Quotes of the Day (Obama and Clinton)

From the last debate before the Democratic Iowa Caucus, Dec. 13, 2007:

Carolyn Washburn, Editor, Des Moines Register and Iowa debate moderator: “Senator Obama, you have former President Clinton’s former national security adviser, state department and navy secretary, among others, advising you. With relatively little foreign policy experience of your own, how will you rely on so many Clinton advisers and still deliver the kind of break from the past that you’ve been promising voters?”

Barack Obama: “Well, the—you know, I am...”

Hillary Clinton (cackling in the background, then): “I want to hear that.”

Obama (smiling and shuffling papers on the lectern, then): “Well, Hillary, I’m looking forward to you advising me, as well.” (Applause and laughter) “I want to gather up talent from everywhere.”

From Tom Brune, “Clinton Accepts Secretary of State Nomination,” Newsday, Dec. 2, 2008:

“Hillary Rodham Clinton said she's ready to leave New York and the Senate to return to the world stage after President-elect Barack Obama announced yesterday he would nominate his former political rival as his secretary of state.”

(What a difference a year makes! When the exchange in Iowa occurred, many of us thought it was just a matter of a really talented rookie in spring training dusting himself off after a high-and-inside fastball put him on his keister, then stepping back into the batter’s box to hit a homerun off the disdainful vet. Who ever knew he really meant what he said about “looking forward to you advising me, as well”?

The media are promoting this as a 21st-century example of the “Team of Rivals” concept that Doris Kearns Goodwin discussed in her book on the Lincoln Cabinet. But if you remember, THAT whole concept didn’t start out so well—William Henry Seward thought that he’d be exclusively running the foreign policy of the United States rather than the President-elect. A lucky thing that Lincoln put him in his place, albeit with tact, and that Seward shared something in common with the President: good grace and love of a good story.

But people, what if the prototype we’re getting is not Seward but a much later Secretary of State, another former primary opponent of a President-elect tapped to run Foggy Bottom? I’m talking, of course, about Al Haig. Remember the confusion following the Reagan assassination and the way he stepped up to the microphone to announce, “I’m in control here”? He didn’t even come into office with all the baggage of Senator Clinton. Yet Time Magazine’s summary of his tenure sounds like an eerie premonition of things to come: “In the eyes of his critics, Haig’s defeat was self-inflicted…he did not know when to stop fighting and seek conciliation; he was too obsessed with his enemies, however real; he spent too much time defending turf and proclaiming his prerogatives; and he was sometimes a poor conceptual thinker.”

And Bill Clinton – why do you think he was made to fill out that that humongous vetting form about his donors? Right now, Obama has to be hoping that the Clinton soap opera—one, I might add, that played out on a smaller scale in the primary season, when Bill was more intent on talking about his own successes than Hillary’s accomplishments—somehow won’t get noticed so much in these turbulent times.

I mean, we’re talking about “No Drama Obama” here—the coolest cat in town, the candidate whose sang froid even won the grudging admiration of Republican handlers. No leaks, no prima donna consultants allowed to undercut his campaign.

Now who does he have reporting to him? The Margo Channing of D.C. You recall her, don’t you—the aging theatrical diva played by Bette Davis in All About Eve, resentful about her place being taken by a young upstart? Remember the great line the drunken Margo tosses off at a cocktail party: “Fasten your seat belts—it’s going to be a bumpy ride!”

With crises at home and abroad, Obama doesn’t need any distractions. But a “bumpy ride” might be what he’s in for now.)