QUOTE OF THE DAY

AP:

Democratic officials said Thursday that Clinton will give a speech on the third night of the convention, before an address by the as-yet-to-be-named running mate for Barack Obama, the party's likely presidential nominee. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity before the details were formally announced.

Howie P.S.: Hey I'm just a blogger on his laptop, don't ask me "what does this mean"?

Barack Obama

"The Accompanists" (with slideshow)

WaPo, with slide show:

Both are confident and funny, opinionated and very smart. Both are Ivy League lawyers with working-class roots. Both have formidable identities independent of their formidable partners. Both are history-making spouses of history-making presidential candidates.

It is fascinating enough that Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are playing on the same field as their partners duel for the Democratic nomination. More intriguing still is her effectiveness, hardly a given for a recent campaign recruit matched against a two-term president.

Clinton, 61, earned his reputation as one of the most gifted national politicians in modern times while Obama was still a young lawyer trying to find herself. Obama, 44, kept her political forays to a minimum while building a career on community outreach in Chicago, yet more than a few enchanted voters have said after watching her that she should be the one in public office.

They share an ability to please a crowd, although in styles as different as a piano and a saxophone. Her riffs are typically smooth and tart, usually understated, always controlled; his are showy and wide-ranging, often roaming exuberantly through complex material.

On the campaign trail, as one staff member put it, Bill Clinton is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief validator. He zips around the country -- this week in states from Illinois to Georgia to Missouri to Colorado -- reassuring Democrats, above all, that she is ready but he has her back. Michelle Obama's role is more of a portraitist. She jetted to both coasts this week to deepen the picture of the self-described skinny black guy with a funny name, and to argue that a divided nation needs him now.

The Clintons and the Obamas are crossing rhetorical paths more frequently these days.

Leading up to the South Carolina primary, the voluble former president assumed the role of antagonist in chief. He called Barack Obama's assertion of consistent opposition to the Iraq war a "fairy tale" and suggested that Obama was way too admiring of Ronald Reagan. He told one audience that "people tell me that Hillary doesn't have a chance to win here" because the state's voters care so deeply about race and gender.

Michelle Obama, who rarely talks explicitly about her husband's Democratic opponents, had something to say about all of that.

"Another candidate's spouse has been getting an awful lot of attention," understandably, she wrote in a fundraising e-mail last week. "What we didn't expect, at least not from our fellow Democrats, are the win-at-all-costs tactics we've seen recently. We didn't expect misleading accusations that willfully distort Barack's record."

The day before the primary, she and Bill Clinton campaigned within an hour's drive of each other.

"My fear," Obama told a rapt mid-morning audience at Central Oak Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Hilton Head, "is that we don't know what truth looks like anymore.

"I desperately want change, personally," Obama said. "A change in tone, a change in the tone that creates division and separates us, that makes us live in isolation from one another. Sometimes our politics uses that division as a tool and a crutch. We think we can mend it all up after all the dirt has been thrown, but we can't."

Hours later, no dirt surfaced as Clinton addressed an enthusiastic throng on nearby St. Helena Island. He stayed on his very best behavior, developing the approach he has used in this week's run-up to Super Tuesday. More than an hour late, he skipped the pleasantries and charged right into his pitch.

Within three minutes, he was describing a brewing economic calamity. Within four, he was offering a three-point plan to deal with the mortgage crisis. Within five, he was rattling off his version of life in America seven years after the end of his presidency:

"Median family income after inflation's about a thousand dollars lower today than it was the day I left office. But the cost of health care has about doubled, the cost of a college education is up, the cost of energy is up, the cost of housing is up. Last year, food costs grew at twice the rate of inflation. . . . In our eight years, we had 22.7 million jobs and almost 8 million people move from poverty into the middle class."

On he went for more than an hour, firing off policies and programs as if it were a State of the Union address. Pell grants, health-care reform, stem-cell research, green-collar jobs, veterans, Medicare, the Geneva Conventions, Iran, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the tax code. He said, at one point, "Let me be very specific about this."

Hillary Clinton may be the presidential candidate, but much of the future Bill Clinton sketches on the stump is about putting the band back together. Watching him engage the crowd is a little like going to a Beach Boys concert, 20 years on. He knows all the old tunes and delivers them reliably. The crowd, mostly middle-aged and older, laughs and cheers in satisfied bursts, remembering the good times.

