Teddy's anger
One of the enduring mysteries of the 2008 campaign was what got Ted Kennedy so mad at Bill Clinton. The former president's entreaties, at some point, backfired, and the explanation has never quite emerged.
I've finally gotten my hands on a copy of Game Change, in which Heliemann and Halperin report:
[A]s Hillary bungled Caroline, Bill’s handling of Ted was even worse. The day after Iowa, he phoned Kennedy and pressed for an endorsement, making the case for his wife. But Bill then went on, belittling Obama in a manner that deeply offended Kennedy. Recounting the conversation later to a friend, Teddy fumed that Clinton had said, A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.
6 comments:
That doesn't have the ring of truth to it.
Do you buy the idea that Clinton would say that?
I think Kennedy, however, in one of his drunken blackouts, would certainly have said such a thing.
I'm not sure although if so I don't think it was intended as racist but more a comment on O's inexperience (of the "we have Pages working here longer than him" type. I wasn't a Clinton fan but I don't see him as a racist.
It's supposedly in the same book the Harry Reid comments are that he had to apologize for today.
Yeah, I took it that way too. It's just that I think Clinton is too smart to say stuff like this, and Kennedy was too fucked up to remember anything anyway.
I believe this story went down exactly the opposite to how it is told in the book.
I think this book is unreliable to the extreme. That is my knee-jerk reaction.
No, not the sort of book I'd buy anyway. but since I put the Reid post up I thought I'd give this equal opportunity.
You know all these politicians look the same to me anyway. . .
Even if that quote is true, Clinton could EASILY have meant that Obama was some lightweight ACORN functionary who got lucky because Jerry Ryan divorced her husband, NOT SOMEONE READY OR WITH THE GRAVITAS to be prez (something Bush said)
Of course if that interpretation is correct, people form the north saw, ultimately, in a man from Arkansas nothing but at heart some redneck cracker.
In the interest of full disclosure, I like Bill Clinton, and think he was a generally good President. That doesn't mean I agreed with him on everything. I just think he was an effective leader and a generally good man.
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