Accidental Blogger

It is more than 21 months before the 2008 presidential election. But the campaigns are in full swing and the gloves are coming off. As I had predicted, the long shadow of Bill Clinton is following Hillary Rodham Clinton everywhere she goes. H. Clinton is having to deflect criticism directed not just at herself but her larger than life husband. She is quick to share in the credit for the success of the Clinton years but when critics point to the flaws of her husband’s presidential stint, she calls it "politics of personal destruction." The barbs are now being thrown by her Democratic primary opponents. I shudder to think what the Republicans will have in store for her if she is the eventual nominee of her party. We will go through some serious and sordid muck. Between Bill Clinton and her unapologetic vote for authorizing the war in Iraq, Hillary will be playing defense much of the time. Not a winning strategy for a political campaign. (Having endured the excruciating pain of the Bush years, do we deserve this?)

An increasingly acrimonious competition between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to enlist the Democratic Party’s leading fundraisers and operatives burst into the open yesterday, overshadowing what was billed as the presidential campaign’s first gathering of candidates in Nevada.

The back-and-forth between the two campaigns has largely been fodder for political insiders. Yesterday, however, David Geffen, the music and film producer who is one of the party’s most prominent donors, made the fight more public. In an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Geffen said that Clinton is "the easiest to beat" of the Democratic field and skewered her unwillingness to apologize for her 2002 vote to use force in Iraq. "It’s not a very big thing to say ‘I made a mistake’ on the war, and typical of Hillary Clinton that she can’t," Geffen said.

Geffen, who was a co-host of an Obama fundraiser Tuesday night in Los Angeles, saved even sharper criticism for former president Bill Clinton, to whom he was close before a falling-out over the pardoning of financier Marc Rich at the end of Clinton’s second term. "I don’t think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person," Geffen said in an oblique reference to questions surrounding the former president’s private life.

After seeing the comments yesterday morning, the Clinton campaign immediately issued a call for Obama to disavow Geffen’s remarks and return his $2,300 donation, arguing that they were contrary to Obama’s pledge to run a positive campaign.

"A day after Barack Obama goes out and eschews the politics of slash-and-burn, his campaign embraces the politics of trash," said Phil Singer, Clinton’s deputy communications director, referring to a speech Obama made Tuesday in Las Vegas.

Obama communications director Robert Gibbs took a markedly different course. After refusing to get in the "middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters," Gibbs pointed out that Hillary Clinton had recently praised Robert Ford, another South Carolina state senator who endorsed her and said the Democratic ticket would be in serious trouble if Obama was the nominee because of the color of his skin. Clinton distanced herself from that remark, and Ford later apologized for it.

Obama weighed in later. "It’s not clear to me why I would be apologizing for someone else’s remarks," he said in Iowa, where he had gone instead of the candidates forum because of a prior commitment. "My sense is that Mr. Geffen may have differences with the Clintons, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with our campaign."

At the forum in Carson City, Nev., ABC’s George Stephanopoulosthe moderator, asked Clinton whether she agreed with her campaign spokesman that Obama should disavow Geffen’s comments.

Clinton did not answer directly. "I want to run a very positive campaign, and I sure don’t want Democrats or supporters of Democrats to be engaging in the politics of personal destruction," she said. "I think we should stay focused on what we’re going to do for America." She then added, to applause: "And, you know, I believe Bill Clinton was a good president. I’m very proud of the record of his two terms."