Obama: Man, those Klinton Kids are Something...

xpostfactoid Post:

keep reading that Obama is 'timid' or 'hesitant' or "whiny" in dealing with Hilllary's attacks. I've never thought so -- I've thought that he's blended his message about trust seamlessly into his message about building a working mandate -- but this is just pitch perfect:

He brushed off concerns about a loss of black voters in the general election should Clinton win the nomination after an ugly primary -- a worry that many others in the party have alluded to.

"Black voters shouldn't blame Senator Clinton for running a vigorous campaign against me," he said. "That should be a source of pride. It means I might win this thing. When I was 20 points down, I was a 'person of good character' and my health-care plan was 'universal.' The fact that we've got this fierce contest indicates I'm doing well, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that."

Obama struck a similar tone when asked about Bill Clinton's role in the campaign. "Let me sort of dispose of the whole issue of President Clinton. I have said this repeatedly. He is entirely justified in wanting to promote his wife's candidacy," Obama said. "I have no problem with that whatsoever. He can be as vigorous an advocate on behalf of her as he would like. The only thing I'm concerned about is when he makes misstatements about my record. That's what I'm seeking to correct."

More than once, Obama has played the adult in the Clinton sandbox. The lion tamer, the ringmaster. "Hillary, I look forward to taking advice from you..."

Related posts:
Obama's "what I meant" moments
Truth and Transformation
The lying Clinton meme
Obama praises (Bill) Clinton, and buries him

"Triangulation"-The Truth is in the detials

Obama interview with

Morning Joe: discussing Bills Clinton's talking Points

The Lasting Leadership of Ronald Reagan
by Jesse Helms, Heritage Foundation

When Bill Clinton took office in 1992, his and Hillary's very first project was their effort to nationalize American health care. It was an old-style, left-wing, big-government project--and it was a colossal failure. The American people wanted nothing to do with a return to big-government liberalism. To make sure Mr. Clinton got the message, they went to the polls in 1994, turned out the Democrat Congress, and elected a Republican majority--a stinging, personal repudiation of Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton got the message. By 1996, he was standing before a Republican Congress declaring: "We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there is not a program for every problem.... The era of big Government is over." Remember that night?

With that one statement, Bill Clinton was conceding Ronald Reagan's victory in the war of ideas; with that statement, Clinton acknowledged that, thanks to the Reagan Revolution, a Democrat President could no longer govern the nation on the basis of the Democrat orthodoxy of big-government liberalism. That orthodoxy had been repudiated, you see, by Ronald Reagan and rejected by the American people. And the only way a Democrat President could govern and expect to be re-elected was do his best to imitate Ronald Reagan.

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Reagan Advisers See A Bit Of Their Former Boss In Obama

By Sam Stein, Huffington Post

Barack Obama found himself under fire on Thursday for having compared his candidacy to Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential run.

"I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure," he told the Reno Journal Gazette editorial board earlier this week. "I think part of what is different is the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not."

The remark did not go over well in progressive circles. On Thursday, Sen. John Edwards, Obama's opponent for the Democratic nomination, ripped into him for the analogy, saying, "I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change."

But while Obama has felt the heat from within his own party, several former Reagan officials and even his son suggest that there are elements of historical truth to the comparison.

"If I understand what he was saying I can't entirely disagree with it. They both came along at times when society was on the cusp of change and they are both agents of change," Ron Reagan Jr, told the Huffington Post. "As far as Barack Obama being a similar agent of change, that remains to be seen. But what I do see him saying is that we are in a historical moment right now like the 60s and 80s. And I think he's right. We are overdue for a cultural shift."

Other Reagan aides grabbed onto the comparison, drawing historical similarities between the end of the Carter administration and the contemporary political landscape. The economic malaise and hangover from Vietnam of the late 1970s, they argued, are analogous in some ways to the middle class unrest and backlash to neo-conservatism today. And yet, for several Reaganites, it was the tone and tenor of Obama that best echoed the image of their former boss.

"Ronald Reagan was an inspirational leader who also was a uniter. There was never any vindictive stuff to the other side," said Lawrence Korb, a former Reagan aide and current Obama supporter who serves as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "In 1983, when you had the commission to fix Social Security, which basically gave us 20 more years with the program, after it was over Reagan would not campaign against any [Democrat] who supported that. And the harshest thing he said against [Walter] Mondale was that he was too young. There was never any of this vindictiveness... I think Obama is trying to get us back to that pleasantness."

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(You can watch the full video: here)