“I’ve heard more from Bush, asking for my advice, than I’ve heard from Obama, 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!” Bill Clinton, according to two people who attended a political strategy meeting with the Clintons in 2011
Bill Clinton’s animosity toward Obama is legendary. A year before the last election (2011), he was urging Hillary to challenge the sitting president for the nomination but Hillary’s no dummy – she say no way!
According to “The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House” by Edward Klein, (which comes out this week)Obama wasn’t interested in Bill Clinton upstaging him during the presidential campaign and he resisted giving Clinton any role whatsoever at the DNC convention, but as the Democrat’s enthusiasm waned, David Axelrod convinced Obama that he needed Bill Clinton’s’ “mojo”.
Bill no dummy, even though he never could figure out the definition for “is,” struck a deal with his arch-enemy – he would endorse Obama at the DNC convention if Obama would endorse Hillary as his successor in the 2016 race. (I image with Obama’s messianic personality traits – that was really hard for him to swallow).
It is also reported that after his re-election, Obama began to have second thoughts on endorsing Hillary but Bill went ballistic and threatened retaliation. I’m sure he had a lot of dirt on Obama but we’ll never know what it was but it was enough to cause Obama to wise-up. Obama called his favorite lap-dog media personality, Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes,” to televise a “farewell interview” with him and out-going Secretary of State, Hillary. According to Klein the interview resulted in 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. (Unless you consider that he managed to put even more people out of work and onto the welfare roles.)
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?
Edward Klein’s new book is a withering portrayal of a radical adrift, in over his head, drowning in his own incompetency — while being weighed down by a small circle of “advisers” who are compounding the problem of the Amateur in the White House. Ed Klein is a former foreign editor of Newsweek and former editor-in-chief of New York Times Magazine
Personally, I’d really love to know what dirt Bill has on Obama and what dirt Obama has on Hillary. Sure would make for an interesting read.