Clinton's talk is neither personal nor emotional. He does less to humanize his wife, which is often the designated role of political spouse, than to recite her credentials and bolster her argument that she is more ready for the White House than Obama. He mentions her often -- "The third thing she says we have to do"; "she will never tolerate that"; "finally, she believes . . . " -- but the narrative often veers into Clintons, plural, or Bill Clinton, singular.

"I tell people all the time," he said at one point, "this war is costing $120 billion a year."

Near then end, Clinton called his wife "the most qualified, best candidate I've had a chance to support for president in 40 years as a voter. You know, a lot of mean things have been said about Hillary over the years, mostly because she had the misfortune to be my wife and they were being mean to me. And they were mean to me because I won twice. It wasn't too complicated!"

The crowd loved it -- and received the intended message.

"If you vote for Hillary and she wins, you get two for the price of one," gushed Lynn Sutherland, 61, a part-time decorator, as Clinton 42 shook dozens of hands before racing to Charleston to introduce the aspiring Clinton 44. "There's an enormous amount of things he can do that will be unbelievably helpful to the country."

Beaufort resident Kevin Mears, 40, considered the former president's earlier criticism of Obama "a bit of a distortion. It's a bit of a no-no. But he's walking a line that others have never walked before. We should cut him a little slack."

Michelle Obama had a different challenge when she spoke to audiences of 200 or more in Hilton Head and rural Estill. She, too, talked of her spouse's readiness, but in different terms and tones, less a policy seminar than a plea delivered around a kitchen table. She pointed to his community organizing and his four terms in the Illinois senate.

Always the more pointed of the two Obamas, she wastes no words and takes her time with the ones she uses.

"Everywhere I go, people are saying, 'Barack is not detailed enough.' . . . You see, the truth of this matter is that this isn't rocket science," Obama said to row upon row of supporters in an Estill storefront, explaining that she has seen countless models of first-rate schools, early childhood education programs and senior centers. "That's what leadership means. It's someone who can touch our souls in a way we haven't seen and can inspire us to be better to one another and to ourselves. That is the difference in this race."

The Iraq war is an issue she addressed directly.

"Well, let me tell you something, I live with the man," Obama said, employing a mix of authority and incredulity. "He was always opposed to the war and he spoke out publicly against it at a time when that wasn't convenient for him. What his opponents won't tell you is he was in the middle of his own tough race for the U.S. Senate."

In etching the themes of transformation -- the core of the Obama campaign narrative -- she uses language that echoes conversations about values and propriety in the late '90s.

"It isn't just about hope and inspiration. It is about character, quite frankly," Obama said. "I am here, away from my kids, talking like this all over the country because Barack is different. It is about character."

Obama is often asked how she and her husband are handling the rough-and-tumble of the campaign. She swears she finds none of it surprising.

"Power," said Michelle Obama, "concedes nothing without a struggle."

Barack Obama

"The Billary Road to Republican Victory"

Frank Rich (NY Times):

IN the wake of George W. Bush, even a miracle might not be enough for the Republicans to hold on to the White House in 2008. But what about two miracles? The new year’s twin resurrections of Bill Clinton and John McCain, should they not evaporate, at last give the G.O.P. a highly plausible route to victory.

Amazingly, neither party seems to fully recognize the contours of the road map. In the Democrats’ case, the full-throttle emergence of Billary, the joint Clinton candidacy, is measured mainly within the narrow confines of the short-term horse race: Do Bill Clinton’s red-faced eruptions and fact-challenged rants enhance or diminish his wife as a woman and a candidate?

Absent from this debate is any sober recognition that a Hillary Clinton nomination, if it happens, will send the Democrats into the general election with a new and huge peril that may well dwarf the current wars over race, gender and who said what about Ronald Reagan.

What has gone unspoken is this: Up until this moment, Hillary has successfully deflected rough questions about Bill by saying, “I’m running on my own” or, as she snapped at Barack Obama in the last debate, “Well, I’m here; he’s not.” This sleight of hand became officially inoperative once her husband became a co-candidate, even to the point of taking over entirely when she vacated South Carolina last week. With “two for the price of one” back as the unabashed modus operandi, both Clintons are in play.

