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April 11, 2008

Panel on Obama's Small Town Comment

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Some of you may have seen that she took a terrible beating in the press for a few days because she was exhausted at 11:00 at night, and she started talking about Bosnia, and she misstated the circumstances under which she landed in Bosnia.

She had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane in the front. Everybody else had to put their flack jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went, they were covered by Apache helicopter. So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony.

I said what I said. Hillary called me and said "You don't remember this, you weren't there. Let me handle it." I said "Yes, Ma'am."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: There you see former President Bill Clinton. The first two bytes there were from campaign stops last night where he talked again about the Bosnia sniper story. Then you heard him today saying he got a phone call from his wife to stop talking about the Bosnia sniper story.

This is what the campaign put out today: "Senator Clinton appreciates her husband standing up for her, but this was her mistake and she takes responsibility for it."

So what about this and the state of the Democratic race? Some analytical observations from Fred Barnes, Executive Editor of "The Weekly Standard," Mort Kondracke, Executive Editor of "Roll Call," and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, FOX News contributors all.

This story was pretty much done, Charles, and now it has been reignited by the former president.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: He is uncaged again, and he got out and started barking.

The worst part of this is that he said, you know, you're 60 years old, 11:00, you forget stuff. If you forget at 11:00, what happens at 3:00 a.m. in the morning when the phone calls are all coming to the White House, or at least a Clinton White House. So at that level, it hurts him.

And it's not that he raised the Tuzla issue. That's dead. The press isn't going to raise what happened in Tuzla. In raising the issue underneath the Tuzla issue, which is the incapacity of the Clintons, husband and wife, to tell the truth, something that William Safire of "The Times" once called "congenital" with them.

His recounting of her telling of that story had about eight errors in it, and it was also made up. And it reminds people that there's a character issue here, and that's what hurts them.

BAIER: What about this, Mort? How does this happen? How does a campaign get to this point that he brings it up again?

MORT KONDRAKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "ROLL CALL": I guess if you have $110 million, you don't care what people think.

No--he has times when he's out of control.

BAIER: Twice--at two different campaign events.

KONDRAKE: Yes, two different campaign events. He had no sense to do it. Charles is a licensed psychologist--he can explain whether Bill Clinton has a secret political death wish for his wife, a political death wish. I don't know.

He has certainly become a big net minus to Hillary Clinton. He is out there on the campaign trail, he can raise money, and stuff like that. But his value to her, I think, is negative at this point.

BAIER: Do you want to weigh in on this?

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": I do, of course.

Imagine--we see this in the Hillary Clinton campaign. Imagine what it would be like if she wins and is president and Bill Clinton is living in the White House, and he's her chief advisor, and if, as Charles says, he gets uncaged again, which would most likely happen.

But more than that, the Clintons, and particularly Bill Clinton, have done something in this campaign that I really thought was beyond possibility, and that is they've alienated millions and millions of Democrats--not just Republicans who already had an unfavorable verdict about them, but Democrats, by attacking Obama in unattractive ways, by, as Charles says, by being untruthful, and by whining about the press all the time. I mean, that never gets you anywhere.

BAIER: Let's talk about this Obama statement that has popped up on the Huffington Post Web site. And it is a quote from a fundraiser in California where allegedly Obama said this:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing has replaced them, and it's not surprising they get bitter. They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them, and it goes on--or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Here's what Hillary Clinton said about that today:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON, (D) NEW YORK: Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who will work hard for your futures, your jobs, your families!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: The Obama campaign is not talking about this comment, but what about this quote that's out there, Mort?

KONDRAKE: If he said it, it's bad.

He was making some effort to go after union members and working class whites in Pennsylvania. I think this will damage that effort, most certainly. It sort of reminds me of, you know, that song about officer Krupke in west side story--"they're not depraved, officer, they're depraved." It is making an excuse for people's bigotry. The bigots won't like it.

KRAUTHAMMER: It's worse than that. It drips with condescension. This is "Latte Liberal" condescension of working class Democrats. You lose a job and you end up a bigot, he says. And in the other pantheon of stuff that you end up as, you end up clinging to guns--that's apparently a very bad thing--and religion.

And that's supposed to be something that people turn to, cling to as a result of losing a job. This is incredibly disrespectful and it tells you about his character.

BAIER: Quickly Fred--on the day we have president Clinton coming out with the Bosnia story again, and then this quote late in the day, which is worse?

BARNES: I think it's worse for Obama because Pennsylvania is coming up, the big primary, on the 22nd of April.

But this is what the campaign has come down to, not big policy issues. It's by statements like this. This is what they're quarreling about. What an absurd campaign!

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