President Obama made a secret deal to support Hillary Clinton when she runs for president in 2016, campaign sources say, payback for the support her husband gave him in 2012.
Bill Clinton’s animosity toward Obama is legendary. A year before the last election, he was urging Hillary to challenge the sitting president for the nomination — a move she rejected.
According to two people who attended that meeting in Chappaqua, Bill Clinton then went on a rant against Obama.
“I’ve heard more from Bush, asking for my advice, than I’ve heard from Obama,” my sources quoted Clinton as saying. “I have no relationship with the president — none whatsoever. Obama doesn’t know how to be president. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’s incompetent. He’s an amateur!”
For his part, Obama wasn’t interested in Bill Clinton upstaging him during the presidential campaign. He resisted giving him any role at the convention.
But as last summer wore on, and Democrat enthusiasm waned, chief political strategist David Axelrod convinced the president that he needed Bill Clinton’s mojo.
A deal was struck: Clinton would give the key nominating speech at the convention, and a full-throated endorsement of Obama. In exchange, Obama would endorse Hillary Clinton as his successor.
Clinton’s speech was as promised; columnists pointed out the surprising enthusiasm in which he described the president. It also lived up to Obama’s fears, as more people talked about Clinton’s speech in the weeks following than his own.
But after his re-election, Obama began to have second thoughts. He would prefer to stay neutral in the next election, as is traditional of outgoing presidents.
Bill Clinton went ballistic and threatened retaliation. Obama backed down. He called his favorite journalist, Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes,” and offered an unprecedented “farewell interview” with departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The result was a slobbering televised love-in — and an embarrassment to all concerned.
It is just one of the debacles that have marked Obama’s second term, from Benghazi to the IRS scandal. While he was effective on the campaign trail, once in the Oval Office, he becomes a different person, one who derives no joy from the cut and thrust of day-to-day politics and who is inept in the arts of management and governance.
Obama has made a lot of promises — and nothing ever happened.
He once boasted that he’d bring the Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table and create a permanent peace in the Middle East. Nothing happened.
He said he’d open a constructive dialogue with America’s enemies in Iran and North Korea and, through his special powers of persuasion, help them see the error of their ways. And nothing happened.
He said he’d solve the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and put millions of people back to work. And nothing happened.
He may yet try to back out of his promise to Hillary Clinton. But as Obama’s presidency sinks deeper into scandal and inaction, the question is — will Clinton even still want his endorsement?
Obama was nominated unanimously by the 5,556 delegates of the convention.
Clinton’s 11th-hour support for Obama came with the condition that his wife would have the President’s support in 2016.
However, the book then claims that Obama began to reconsidered this idea – enraging Bill Clinton.
The reported culmination of the behind-the-scenes wranglings was an on-camera love-fest nterview with Obama and Hillary Clinton when the Secretary of State stepped down in January.
The pair lavished compliments on one another as they gave a rare joint interview.
Obama said during the interview that he considers Mrs Clinton ‘a strong friend’ and she described their relationship as ‘very warm, close’.
More than anything, their camaraderie and grins appeared to show that time had healed the bitter rift from when they faced off in the Democratic primary leading up to the 2008 election.
The ongoing tension between Obama and Bill Clinton has been well-documented.
During the election campaign in 2012, Clinton said Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s business career was ‘sterling’ and criticized the Obama campaign’s attacks on Romney’s background at the private equity firm Bain Capital.
Hail to the chief: Bill Clinton bows to President Obama as he walks on to the stage following Clinton’s endorsement at the Democratic Convention last year
Best of friends: Clinton’s speech saw a boost in voter approval for Obama at at time when his campaign was flagging
Around that time, he caused more headaches for the Obama administration when he said he favored the extension of all of George W Bush’s tax cuts. Obama has campaigned on repealing the cuts for the richest Americans.
During the 2008 Democratic primary, Clinton made headlines for calling the premise of Obama’s campaign, his opposition to the Iraq War, ‘the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen’.
However, by the time it came to the Democratic convention four years later, former president Bill Clinton delivered a rousing, rollicking speech and an impassioned plea for Americans to vote.
The former occupant of the White House from 1993 to 2001 declared that Obama was ‘a man cool on the outside but burning for America on the inside’.
He went on: ‘A man who believes we can build a new American Dream economy driven by innovation and creativity, education and cooperation. A man who had the good sense to marry Michelle Obama.’
Sources
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In a real legal political system any endorsement by Obama would be political suicide.
How effing stupid are Americans?