For the Republicans, that means not just a double dose of the one steroid, Clinton hatred, that might yet restore their party’s unity but also two fat targets. Mrs. Clinton repeatedly talks of how she’s been “vetted” and that “there are no surprises” left to be mined by her opponents. On the “Today” show Friday, she joked that the Republican attacks “are just so old.” So far. Now that Mr. Clinton is ubiquitous, not only is his past back on the table but his post-presidency must be vetted as well. To get a taste of what surprises may be in store, you need merely revisit the Bill Clinton questions that Hillary Clinton has avoided to date.

Asked by Tim Russert at a September debate whether the Clinton presidential library and foundation would disclose the identities of its donors during the campaign, Mrs. Clinton said it wasn’t up to her. “What’s your recommendation?” Mr. Russert countered. Mrs. Clinton replied: “Well, I don’t talk about my private conversations with my husband, but I’m sure he’d be happy to consider that.”

Not so happy, as it turns out. The names still have not been made public.

Just before the holidays, investigative reporters at both The Washington Post and The New York Times tried to find out why, with no help from the Clintons. The Post uncovered a plethora of foreign contributors, led by Saudi Arabia. The Times found an overlap between library benefactors and Hillary Clinton campaign donors, some of whom might have an agenda with a new Clinton administration. (Much as one early library supporter, Marc Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, had an agenda with the last one.) “The vast scale of these secret fund-raising operations presents enormous opportunities for abuse,” said Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat whose legislation to force disclosure passed overwhelmingly in the House but remains stalled in the Senate.

The Post and Times reporters couldn’t unlock all the secrets. The unanswered questions could keep them and their competitors busy until Nov. 4. Mr. Clinton’s increased centrality to the campaign will also give The Wall Street Journal a greater news peg to continue its reportorial forays into the unraveling financial partnership between Mr. Clinton and the swashbuckling billionaire Ron Burkle.

At “Little Rock’s Fort Knox,” as the Clinton library has been nicknamed by frustrated researchers, it’s not merely the heavy-hitting contributors who are under wraps. Even by the glacial processing standards of the National Archives, the Clintons’ White House papers have emerged slowly, in part because Bill Clinton exercised his right to insist that all communications between him and his wife be “considered for withholding” until 2012.

When Mrs. Clinton was asked by Mr. Russert at an October debate if she would lift that restriction, she again escaped by passing the buck to her husband: “Well, that’s not my decision to make.” Well, if her candidacy is to be as completely vetted as she guarantees, the time for the other half of Billary to make that decision is here.

The credibility of a major Clinton campaign plank, health care, depends on it. In that same debate, Mrs. Clinton told Mr. Russert that “all of the records, as far as I know, about what we did with health care” are “already available.” As Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reported weeks later, this is a bit off; he found that 3,022,030 health care documents were still held hostage. Whatever the pace of the processing, the gatekeeper charged with approving each document’s release is the longtime Clinton loyalist Bruce Lindsey.

People don’t change. Bill Clinton, having always lived on the edge, is back on the precipice. When he repeatedly complains that the press has given Mr. Obama a free ride and over-investigated the Clintons, he seems to be tempting the fates, given all the reporting still to be done on his post-presidential business. When he says, as he did on Monday, that “whatever I do should be totally transparent,” it’s almost as if he’s setting himself up for a fall. There’s little more transparency at “Little Rock’s Fort Knox” than there is at Giuliani Partners.

“The Republicans are not going to have any compunctions about asking anybody anything,” Mrs. Clinton lectured Mr. Obama. Maybe so, but Republicans are smart enough not to start asking until after she has secured the nomination.

Not all Republicans are smart enough, however, to recognize the value of John McCain should Mrs. Clinton emerge as the nominee. He’s a bazooka aimed at most every rationale she’s offered for her candidacy.

In a McCain vs. Billary race, the Democrats will sacrifice the most highly desired commodity by the entire electorate, change; the party will be mired in déjà 1990s all over again. Mrs. Clinton’s spiel about being “tested” by her “35 years of experience” won’t fly either. The moment she attempts it, Mr. McCain will run an ad about how he was being tested when those 35 years began, in 1973. It was that spring when he emerged from five-plus years of incarceration at the Hanoi Hilton while Billary was still bivouacked at Yale Law School. And can Mrs. Clinton presume to sell herself as best equipped to be commander in chief “on Day One” when opposing an actual commander and war hero? I don’t think so.

