The Daily Background

Bill Clinton was on Charlie Rose’ show Friday night, and he completely distorted Obama’s stance on scrapping the status quo in Washington. Here’s a video of the relevant portion:

Transcript:

CLINTON: I think vision’s important and I think programs are important, but I think symbol is not as important as substance. Now, we’ve got to–

ROSE: Are you suggesting by that that Senator Obama is more symbol than substance as an agent of change?

CLINTON: Well, that’s not what– he can’t help that.

ROSE: But is that the reality? That he’s more symbol than…

CLINTON: But, no, no, I, no, other people… What I’m suggesting is [snip] If you listen to the people who are most strongly for him, they say basically “we have to throw away all these experienced people because they’ve been through the worst of the ’90s, and, you know, they’ve made enough decisions and enough calls that they’ve made a few mistakes, and what we want is somebody who started running for president a year after he became a Senator because he’s fresh, he’s new, he’s never made a mistake, and he has massive political skills, and we’re willing to risk it.”

Clinton’s charactarization of Obama’s rhetoric on scrapping the status quo in Washington is blatantly false. Obama has consistently said that he thinks that the “ways of Washington need to change” and that that includes getting rid of the type of conventional mindset that said that invading Iraq would be a good idea, or that climate change doesn’t need to be dealt with.

On the other hand, Obama has made it clear from Day One that he would be seeking advice from the brightest, and most experienced and capable people in public service– not “throwing away all these experienced people.” Obama reiterated this point at the recent Des Moines Register debate when asked about why several of Clinton’s old advisors now have his ear:

Transcript:

MODERATOR: Senator Obama, you have Bill Clinton’s former national security advisor, State Department policy director, and Navy Secretary among others advising you. With relatively little foreign policy experience of your own, how will you rely on so many Clinton advisors and still deliver the kind of break from the past that you’re promising voters?

CLINTON: [Laughter] I want to hear that!

OBAMA: Well Hillary, I’m looking forward to you advising me as well…

[Laughter, applause]

OBAMA: I wanna gather up talent from everywhere. You know, we haven’t talked too much about the war but one of the points that I’ve tried to make during the course of this year during the campaign, is I wanna change the mindset that got us into war, because I think that since 9/11, we’ve had a president who essentially fed us a politics of fear and distorted our foreign policy in profound ways. And I think taht there are a lot of good people in the Clinton years, Carter years, George Bush I, who understand that our military power is just one component of our power…

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