. And the tirade he directed at a local television reporter before Nevada’s caucuses. And his apparent venture into racial politics, like when he sought to water down the impact of Barack Obama’s South Carolina victory by pointing out that Jesse Jackson had carried the state in his presidential campaigns. And so on.  read more »

LEWISBURG, PA.—All Bill Clinton wants is for people to focus on the issues.

“I just think I’m for Hillary, and she’d be the best president,” Mr. Clinton told The Observer, after addressing a basketball gym full of Pennsylvanians at Bucknell University.  read more »

Bill Clinton told the Observer yesterday that the money his foundation has taken from foreign companies does not pose a conflict of interest for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

A story in the Los Angeles Times over the weekend examined the potential problems in Clinton's fund-raising relationship with a Chinese Internet company that has allegedly aided China's crackdown on Tibetan activists by posting "most wanted" pictures of protest organizers on the Yahoo China homepage, which the Cl  read more »

BLOOMSBURG, Penn.—At a campaign stop here yesterday afternoon, Bill Clinton made it clear that the campaign has no plans of letting Barack Obama off the hook for his remarks suggesting that the lagging economy had caused Pennsylvanians to become “bitter” and “cling” to their religion, guns and distrust of immigrants.  read more »

At an event in New York this morning former Bill Clinton aide Paul Begala sharply criticized Mark Penn. One attendee who I spoke with today added that Begala, employing a Cajun accent, also quoted a swipe taken by Jim Carville at the now former chief strategist.

'How come the guy who calls himself chief strategist doesn't have a strategy?' said Begala, channeling Carville, according to the attendee.

The theatergoers at Radio City Music Hall last night had paid between $125 and $2,300 to hear the Clintons talk and Elton John sing, and several more dollars to drink fluorescent purple cocktails illuminated by glowing straws. Hillary promised them it was not a night for “political speeches.” Then she gave a political speech.  read more »

A reflective and sometimes wistful-sounding Bill Clinton largely steered clear of campaign issues last night at a Manhattan event honoring him for his contribution to the Irish peace process.

Though he briefly thanked an introductory speaker for complimenting his wife's engagement with Irish issues, including the peace process, and made a glancing reference to her earlier appearance at the Irish American Presidential Forum, the former president made no other allusions to her candidacy.  read more »

Big moves in tab-land! The unstoppable Janice Min has signed up two new high profile writers for Us Weekly, her glossy juggernaut of Brangelina speculation and Hills entrail-reading. The new issue (Inside Beyoncé's Wedding!) features articles by Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama. The articles are each teased on the cover with "Vote For My Spouse!"

Mr. Clinton is the author of 2004's My Life, an autobiography. He has also contributed to The New York Times on April 29, 2007 and August 22, 2006. Mrs. Obama is currently being courted by several publishers interested in her work, according to The Observer's Leon Neyfakh.

The Clinton campaign has just released the long-awaited tax returns of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Late on a Friday afternoon.

The couple declared more than $109 million over the last seven years and have paid about $33 million in taxes.

 

Following Hillary Clinton's joke about (and over-explaining of) the Bosnia debacle on Jay Leno last night, she talked about how early it is in the campaign season.

In commemoration of the April 10 Good Friday Agreement, Bill Clinton wrote an essay published today in the Irish Times, recounting his efforts to facilitate peace in Northern Ireland.

The section that mentions Hillary is excerpted below (it's subscription only, but the truly committed can read more here).

A reader notes that the former president doesn't make a huge effort to trumpet his wife's contributions to the peace process, which was something of a controversy earlier in the campaign (before the Bosnia debacle become much more of one).
Of the article's three mentions of Hillary, the reader writes, "two are
merely as his traveling companion and the other is about her
(uncontroversial) role in bringing women together:"  read more »

In a speech to union members in Philadelphia today, Hillary Clinton said that she would create three million jobs over the next decade as part of her plan to rebuild much of the country’s eroded infrastructure.

“We're trying to run today’s economy on yesterday’s infrastructure – and we’re jeopardizing tomorrow’s prosperity,” said Clinton. “So I will rebuild America – by rebuilding, repairing and modernizing our infrastructure.”

