Accidental Blogger

The media outlets are abuzz with the news of Barack Obama’s supposed "plagiarism."  Last Saturday in Wisconsin, Obama delivered a speech where he defended the "power of words" using the words of his good buddy Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. Both Obama and Patrick dismissed the brouhaha by claiming that the two talk all the time and Patrick had advised Obama to use parts of his own gubernatorial campaign speech to counter  Hillary Clinton’s charge that Obama is all talk and no substance. Most commentators agree that Obama’s speech doesn’t amount to plagiarism but that he should have mentioned Patrick as his source.  When Obama pointed out that Hillary herself has lifted his slogans (journalists point to others like John Edwards, Pat Buchanan and her ever reliable crutch, Bill Clinton) in recent weeks, Clinton campaign adviser Howard Wolfson retorted that it was okay for Hillary to do it because she is not running on the strength of her rhetorical skills, while Senator Obama is!

In the last couple of weeks I have come across numerous articles which illustrate the Clintons’ (Bill and Hillary) amazing prowess for explaining and exploiting every situation and outcome to their own advantage. I am posting some choice Clintonisms here so you don’t have to plow through the entire articles.  The problem for the Clintons this time around may be that the American public is now trained to read and anticipate the Clinton thought process – we can tell what the meaning of "is" is.

Bill Clinton after Obama’s victory in the Maine, Nebraska, N. Dakota, Colorado, Washington and other "white" states:  (Remember that Bill C. had compared Obama to Jesse Jackson after he won in South Carolina. He tried to make up for that with an attempt at humor.)

Former President Bill Clinton today downplayed the significance of his wife’s losses in Maine, Nebraska and Washington over the weekend, noting that just as being half-black helped Sen. Barack Obama win in the south, “his white half gives him the edge in primarily Anglo-American states.”

“Obama gets to play both sides of the race card,” said Mr. Clinton, “I told you he won South Carolina because he’s black, like Jesse Jackson. So, to be consistent, I’d have to say he won Maine because he’s white like Michael Dukakis.”

Both Bill and Hillary Clinton slamming Obama: (note the brilliant escape hatch of deniability)

With metronomic regularity — the rhythm may arise from some strangely shared metabolic urge, which may explain the mystery of their marriage — the Clintons say things that remind voters of the aesthetic reason for recoiling from them.

Last week, in his 10-thumbed attempt to prevent his wife’s Louisiana loss, Bill Clinton said that Obama has made "an explicit argument that the ’90s weren’t much better than this decade." The phrase "explicit argument" was an exquisitely Clintonian touch, signaling to seasoned decoders of Clintonisms that, no matter how diligent the search, no such thought could be found, even implicitly, in anything Obama has ever said.

Then in Virginia on Sunday, his wife, true to the family tradition of "two for the price of one," contributed her own howler to the growing archive of Clintoniana. She said she is constantly being urged to unleash her inner Pericles: "People say to me all the time, ‘You’re so specific. . . . Why don’t you just come and, you know, really just give us one of those great rhetorical flourishes and then, you know, get everybody all whooped up?’ "

It must be wearisome. But surely people are "all the time" pestering her about being so substantive. It is a stronger word; she should tweak her fable in future tellings.

Bill Clinton on why Hillary doesn’t do well in caucuses and also the self pitying allusion to her "shoe string" budget and media bias.

Of his wife’s recent travails, he said, "the caucuses aren’t good for her. They disproportionately favor upper-income voters who, who, don’t really need a president but feel like they need a change."

(An interesting description of caucus voters, and upper-income voters, to say the least.)

"I think she has been the underdog ever since Iowa," Clinton said. "She’s had, you know, a lot of the politicians, like Senator Kennedy, opposed to her. She’s had, the political press has avowedly played a role in this election. I’ve never seen this before."

He said they’d done well considering their slim budget. "We’ve gotten plenty of delegates on a shoestring," he said. He did not mention that his wife’s campaign has raised more than $140 million.

Judging from his angry rhetoric, one has to wonder whether Bill Clinton is campaigning for his wife’s nomination or defending his own legacy as the "savior and rock star" of the Democratic Party. (Does Bill realize that one of the major factors in Hillary’s lack of appeal as a candidate may be he himself?)

ABC News’ Sarah Amos reports that former President Bill Clinton — despite myriad promises he would stop assailing his wife’s opponent given how it has backfired on her — upped his harsh attacks today in Tyler, Texas.

"There are two competing moods in America today," Clinton said. "People who want something fresh and new — and they find it inspiring that we might elect a president who literally was not part of any of the good things that happened or any of the bad things that were stopped before. The explicit argument of the campaign against Hillary is that ‘No one who was involved in the 1990s or this decade can possibly be an effective president because they had fights. We’re not going to have any of those anymore.’ Well, if you believe that, I got some land I wanna sell you."

After her defeats in MD, VA and Washington D.C., Hillary Clinton rushed to Texas where she wished to get a head start in energizing her Latino base. Masters at pandering, the Clintons try to be everything to everybody. Both liked to assume a southern preacher accent (Bill is a natural of course; Hillary is disastrous) when addressing African American gatherings – back when Bill was still the "First Black President." During campaign rallies in El Paso and San Antonio, Hillary tried very hard to authenticate her Hispanic "roots."

Some people prefer coffee.Others, Red Bull.

Hillary Clinton, apparently, runs on hot peppers.

"I eat a lot of hot peppers," Clinton told a crowd in San Antonio. "They keep me healthy. They keep me going. And they remind me of South Texas."

Clinton was reminiscing about her time spent working for the DNC in the 1970s, when she signed up to register Hispanic voters in Texas. "I lived in San Antonio for three months," she said. "I lived in San Antonio for three months. It’s where I became addicted to Mexican food and mango ice cream."

Journalist Gregory Rodriguez asserts that the Latino community’s supposedly disproportionate support for the Clintons and aversion to Obama based on racial considerations, may be a myth that is being perpetuated by the Clintons themselves. Rodriguez argues that by exploiting the fallacious notion as a "historic statement," the Clinton campaign is actually doing real harm to both the African American and Latino communities by reinforcing mutual suspicion. I won’t provide an excerpt from Rodriguez’s article – it should be read in full.