The reports of Bill Clinton's appearance in [7]Muscatine [7], Iowa on Tuesday leaves me just shaking my head
. It seems most media outlets this evening are just as puzzled as I am regarding his stump appearance for wife, Hillary.
The former president is taking heat, from across the political spectrum left and right - for his claim that he was against the Iraqi War "from the beginning". In this age of Google and LexisNexis, it is amazing someone would state such artificial claims, considering what the record actually shows.
Associated Press writer Ron Fournier painted a very telling picture [7] of his appearance and the statements he made, which included a quote from 2003 regarding Bill Clinton's position on the War at that time.
Fournier writes:
He has not clearly opposed the war from the start. Like his wife, the former president has been critical of the Iraq war in recent months, but at one time he gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt. "I supported the president when he asked for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," he said in May 2003, the same year he was quoted praising Bush's handling of the war.
Bill Clinton double-speaking is certainly nothing new. What's amazing to me is the timing of this behavior. This needs to be viewed in the context of the events in recent weeks, which have led to Hillary's lead in the polls being rapidly destroyed and the related surge of Barack Obama's numbers.
Polling shows that the likely Democrat voter in Iowa has obviously been affected by the multiple cases of inconsistent rhetoric Hillary has been revealed to employ in her campaign. And it has been Obama, in particular, that has been the voice most loudly calling foul on those occasions. Straight talk and honesty are traits Iowans have historically held dear during caucus season.
An explanation for such a poorly executed stump speech, possibly, can be found in Fournier's mention of how much focus Bill Clinton chose to place on himself in comparison to the Clinton who happens to be running for President at the moment:
In the next 10 minutes, he used the word "I" a total of 94 times and mentioned "Hillary" just seven times in an address that was as much about his legacy as it was about his wife's candidacy.
As unbelievable as it would seem to appear, the man who has been credited as being perhaps the best politician in American history, apparently stepped all over himself and the best interests of his wife's campaign in his zealous efforts to, both, own a slice of the spotlight and to use his wife's presidential run for his purposes of legacy building.
Not a lot seems to have changed in terms of Hillary's husband placing priority on his own personal intentions and trivial desires to the detriment of the bigger goals and duties at hand. What has changed, however, is the availabilty of information the voting public now has at it's disposal to bring light to the true facts of any issue and the true record of any candidate.
Clearly, this age of information accessibility is to the advantage of the american voting public and to the disadvantage of this particular political couple.