The key here is that Clinton is continuing to attach specific numbers to her broad economic proposals (five percent to ten percent of income to insurance premiums, $100 billion in tax cuts to the middle class) to make starker the contrast she says exists between her and Barack Obama, who she accuses of being vague and all talk.  read more »

The presidential nominating process is a lot like the Bowl Championship Series that governs college football: a maddeningly clunky, irrational, and outmoded system that regularly inspires calls for reform, none of which ever go anywhere.

So it’s tempting to greet the latest proposed overhaul of the Democratic primary calendar, this one authored by Florida Senator Bill Nelson, as just another in a long line of futile efforts. It’s also easy to dismiss Nelson’s maneuver as sour grapes, given his state’s black-sheep status in this year’s Democratic contest.  read more »

The presidential nominating process is a lot like the Bowl Championship Series that governs college football: a maddeningly clunky, irrational and outmoded system that regularly inspires calls for reform, none of which ever go anywhere.

So it’s tempting to greet the latest proposed overhaul of the Democratic primary calendar, this one authored by Florida Senator Bill Nelson, as just another in a long line of futile efforts. It’s also easy to dismiss Nelson’s maneuver as sour grapes, given his state’s black-sheep status in this year’s Democratic contest.  read more »

 

Bill Clinton sat down for an interview with the editorial board of mtvU (“the largest and most comprehensive media network just for college students,” according to the web site) and told a student journalist from Smith College that Melissa Etheridge’s characterization of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act was “a slight rewriting of history.” (Etheridge once said that Clinton threw the gay community “under a bus”).  read more »

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe defended General Merrill "Tony" McPeak in a conference call this morning for making controversial remarks comparing Bill Clinton to Joseph McCarthy, after the former president implied that John McCain and Hillary Clinton are "two people who love this country."

Plouffe was asked if Barack Obama agreed with McPeak's remarks, which McPeak interpreted as a deliberate exlcusion of Obama as a patriotic American. Obama would have used different words to express the sentiment, Plouffe argued, but "the point was a fair reading of that."

Plouffe drew a connection between the former president's remarks this weekend and Hillary Clinton's recent statement that she and McCain have met the commander in chief test. "There is a pattern and a history here," Plouffe said.

Plouffe again refused to walk back McPeak's comments later in the call. "Questioning patriotism is something we don't think has a place in this campaign," he said, adding, "We think it was pretty clear what the intention was there and we don't think it is right."

Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, has called McPeak's interpretation a "deliberately pathetic misreading of what the president said."  read more »

This statement just came in from Hillary Clinton's Senate office:

This morning, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice contacted Senator Clinton in order to inform her that the Senator's passport file was breached in 2007. The State Department will be briefing Senator Clinton's staff this afternoon to provide details about the recent unauthorized breaches of passport records.  read more »

Last month Azi mentioned a conference in Belfast that Bill Clinton was scheduled to attend on April 10, during the extended run-up to the April 22 Pennsylvania primary.

Today The Sunday Business Post of Ireland reports that Clinton has pulled out of the conference, citing "changes to his schedule."

If the feelings of Sam Spencer are any measure, Barack Obama’s speech about race on March 18 may just have done the trick in terms of reassuring the all-important uncommitted superdelegates about his general-election viability.

"On Sunday we had a Democratic State Committee meeting and several members came up to me,” Spencer, an uncommitted superdelegate from Maine, told me. “They were very concerned about what was happening with Jeremiah Wright and Senator Obama. I watched clips of the speech yesterday, and I thought it was a very moving, powerful speech.  read more »

Addressing incendiary remarks by his former pastor, Barack Obama gave a major address on race in America today in which he refused to disown the reverend, and instead used him as a springboard to make one of the most nuanced speeches about race in any American election.

The speech addressed a matter that may have represented the most grave threat yet to his appeal, but it was also a tacit rebuke of Hillary Clinton's criticism that he represented "just talk." Honest talk, in terms of race, Obama seemed to suggest, was just what was necessary to move the country forward.

In the speech, given at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Obama rejected the divisive comments of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but also acknowledged and challenged the black community's notion of an immutable institutional racism in America. But somewhat counterintuitively, Obama embraced Wright as an example of the America tinged by years of racial division, but which he argued could be healed. Referring to his own unusual biography – the son of a white Kansas woman and black African man – he called on white Americans to recognize the plight of black Americans as a step towards the goal of working toward a national racial unity.  read more »

The first time I saw Hillary Clinton speak in person, she addressed about 80,000 people. But they hadn't come to see her.

