Video: Bill: “I Will No Longer Defend Hillary” And “I Will Not Be In Her Cabinet”
WASHINGTON - Former President Clinton says he’s learned a valuable lesson from the dustup over his remarks on the campaign trail—he can promote his wife’s presidential candidacy, but he’s not free to defend her.
Clinton also said that everything he said in South Carolina about Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was “factually accurate,” but a lot that has been said about what he said is “factually inaccurate.”
“I think the mistake that I made is to think that I was a spouse like any other spouse who could defend his candidate,” Clinton said, referring to his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is waging a hard-fought contest with Obama for the Democratic nomination.
“I think I can promote Hillary but not defend her, because I was president. I have to let her defend herself or have someone else defend her,” Clinton said in an interview with NBC News as he was campaigning in Portland, Maine, Thursday.
On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Clinton called Obama’s celebrated opposition to the Iraq war “a fairy tale,” suggesting that while Obama had spoken out against the war in 2002 while he was an Illinois state senator, Obama had moderated his anti-war stance during his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign.
Later, campaigning for his wife in South Carolina, Clinton suggested an Obama victory there would be a racial one, like the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s twenty years ago.
Critics accused Clinton of injecting race into the Democratic campaign.
“A lot of the things that were said were factually inaccurate,” Clinton said. “I did not ever criticize Senator Obama personally in South Carolina. … But I think whenever I defend her, I, A, risk being misquoted, and, B, risk being the story. I don’t want to be the story.”
While he’s toned down his defense of his wife, Clinton said he doesn’t intend to stop campaigning for her even though some critics have suggested it’s inappropriate for a former president to take sides in a nomination race.
“I would be campaigning for her if we were not married,” Clinton said. “She’s the best qualified person to be president I’ve ever had a chance to support, and I feel strongly about it. And I think there’s nothing wrong with me saying that.”
If his wife is elected president, Clinton said he will not interfere with her work or her advisers.
“I will do what I’m asked to do,” Clinton said. “I will not be in the Cabinet. I will not be on the staff full-time. I will not in any way interfere with the work of a strong vice president, strong secretary of state, strong secretary of treasury.
“I will do what we’ve always done for each other,” he said. “I will let her bounce ideas off me. I will tell her what I think.”
(AP)
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This is what MY new administration will look like under my wife Hillary.
Reading between the lines.
3 min. 10 sec. of a relaxed and all too long chat with the head Dem, where’s the equal time with relaxed demeanor for the Republican response?
February 8th, 2008 at 11:53 amsmoking prohibited in her office
February 8th, 2008 at 12:18 pmYa think maybe Hilda told him to STFU and piss-off? That’s what I think.
February 8th, 2008 at 12:32 pm“Everything I’ve said was FACTUALLY accurate”…
Is that Slick Willies latest version of “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”? Or is he just defending himself against allegations that his Butt Ugly “Pimped out” Daughter is actually of his loins and not the offspring some puttered alien being?
February 8th, 2008 at 11:58 pm