Foreign policy issue No. 1, withdrawal from Iraq, should be a slam-dunk for any Democrat. Even the audience at Thursday’s G.O.P. debate in Boca Raton cheered Ron Paul’s antiwar sentiments. But Mrs. Clinton’s case is undermined by her record. She voted for the war, just as Mr. McCain did, in 2002 and was still defending it in February 2005, when she announced from the Green Zone that much of Iraq was “functioning quite well. ” Only in November 2005 did she express the serious misgivings long pervasive in her own party. When Mr. McCain accuses her of now advocating “surrender” out of political expediency, her flip-flopping will back him up.

Billary can’t even run against the vast right-wing conspiracy if Mr. McCain is the opponent. Rush Limbaugh and Tom DeLay hate Mr. McCain as much as they hate the Clintons. And they hate him for the same reasons Mr. McCain wins over independents and occasional Democrats: his sporadic (and often mild) departures from conservative orthodoxy on immigration and campaign finance reform, torture, tax cuts, climate change and the godliness of Pat Robertson. Since Mr. McCain doesn’t kick reporters like dogs, as the Clintons do, he will no doubt continue to enjoy an advantage, however unfair, with the press pack on the Straight Talk Express.

Even so, Mr. McCain hasn’t yet won a clear majority of Republican voters in any G.O.P. contest. He’s depended on the kindness of independent voters. Tuesday’s Florida primary, which is open exclusively to Republicans, is his crucial test. If he fails, his party remains in chaos and Mitt Romney could still inherit the earth.

That would be a miracle for the Democrats, but they can hardly count on it. If Mr. Obama has not met an unexpected Waterloo in South Carolina — this column went to press before Saturday’s vote — the party needs him to stop whining about the Clintons’ attacks, regain his wit and return to playing offense. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, he would unambiguously represent change in a race with any Republican. If he vanquishes Billary, he’ll have an even stronger argument to take into battle against a warrior like Mr. McCain.

If Mr. Obama doesn’t fight, no one else will. Few national Democratic leaders have the courage to stand up to the Clintons. Even in defeat, Mr. Obama may at least help wake up a party slipping into denial. Any Democrat who seriously thinks that Bill will fade away if Hillary wins the nomination — let alone that the Clintons will escape being fully vetted — is a Democrat who, as the man said, believes in fairy tales.

Barack Obama

"Video: Ed Schultz Says Bill Clinton Is Flat Out Lying about Barack Obama’s Record" ( with video)

Think On These Things, with video (00:53):

Hey Ed, I was also thinking about “he’s picking on the one candidate whose judgment could have saved over 3000 American soldiers from dying in Iraq and 2 trillion dollars spent in an unnecessary war.” I’d hope every American would be thinking about it.

Barack Obama

"Zip It, Bill!"

Karen Russell (Huffington Post):

Senator Obama nailed it during the South Carolina debate when he mentioned Bill Clinton, "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes."

Don't get me wrong. I love Bill Clinton. I always have. I hope I always will. But lately, not so much.

In the 90's President Clinton's slickness was just sad and creepy. I remember "slick" Clinton when he fibbed that he "didn't inhale". I cringed when Clinton wagged his finger at America insisting that he did not "have sexual relations with that woman." I was downright embarrassed when, with a straight-face, Clinton declared "that depends on the definition of what "is" is.

Well, "slick" Clinton is back. Frankly, I'm disappointed.

Before Iowa, "Hillary the Inevitable" had the numbers, the machine and the name on her side in this race. Despite being the clear and unequivocal underdog, Obama built a grassroots campaign, brought in independents and got disillusioned Republicans to cross the aisle.

Obama starting gaining ground and closing the gap. That's when the "fun" started. That's when Hillary told reporters about her plans to attack Obama.

For months, we saw "the inevitable frontrunner" running a tight and disciplined campaign. Then as Obama rose in the polls, suddenly Hillary and her surrogates started dropping a series of "misunderstood" slurs. They fit a familiar pattern, "smear, play dumb, own up and apologize". Rinse, lather and repeat.

We are supposed to believe that as Obama gained ground on Clinton that it's just mere coincidence that Clinton surrogates painted Obama as a risky "shucking and jiving", "roll of the dice", "cocaine-loving", "drug-dealing", "Reagan-loving", "closet-Muslim" , "fairytale-living", "establishment", "less black than President Clinton" "rookie"?

We are supposed to believe that these are isolated "mistakes". Remember these are the people who went after Senator Obama's kindergarten record and then tried play it off as a joke.

