New York – A Hollywood- style brawl with the campaign of rival Barack Obama is the latest in a series of speed bumps tripping up Hillary Rodham Clinton’s early presidential moves.
From the Clinton team’s decision to criticize – and therefore publicize – producer David Geffen’s complaints about both Clintons to increasingly skeptical questions about Sen. Clinton’s nuanced explanation of her 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war, it became apparent even a battle- tested front-runner can fall prey to missteps.
On top of that, voters were reminded of the downside of the first Clinton presidency.
“Her explanation for her Iraq vote sounds like the bad old days of Dick Morris triangulation,” said Marty Kaplan, a political communications professor at the University of Southern California.
Morris, once an influential adviser to both Clintons who has since turned against the couple, urged President Clinton to make policy decisions by splitting the difference on opposing views.
Kaplan added, “She may have overreacted to Geffen in a way that showed she’s potentially thin-skinned. And the whole thing was a reminder that the issues of Monica Lewinsky and Whitewater are still out there.”
The latest spat began Wednesday, when Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson called on Obama to disavow comments Geffen made in a New York Times interview.
Geffen, a onetime Clinton supporter who threw a $1.3 million fundraiser for Obama in Hollywood on Tuesday night, criticized Bill Clinton for “reckless” behavior and called his wife polarizing and dishonest. He also took her to task for refusing to recant her Iraq vote.
Obama ducked the controversy, saying he shouldn’t have to apologize for something he didn’t say. But his spokesman Robert Gibbs noted that Geffen had raised $18 million for Bill Clinton and had been invited to one of the infamous Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers that helped define the Clinton fundraising excesses of the 1990s.
The brouhaha reflected the Clinton campaign’s annoyance with what it perceives as the national media’s lenient treatment of Obama.
The tit-for-tat between campaign operatives helped the story to explode nationally – overshadowing a Democratic presidential forum in Nevada that all the candidates except Obama attended.
Ironically, that lack of attention may have helped Clinton, who was pointedly jabbed by rival John Edwards for her unwillingness to revisit her war stance.
Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who also voted to authorize the invasion, has repeatedly apologized for his vote and said Clinton’s decision not to do so was “between her and her conscience.”
