Boy Can't Help It

Bill Clinton taking zero responsibility for his behavior a month or so ago in South Carolina:

"What happened there is a total myth and a mugging," Clinton told CNN's Sean Callebs in New Orleans, Louisiana, over the weekend.

"It's been pretty well established. Charlie Rangel ... the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in unequivocal terms in South Carolina that no one in our campaign played any race card, that we had some played against us, but we didn't play any."

Oh, Bill. Why do you have to continually reinforce what my Republican friends always said about you back when I didn't believe them?

Why do you have to call it a mugging, you self-victimized, crypto or (charitably) unconsciously racist bastard?

I know it hurts the one thing you care about the most:

It seems that the more voters see of Bill Clinton, the less they like him. The poll shows a significant shift in his approval rating from a year ago. In March 2007, some 48% of those surveyed had a positive view of the former president, and 35% had a negative view. Now his negatives outpace his positives, 45% to 42%.

I think the only question left for us political junkies is (a) whether Bill cares about his legacy rating more than his wife's political aspiration, or (b) whether he believes the only path to salvaging his reputation is if she gets nominated, damned whatever reallignment they have to destroy in the process.

Fortunately, Bill and Hillary get help from the press. Not only the Reverend Wright affair, which Barack Obama will face off against Tuesday night in a JFK-esque speech, but jus' reg'lar Ron Fournier of the AP, who's not incidentally been covering Bill and the Clintons since waaay back in Arkansas:

But there's a line smart politicians don't cross — somewhere between "I'm qualified to be president" and "I'm born to be president." Wherever it lies, Barack Obama better watch his step.

He's bordering on arrogance.

No shit. 2008, and the Associated Press is essentially calling Obama "uppity".

Hillary's arrogance of being owed or due for the crown? McCain's taxpayer-funded campaign trip to Iraq? And this community organizer turned State Senator and then Senator is the only arrogant one?

One again this strange electoral season, I'm with Andrew Sullivan on Obama, his past connection with Wright, and what his candidacy can mean for America if even possible:

But he did not merely sit back; he also dedicated his career to racial integration and understanding. It was a wide bridge, perhaps too wide for the weight it is bearing. And maybe America is not ready for this bridge, for these contradictions, for this complexity. But the promise of Obama is that his campaign appears poised to show that America is ready for this - and the immense healing it would bring.

And so we are suspended between the old politics and the new, between a Clinton who believes in her heart that America is not ready and may never be ready for this leap and should therefore adopt a politics that assumes the ineradicability of this gulf and the need to disguise it and play cynical defense - and an Obama who offers all of us a chance to see that sometimes authentic identity requires an element of contradiction, a bridging of the resentful, angry past and a more complex, integrated future.

He may fail; and the Clintons may be proven right. But he may also succeed - and what a mighty success that would be. These things are never easy; and we were lulled perhaps into an illusion that they could be. So now the real struggle starts. And it will not end with an Obama presidency; it ends with a shift from below that makes an Obama presidency possible.

Or to put it in a phrase that is as true as it is wilfully misunderstood: We are the change we have been waiting for.

I do believe this. The Clinton/Bush generation has made their mistakes, and we're suffering even this week for them -- Iraq, Wall Street, all things she tacitly or actively went along with.

It's time for the next generation to take charge, make our own mistakes, sure, but take responsibility, and hopefully in the balance make a more promising future for our children.