Now it appears that "Trasher-in-Chief" Bill is in charge of keeping the "fun" going. Apparently, the Clinton campaign figured out that having Hillary taking the cheap shots at her opponents made her less "likable".

It started with Clinton trashing Obama on the war. When a red-faced and angry Clinton twisted Obama's anti-war record calling it a "fairytale". However, according to the New York Times, " a review of Mr. Obama's statements on Iraq since 2002 shows that he has opposed the war against Saddam Hussein consistently, calling it ''dumb'' and ''rash.'' "

All of the Clinton's huffing and puffing won't change the fact that Hillary Clinton voted for the war and that Obama has always been against it.

Then in Nevada, Clinton claimed that Obama was running ads "telling Republicans that they ought to just register as Democrats for a day so they can beat Hillary and go out and be Republicans next week and vote in the primary. Doesn't sound like the new politics to me."

This simply isn't true. Those ads don't exist. To many, the idea of getting Republicans to cross the aisle and become "Obama Republicans" is appealing. Remind me again, what is wrong with trying to woo independents and Republicans? Taylor Marsh seems to think there's something wrong with that.

Ms. Marsh, also ran with the Clinton exaggeration of voter intimidation, "New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign had a story it wanted to tell this week, so it turned to a friendly blogger. Taylor Marsh, who in the past has been paid by a union now backing Clinton, quickly ran with the story: Members of the Culinary Union were being intimidated to vote for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, whom the union endorsed last week. Under scrutiny, the story didn't exactly pan out. But no matter."

President Clinton went on to claim Obama said Republicans had all the good ideas, "Her principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas...I can't imagine any Democrat seeking the presidency would say they were the party of new ideas for the last 15 years. But it sounded good in Reno I guess...So now it turns out you can choose between somebody who thinks our ideas or better or the Republicans had all the good ideas."

The Clinton assertion that Obama said Republicans had "all the good ideas" just isn't true. Obama said the Republican challenged "conventional wisdom" and moved the country in a fundamentally different direction and that we Democrats can learn from that strategy. That people wanted optimism, clarity and to talk differently about issues and values. Obama pointed out that the unfortunately the Republican ideas promoted by this strategy were bad and wrong.

When Obama was asked how his being the nominee would help other Democrats get elected he said,

"I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like, you know, with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating and he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is, people wanted clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamic and entrepreneurship that had been missing, alright? I think Kennedy, twenty years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it just has to do with the times. I think we're in one of those times right now. Where people feel like things as they are going aren't working. We're bogged down in the same arguments that we've been having, and they're not useful. And, you know, the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out. I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom. Now, you've heard it all before. You look at the economic policies when they're being debated among the Presidential candidates and it's all tax cuts. Well, you know, we've done that, we tried it. That's not really going to solve our energy problems, for example. So, some of it's the times. And some of it's, I think, there's maybe a generation element to this, partly. In the sense that there's a, I didn't did come of age in the battles of the 60s. I'm not as invested in them. And so I think I talk differently about issues. And I think I talk differently about values. And that's why, I think we've been resonating with the American people."

Senator Clinton continued "the twist" of Obama's words during the debate. Why is Team Billary twisting the facts on Senator Obama? They are playing to win, truth be damned. Campaigning for his wife is one thing but continuing to trash Obama with misrepresentations is frankly disappointing. Daddy Bush didn't trash John McCain when McCain was running against Shrub. Clinton needs to rein it in. If Hillary can't control Bill or her surrogates, why do we believe she's ready to lead on day one?

Think about how the Clinton campaign responded to Bob Johnson's smear. When she was caught between a rock and a big donor, look how she responded.

First, they denied it was a smear and "took him on his word". Yeah, right. Unlike less powerful surrogates, they couldn't get Johnson to walk the plank. Finally, after Johnson was rightfully shamed into apologizing, Clinton conveniently flip-flopped claiming Johnson was "out of bounds". Hillary was for the smear before she was against it. It's familiar territory for her.

And, if it's true that Hillary is not campaigning in South Carolina, this is just the Clintons lowering expectations.

That despite Clinton LEADING in South Carolina for months, if she loses there, it is no big whoop because she stopped campaigning there and lots and lots of those voters are black! Lots!