The time was November 1995 and the place was the downtown area of my native Belfast. The Irish Republican Army had called a ceasefire a little over a year before and the sense was building that a real peace might take hold.  read more »

The Clinton campaign just sent out a release that reads, in part:

Legendary artist Sir Elton John will perform at a solo concert on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign on April 9, 2008 at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The event, called "Elton and Hillary: One Night Only," is Elton John's first public solo concert in New York City without his band since his solo concert at Madison Square Garden in October 2000.

"I'm not a politician but I believe in the work that Hillary Clinton does," said John.  read more »

 

This is kind of amazing.

 As Ralph Nader becomes the Harold Stassen of the 21st century and a running joke to everyone except Al Gore, we sometimes forget that a generation ago (When Stassen was our perennial candidate for President), Nader was a founder of the consumer and environmental movement. How does someone evolve from one of the most credible policy advocates in the country, to a punch line on late night television?

When you buckle your seatbelts and when your air bag deploys—saving your life—you should thank Ralph Nader. The Clean Air Act, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act are at least partially due to Nader’s skill as an advocate in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

I mention the history because Nader did not build his reputation as a consumer and environmental advocate by pushing symbolism at the expense of results. He must know that his popularity is trending down.  read more »

If Barack Obama prevails over Hillary Clinton to become his party’s nominee, it will mark the end of an era for the Clintons. But the agenda of the group that devised their national political identity will be just fine.

At least according to Al From, the founder and CEO of the resolutely centrist—Clintonian, even—Democratic Leadership Council.

“What he has done is he has certainly taken a good part of the strategy we have articulated over the years,” Mr. From said. “Which is to not polarize, but try to unite and build a coalition that understands that a Democratic victory is a coalition.”  read more »

LAKEWOOD, Ohio—Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio thinks Hillary Clinton should keep pursuing the Democratic nomination even if she emerges from Tuesday’s voting with a victory only in his state.

“In my judgment and if I’m asked, I’ll say to her that if she wins Ohio, I think she should continue this because Pennsylvania is another sizable state,” Strickland said in an interview with The Observer after a campaign event here with Bill Clinton. “We need to be thinking about what is going to happen in November. It will do no good to come up with a Democratic nominee if we don’t win in November. We’ve been through that before.”

When asked if there wouldn’t be overwhelming pressure from senior Democratic Party officials on Hillary Clinton to withdraw from the race if she were to lose Texas—no less a supporter than her husband has intimated that she wouldn’t be the nominee if she didn’t win both major states on March 4—Strickland grew adamant.  read more »

Kaitlin Bell, an Observer intern who used to write about city government for the McAllen, Texas-based Monitor, has a fun interview with one of Hillary Clinton’s surrogates in South Texas.

Among other things, the surrogate – Billy Leo, the mayor of La Joya – says that the Obama organization down there is much better than the Clinton organization, but that the area’s Hispanic population is still very fond of the Clintons.

In South Texas, one of the state's remaining Democratic strongholds, people love the Clintons. They know Bill's favorite taco restaurant in McAllen, a city of about 150,000 on the Mexico border. They mobbed him at a Barnes & Noble last fall. They named a school after him.

So things should look pretty good for Hillary Clinton in next week's Texas primary.  read more »

AUSTIN, Texas—Bill Clinton told a crowd gathered in glorious sunshine here yesterday that his wife’s candidacy represented “change you can rely on.”

The former president also complained, as his wife started to fall behind in the polls, about the rules governing the Democratic contest in this state.

“The election process you’ve got takes the cake,” he told the crowd, citing the unusual combination of early voting, a primary and then caucuses on the evening of polling day.  read more »

AUSTIN, Texas—Before Bill Clinton proceeded to the serious business of making a pitch for his wife here at Austin Community College, he had to clear something up.

The man who introduced Clinton, former State Senator Gonzalo Barrientos, badly mangled a saying involving a rooster and the dawn.

His point appeared to have something to do with the dangers of investing too much hope in the rhetoric of certain unnamed politicians, but the convoluted aphorism drew only bemused looks and muted laughter among the crowd.

