Is Hillary Running Scared...What Do You Think?

Obama rejects Bill Clinton's criticism

AP Interview: Obama Rejects Bill Clinton's Comparison of Criticism of Hillary to 'Swift Boats'
NEDRA PICKLER, AP News

Barack Obama said Tuesday that former President Clinton was making a leap to compare treatment of his wife in the presidential race to the "swift boat" criticism of John Kerry in 2004.

The former president encouraged an audience in Nevada Monday not to let "trivial matters" take away the election from the Democrats as they have in the past. He cited the television ads during the 2004 presidential campaign that questioned Kerry's patriotism and campaign commercials in 2002 suggesting that Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga. was soft on terrorism.

Both Kerry and Cleland were honored for their service in Vietnam, during which Cleland lost three limbs. Both were defeated after the ads aired.

"I was pretty stunned by that statement," Obama said with a chuckle when asked about the former president's comment in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

He said that when debating last week whether illegal immigrants should be given driver's licenses, Hillary Rodham Clinton "seemed to contradict what she said previously."

Both Obama and John Edwards have criticized her repeatedly on that score, but Obama said in the interview: "How you would then draw an analogy to distorting somebody's military record is a reach."