slick willy

Bill Clinton has some amazing political abilities. I remember the phrase "slick Willy" from the 90's, but perhaps didn't appreciate it at the time. Here's a late-breaking iteration of it.

Yesterday on a PA radio station (WHYY), Bill Clinton was interviewed and had this exchange about the fallout after his comments comparing the Obama campaign strengths to those of the Jesse Jackson campaign in '88:

Ms. Phillips: Do you think that was a mistake and would you do that again?”

Mr. Clinton: “No, I think that they played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it along.”

…If you go back to what I said at the time. There was a conversation that I engaged in that included two African-American members of Congress who were standing right there …. and I said that Jesse Jackson had run a good campaign with overwhelming African-American support and white supporters. And this was started off because people wanted to act like — for reasons i didn’t understand — that Senator Obama didn’t have his African-American support or they thought his white support was better because Jesse Jackson had blue-collar working people and most of Senator Obama’s support was upscale cultural liberals. And it was like beneath them to be compared to Jesse Jackson….

Ultimately it really doesn't matter. There was a small bit of a backlash to the comments at the time (back in January), but in political terms this is ancient history. The memos to which he's referring were generated within the Obama campaign in an attempt to compile a list of all of the racially charged attacks Clinton surrogates (and others?) had made on Obama at the time.

Here's where the political double speak comes out. This morning Bill Clinton was asked by a reporter about the comments he made on air yesterday and this is what he had to say:

Mr. Memoli: “Sir, what did you mean yesterday when you said that the Obama campaign was playing the race card on you?”

Mr. Clinton: “When did I say that, and to whom did I say that?”

Mr. Memoli: “On WHYY radio yesterday.”

Mr. Clinton: “No, no, no. That’s not what I said. You always follow me around and play these little games, and I’m not going to play your games today. This is a day about election day. Go back and see what the question was, and what my answer was. You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your game today. Have a nice day.”

Mr. Memoli: “Respectfully sir, though, you did say …”

Mr. Clinton: “Have a nice day. I said what I said, you can go and look at the interview. And if you’ll be real honest, you’ll also report what the question was and what the answer was.”

While this may be a diversion from the important issues, it's the latest example of how effective Bill Clinton is as a politician... for better or worse. Amazing.

(via the NYT blog The Caucus)