First Black President “Not a Racist”
It takes some doing to make Bill Clinton a victim. You need a villain of extraordinary wickedness and degeneracy—say, Newt Gingrich or Ken Starr (only being slightly ironic here).
Step up, Barack Obama (even less irony)!
ABC’s Good Morning America caught up with Bill Clinton this weekend while the former president tours Liberia. They discovered that Clinton still has not recovered from the bruising primary. It didn’t take much prompting to get Bill to insist that he got smeared in the primaries in a manner that sounds very similar to what happened this week:
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Q: Do you personally have any regrets about what you did campaigning for your wife?
A: [Pause, shakes head] Yes, but not the ones you say, and it would be counterproductive for me to talk about it. There are things I wish I’d urged her to do, things I wish I’d said, things I wish I hadn’t said. But I am not a racist, I never made a racist comment, and I didn’t attack him personally.
Democrats should take this as a hint that party unity will not be forthcoming, at least not beyond the superficial. Bill Clinton, at least, has not forgiven his treatment as a racial pariah during the latter part of the primary campaign, nor has his mood improved much. Neither he nor Hillary have rushed to Obama’s assistance yet, and except for the most cursory of statements of support, the Clintons have almost cloistered themselves over the last two months.
Only a few weeks ago, President Clinton offered to campaign for Obama any time, any place. The response hasn’t exactly been declamatory. The veneer of unity at the DNC later this month will be thinner than the motel room walls.