When Former President Bill Clinton tried to get former
senator Ted Kennedy to endorse Hillary Clinton for president in the 2008
election he did so by describing Barack Obama this
way: "A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our
bags."Also attributed to Clinton on Obama:Edward Klein, the author of “The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House” told the New York Sunday Post that just last year, Clinton told friends and political adviser's that, “Obama doesn’t know how to be president…He doesn’t know how the world works.”
This is revealed in a New Yorker article
Let's
Be Friends on the relationship between Bill Clinton and Obama.
The ploy of "Let's be Friends" looks like it
worked Clinton is giving a keynote address at
the Democratic convention this week in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Former President Clinton, long ignored by President Obama,
has been given a prominent speaking spot at the Convention, in Charlotte, the
night before the President’s speech—a spot usually reserved for the
Vice-President. Joe Biden was bumped to the following night, in the slot immediately before Obama.
The operation let's be friends last summer when Patrick
Gaspard, the former White House political director, now at the Democratic National
Committee, contacted Douglas Band, Clinton’s closest political
adviser and longtime gatekeeper, with some suggestions about how the former
President might help with Obama’s 2012 reëlection campaign. Band, who, by
reputation, has an acute sense for moments of political advantage, tried to
explain that you don’t just call up Bill Clinton and tell him to raise money
and campaign for you. Band recommended that the two Presidents begin by playing
golf. The next day, Obama phoned Clinton and invited him out for a round.
Several Clinton associates say that this was the moment they realized that
Obama truly wanted to win in 2012. Why else would he spend hours on a golf
course being lectured by Clinton?
The Presidential round was played at Andrews Air
Force Base on September 24, 2011, and since then Clinton has become a visible
and vigorous champion of Obama’s re-election. Clinton agreed to participate in several fund-raisers; he was in a
documentary, released on March 15th, attesting to Obama’s sound judgment in
ordering the raid on Osama bin Laden; and he recently appeared in an Obama
campaign ad. “President Obama has a plan to rebuild America from the ground
up,” Clinton says. “It only works if there is a strong middle class. That’s
what happened when I was President. We need to keep going with his plan.”
Behind the scenes, Clinton has been involved in detailed discussions about
campaign strategy.
It’s also an ideological turnaround: Obama, who
rose to the Oval Office in part by pitching himself as the antidote to
Clintonism, is now presenting himself as its heir apparent. It’s a shrewd, even
Clintonian, tactical maneuver. Source