Well, as recently as October, African-Americans favored Clinton over Obama 57 percent to 33 percent. Now, only after months of campaigning against "Hillary the Inevitable" and proving that he is electable, Obama has flipped those numbers.

I do have to hand it to the Clintons, they are the masters of lowering expectations.

Howie P.S.: In case you don't know, Karen Russell lives in Seattle and is the daughter of basketball great Bill Russell.
Barack Obama

"Durbin warns Bill Clinton"

Mike Allen (Politico):

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the second-ranking party leader in the Senate, says President Bill Clinton’s comments about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are getting “too personal” and called on the former president to refrain from attacking Obama’s integrity.

“I’m really troubled by his questioning the sincerity of Barack Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq,” Durbin said. “I really think it is unfortunate to question Barack’s sincerity on the war. He has been there from the start, opposing this war.”

The unsolicited comments — in a phone call to Politico from Springfield, Ill. — were a sign that the Obama campaign is going to react aggressively to perceived attacks on the senator’s character.

“I really had hoped ... that it wouldn’t become too personal or too negative,” Durbin said. “I don’t think that’s good for either of the candidates or for our party. There may be clear some clear differences on some issues.”

Durbin suggested that the former president has been giving somewhat revisionist accounts on the way the Iraq war debate played out.

“It was not easy to be against that war back when we cast that vote in October of 2002,” Durbin said. “I was one of 23 who voted against the war. Barack was supportive — one of the few candidates speaking out strongly against it in Illinois.

“If President Clinton had opposed that war as strongly as Barack Obama at the time, it would have helped a lot of us who had voted against authorizing an invasion.”

Durbin, the majority whip, was reacting to comments the former president has made in several recent forums suggesting that Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war has not been as steadfast as he has suggested on the stump.

“I think that his story line is not accurate,” Clinton said Friday on a liberal talk show on Sirius satellite radio.

Clinton, seeking to tamp down discontent among black leaders about comments he made about Obama in New Hampshire, told Mark Thompson on the Talk Left channel:

“This is what happens any time anyone tries to question a statement or a position of Sen. Obama. The response is, ‘You’re attacking me personally,’ and that relieves him of the obligation to address the substance.”

Durbin has endorsed Obama but says he is friends with both Clintons and noted that his voting record was strongly supportive of Bill Clinton when he was in office. Durbin and the former president overlapped at Georgetown University: Durbin got his undergraduate degree in 1966, and Clinton graduated in 1968.

“I really worked hard for him when he was a candidate,” Durbin said. “And I’ve had a very strong and warm relationship with Sen. Clinton, as well. So none of this is personal. I respect them both very much.”

Asked his outlook on the Democratic primary campaign, Durbin said: “In this business, you step back as a candidate and you say, 'Would I rather be in my opponent’s shoes or in my shoes?' I’d rather be in the Obama camp today, I think. We really have momentum behind us.”

Barack Obama

Obama: "Bill Clinton 'took liberties' with my words" (with video)

CNN's Political Ticker, with video:

Watch Sen. Obama's interview on American Morning.

(CNN) — Barack Obama accused Bill Clinton of twisting some of his early remarks on the Iraq war in a speech the former president gave the night before the New Hampshire vote.

"Bill Clinton was taking some liberties with my statements," Obama told CNN American Morning anchor John Roberts Wednesday, after his narrow loss to Hillary Clinton in the Granite State’s Democratic primary.

Clinton had alleged that the media had not properly reported on remarks the Illinois senator had made, saying that Obama’s policy stands on the war had actually been identical to those of his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

"I'm not clear about what the contradiction is," says Obama. "I said from the start that Iraq was a bad idea. I also said from the beginning that if we were gonna go in then we would have an obligation to our troops and that's been a consistent position of mine. So, the notion that somehow that diminishes my clear unequivocal statement of opposition to the war even before the Congress voted to authorize it actually doesn't make much sense."

Obama won the Iowa Democratic caucuses by 8 percentage points over Clinton, but lost the New Hampshire primary to her by 2 points, despite showing a lead in most pre-vote surveys.

Obama says the record-setting Democratic turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire bodes well for his campaign. "What's pretty clear is that the American people are taking this process seriously. They want to bring about the fundamental change in how our politics works."

Barack Obama

"Obama SmackDown Series: The Greatest Hits Collection" (video)

lovingj1'svideo (10:41).

Howie says: Bill Clinton makes the case for "real experience," not "same old experience" @ 09:40.