Obama Shocked! Shocked! at Clinton Lies

Bill Clinton Lie Finger Wag Photo A WSJ editorial today commiserates with Barack Obama for facing the amazing audacity of the Clinton smear machine. But only to a point:

The Illinois Senator is still a young man, but not so young as to have missed the 1990s. He nonetheless seems to be awakening slowly to what everyone else already knows about the Clintons, which is that they will say and do whatever they “gotta” say or do to win. Listen closely to Mr. Obama, and you can almost hear the echoes of Bob Dole at the end of the 1996 campaign asking, “Where’s the outrage?”

This has been the core of the conservative critique of the Clintons for years. So it is illuminating to hear the same critique coming from Mr. Obama and his supporters now that his candidacy poses a threat to the return of the Clinton dynasty. Even Democrats are now admitting the Clintons don’t tell the truth — at least until Mrs. Clinton wins the nomination.

Politics ain’t beanbag, they say, and all campaigns cherry pick the truth about the opposition to a degree. The Clintons, though, are past masters of simply making things up. And getting away with it.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Alex Knapp says:

    It does seem strange to me that the Clintons are taking these tactics, given that it has potential to harm whoever the nominee is in the General and the Democratic Party in the ’08 elections as a whole.

  2. Dave Schuler says:

    The first step is to get to the general election.

  3. carpeicthus says:

    I think a lot of Democrats, including me, were pretty skeeved by the all-politics-all-the-time attitude of the Clinton camp, but of course anyone capable of getting themselves elected of being president shouldn’t be allowed to take the job, to quote Douglas Adams. It didn’t hurt his image that he was followed by someone even more distasteful on his worst points, and of course also awful where the Clintons were good.

  4. Michael says:

    The Clintons, though, are past masters of simply making things up. And getting away with it.

    Good thing we got rid of them, imagine if they had done that kind of thing to get us into a war or something….frightening.

  5. John Clark says:

    Amen, Michael

  6. Steve Plunk says:

    Michael and John should remember President Clinton believed Iraq to be in possession of WMDs, sent troops into the Balkans (where they are still), and ordered multiple bombings (once during the Lewinsky debacle, who some say was a forced distraction).

    As long as the people have a short memory politicians will distort and lie to get elected. When we as a people get serious about understanding the issues and just paying attention there might be a change for the better.

  7. Triumph says:

    President Clinton believed Iraq to be in possession of WMDs, sent troops into the Balkans

    Plunk has it right–Clinton, dingbat liberal that he is, thought that Iraq had WMDs and invaded the Balkans. At least Bush invaded THE RIGHT COUNTRY.

  8. floyd says:

    Michael;
    He did!

  9. b2008 says:

    It hurts the Democratic party as a whole to wallow in the mire of accusations. Both should be on target with the issues and nothing else. It seems, however, that the Clintons are the ones who are targeting Obama because Obama had not said anything about the Clintons until they started on him. And now the media wants to blame Obama for this mess? I don’t think so!

  10. Tlaloc says:

    I still contend that just about everything wrong with our latest Iraq war was also wrong with the Kosovo war, just on a *much* smaller scale. Same waste of money and lives. Same abuse of locals by out of control contractors.