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How hard will the Obama team hit back against Bill's attacks?

James Forsyth

Thursday, 24th January 2008

The Washington elite and the press corps think that Bill Clinton’s role as attack dog in chief is unbecoming of a former president. But it is effective. Bill’s stature means that every charge he makes instantly becomes headline news and enters the political bloodstream.

Steadily, the Obama campaign is upping their rhetoric against Bill. First, it was John Kerry talking about the Swiftboating of Obama—Swiftboating is the name for the 2004 ads that called Kerry’s Vietnam service into question—but stopping short of calling the former president out by name. Then, a key Obama South Carolina supporter compared Bill to Lee Atwater, the late Republican strategist who was renowned for his bare knuckle tactics and for being Karl Rove’s mentor. Now, Michelle Obama has sent out an email about Bill Clinton’s role, saying “We've seen disingenuous attacks and smear tactics turn people off from the political process for too long, and enough is enough.”

Now, as Clinton biographer John Harris and Jim VandeHei point out the Obama attacks are stopping far short of where they could. They haven’t said anything like this, “You know, I admired some aspects of Bill Clinton’s presidency. But let’s recall that it was precisely these sort of too-cute-by-half statements that caused him to be reprimanded by a federal judge and stripped of his law license. Senator, you may want to go back to those days and that style of politics, but I think most Americans are ready to move on.” But if Obama were to do this, the Clintons would claim he was adopting the talking point of the vast right wing conspiracy and Obama would be forcing Democratic voters to choose between him and Bill.

What the Obama campaign really needs is for some big name Democrat to publicly tell Bill to dial it down. Robert Reich, Labor secretary under Clinton who has known the couple since their student says, called on Bill to stop “demeaning” himself but he is probably not a well known enough figure for this to have much impact on the national conversation. There are probably only a couple of Democrats who could do that. One is Ted Kennedy and the other is Al Gore. If Gore were to come forward and publicly scold the Clintons, the impact would be dramatic.