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February 21, 2007

Clinton & Obama Trade Shots Over Geffen

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: I want to run a very positive campaign and I sure don't want Democrats or his supporters of Democrats to be engaging in the politics of personal destruction. I think we should stay focused on what we are going to do for America. And, you know, I believe that Bill Clinton was a good president and I'm very proud of the record of his two terms.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: So, what was Senator Clinton reacting to? She was reacting to a quoted comment from the Hollywood big-shot David Geffen in Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times in which Geffen, among other things, said, "Everybody in politics lies, but [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it's troubling."

That's not all he said, but it provoked the reaction, first, from Clinton's spokesperson, Howard Wolfson:

"By refusing to disavow the personal attacks from his biggest fundraiser against Senator Clinton and President Clinton, Senator Obama has called into serious question whether he really believes his won rhetoric. How can Senator Obama denounce the politics of slash and burn yesterday while his own campaign is espousing the politics of trash toddy?"

That drew this from Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs:

"We aren't going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters. It is time ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when he was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom."

And that in turn invoked this from Mr. Geffen himself:

"I am not the campaign finance chair and have no formal role in the Obama campaign, nor will I...my comments, which were quoted accurately by Maureen Dowd, reflect solely my personal beliefs regarding the Clintons."

So, that's been going on all day to the delight and some extent, the astonishment of political journalists covering his respective campaign. This sounds like primary eve stuff and we're not even in the same year with the primaries yet. So, question, first of all, if David Geffen's quote had appeared in the New York Times this morning as it did under Maureen Dowd's -- in Maureen Dowd's column, and there had been no reaction from the Clinton camp, would we have enough to talk about here tonight?

LIASSON: Well, we wouldn't be talking about this at all. I mean, I guess, one of the biggest questions is why did the Clinton campaign do this? Why did they react this way?

HUME: You mean why did they react so strongly?

LIASSON: Yes, now, you can imagine that clearly...

HUME: It was a pretty sharp thing that David Geffen, a one-time Clinton backer to say.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: Yeah, oh clearly, I can see how the Geffen comments would have kind of struck them like a bowling ball, you know, rolling though their campaign offices. But why pick a fight with Obama over this? You know...

HUME: Well, he's a big Obama supporter, and this is all in the context of Obama raising money out there.

LIASSON: Yes, I understand that, but these comments would have had to have been on the level of something really personally offensive that everyone would see as such for them to hold him accountable, for what David Geffen says. This is basically a problem, I think, between the Clintons and David Geffen. And they clearly failed to draw Barack Obama into this. And I guess what they were hoping was that there would be some kind of groundswell of people saying it's horrible that David Geffen said that Bill Clinton was reckless guy, that was one of the quotes or that one you played, "that everyone in politics lies, but they do with such ease." I don't know if those are the kind of comments that are going to get people worked up and demanding an apology from Obama.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: (INAUDIBLE) Clinton is such a divisive figure that no matter how smart or ambitious, and then he said, "and is there anyone more ambitious than Hillary Clinton could bring the county together?"

LIASSON: And I'm sure Barack Obama would say, I don't feel that way about either of the Clintons.

SAMMON: It was a pretty tough statement by Geffen and the reason Hillary came out after it was because, they've been itching for some time to go after this guy. They look at Barack Obama as the biggest single obstacle to her securing the Democratic nomination. They've been tired of the free ride he's been getting from the press and they've been looking for a pretext to launch on him.

Now whether they did that, you know, executed correctly on their launch today, remains to be seen, because I think when the dust settles, I think, Obama probably looks a little better in this because he is simply responding to Clinton's attack. He's not the one who threw the first punch; Geffen threw the first punch and started this.

Clinton sort of went nuclear and then Obama responded and he didn't back down. You notice that Clinton said, "we call on Obama to renounce David Geffen and give back the money."

HUME: Give his money back.

SAMMON: Sever all ties and he didn't back down and said, hey, I'm not going to get in the middle of fight between Clinton and one of her former supporters and they throws in the Lincoln bedroom thing, which is brilliant because it evokes all of the scandals of the Clinton years. So, I think he ends up as a net gain on this one.

HUME: Really?

SAMMON: Oh, yeah.

BARNES: Well, Hillary clearly doesn't gain. I mean there are a number of things here, one is, if Hillary's camp hadn't responded, of course, there wouldn't be much of a story here because you have to have two people to have a fight. And this thing will continue to go on, but why did they have to respond to David Geffen?

I mean, he may be big-wig in Hollywood, but he's no big figure in American politics or anything they didn't have to respond to him. It shows how much off balance Hillary Clinton and her whole campaign are because Obama's in the race. This isn't the way that she envisioned tat it would go. This was going to be easy winning the nomination and she could stay toward the center and wouldn't have to worry about this guy. The key word that Geffen used was "inspiring" and Democrats find Obama inspiring. Hillary's many things, inspiring isn't one of them.

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