Clarification, however, was at hand.  read more »

A reader points out that Bill Clinton, Hillary's most tireless (if somewhat reined-in) surrogate, is taking some time off from the trail to appear in Northern Ireland on April 10 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Belfast agreement he helped bring about.  read more »

Mark Penn thinks that people have the wrong impression about him, and about Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“I think that people misunderstand,” he said in a 45-minute phone interview Monday evening.  read more »

The argument that the constant carping about Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been a function of an Obama-friendly, process-obsessed media is well and good. But how, then, to explain the deeply held dissatisfaction of an old Clinton loyalist like Leon Panetta?

In an interview with The Observer, Mr. Panetta compared Mrs. Clinton’s top strategist, Mark Penn, to Karl Rove, suggested that the Clinton campaign had totally underestimated Barack Obama’s appeal, and complained about the overall lack of planning that he said had characterized the former First Lady’s bid to return to the White House.

Mr. Panetta, who served as chief of staff in the White House from July 1994 to January 1997, and who has contributed $2000 to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, complained that Mr. Penn “is a political pollster from the past.”

”I never considered him someone who would run a national campaign for the presidency,” he said.  read more »

It should come as no surprise that Democratic Party officials haven’t exactly been rallying to Hillary Clinton in her time of need.

While most Democratic voters remember Bill Clinton’s presidency with fondness, as the era of peace and prosperity and two straight wins in presidential elections, more than a few elected officials and Democratic leaders remember him as the selfish careerist who, time and again, threw them all under the bus.

Sure, he won reelection in 1996—the first Democrat to do so since Franklin Roosevelt—but at a steep price for the party.  read more »

A State Senator who criticized the dismissal of the top Latina on Hillary Clinton's campaign now says he’ll support Barack Obama as a result.

When reached by cell phone Monday night in Albany, State Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr. said, "I never supported anyone yet, so, you know, if I support Obama? Yes. I am with Obama, yes."

Diaz, who has had a history of criticizing his fellow Democrats in New York, said, "Hillary's campaign has been going down because of Bill Clinton, William Jefferson Clinton. Because people like Charlie Rangel, who called Obama stupid."

But the final straw, Diaz, said, was the removal of Patti Solis Doyle as Clinton's campaign manager, which was announced over the weekend. The next day, Diaz, along with Assemblyman Jose Peralta, sent a letter to Clinton's campaign saying they felt the Hispanic community was being ignored, and Doyle treated as a scapegoat.

"It is hard to understand how the Hispanic community that has been there to keep your campaign alive could remain in your corner when the first Hispanic woman to serve as your presidential campaign manager has 'resigned' from her post," Diaz and Peralta wrote.

More after the jump.   read more »

“What’s gone wrong is very simple,” said Hassan Nemazee, a national finance chair for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.  read more »

FAIRFAX, Va.—Bill Clinton's address at George Mason University last night was preceded by a booming broadcast of Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," and virtually the first words out of the former President's mouth were, "What a way to end this campaign, this is great!"

Presumably he was referring to the campaign in Virginia, which holds its primary today.

Clinton has been relatively muted on the campaign trail ever since his more aggressive tactics in South Carolina were seen to have helped Barack Obama to a big victory. He did, however, raise the subject of Barack Obama, albeit without naming him.  read more »

Hillary Clinton's longtime friend and aide Patti Solis Doyle is leaving her post as campaign manager and being replaced by Maggie Williams. According to a release from the Clinton campaign, this statement went to staff earlier this afternoon:

Over a year ago Hillary launched her campaign for President.

Her announcement began a historic effort that has inspired millions and brought hundreds of thousands to their feet all across this nation.  read more »

Claiming Hillary Clinton has been the underdog in the race for the Democratic nomination since losing Iowa, Bill Clinton called on her supporters today to send in more donations to fuel the final sprints of an unexpectedly marathon campaign.

“She has basically been running as the underdog ever since Iowa,” said the former President, who was speaking to a small group of Clinton supporters in the Richmond Convention Center Saturday afternoon.

Without directly mentioning the $5 million loan Clinton gave her campaign this month, he said that after his wife’s victories in major states on Tuesday, “People said, well, we got to help her.”  read more »