A major concession from the Clintons this weekend: Obama is ready to be President.
Last week, the Clinton campaign was spewing a lot of nonsense about an imaginary threshold to be Commander in Chief. Whatever that threshold is, both Clintons spent the weekend saying Obama has crossed it and is ready.
This stems from the new, desperate Clinton talking point that Obama could be Hillary's Vice President. Yesterday, Bill Clinton said it again.
There's been a lot of speculation about how Obama would fight back. And, today, he took the only appropriate tone. Obama mocked this latest Clinton strategy today -- and it deserved mocking:
“I do not believe Senator Clinton is about change, because in fact, this kind of gamesmanship — talking about me as vice president, but maybe he’s not ready for commander in chief—that’s exactly the kind of double-speak, double-talk that Washington is very good at.”
Obama noted Bill Clinton’s comments in 1992, when he explained his criteria for a vice president. According to the Obama campaign, Bill Clinton told CBS’s Harry Smith that a vice president must be ready to lead from day one.
“Someone who would be a good president if, God forbid, something happened to me a week after I took office. That's the most important thing,” Bill Clinton said in 1992.
Obama said that this criteria dismisses Clinton’s argument that he does not have the experience to be president.
“I don’t understand if, I’m not ready how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president? Do you understand that?”
We know Bill's standard for choosing his V.P. back in 1992. Obviously, now that we know Hillary was really Bill's co-president, we can safely assume she must have shared that view.
This latest Bill-Hillary "double-speak, double-talk" means Team Clinton is muddling its message again. Not a surprise after you read today's NY Times article on the campaign's continuing dysfunction (which starts at the top):
The divisions in her campaign over strategy and communications — and the dislike many of her advisers had for one another — poured out into public as Mrs. Clinton struggled in February to hold off Mr. Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
But even as Mrs. Clinton revived her fortunes last week with victories in Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas, the questions lingered about how she managed her campaign, with the internal sniping and second-guessing undermining her well-cultivated image as a steady-at-the-wheel chief executive surrounded by a phalanx of loyal and efficient aides.
The full NY Times article is worth a read. You have to wonder if this is how Clinton would manage the government too. Maybe, though, her campaign's dysfunction is another reason she wants Obama on her ticket. He's running a very smooth, sophisticated functioning campaign. And, he's winning.
