Opening rounds fired in new Clinton-Bush feud

01/22/2006

Tensions from the ‘92 campaign have flared anew in what might be the beginning of the 2008 presidential campaign.

Raymond Hernandez,
New York Times
Last update: January 21, 2006 – 6:35 PM

WASHINGTON - In the past week, the Bush and Clinton camps have traded nasty words in a series of exchanges that had the faint echoes of their open warfare during the 1992 presidential campaign.

On the surface, the skirmishing seemed to stem from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertion that Republicans were running Congress like a plantation and that the Bush administration is one of the “worst in history.” But political strategists say the hostilities were more likely the opening shots of the 2008 presidential campaign.

The battle between the Bush and Clinton camps has been building for weeks. In late December, people close to the senator were struck when the president himself took a shot at Clinton and her New York colleague, Sen. Charles Schumer, for helping to block the renewal of the Patriot Act, saying that the two owed an explanation to New Yorkers, previous targets of terrorists.

Not long after, Clinton struck back, calling the Bush administration’s efforts to protect troops in Iraq “incompetent” and saying that what she called the lack of adequate body armor for those troops was “unforgivable.”

But things did not heat up until Monday, when the senator, speaking at a ceremony in Harlem honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said Republicans ran the House of Representatives “like a plantation” in which dissent was not tolerated. Clinton also attacked the Bush administration as potentially being “the worst” in the nation’s history.

The Republican National Committee responded within hours, accusing Clinton of using divisive and racially charged language on a day devoted to national reconciliation. Then, two days later, the national party sent reporters an Internet video of her speech included in an e-mail message titled “Hillary’s Back,” in an apparent effort to conjure up an image of her that she has tried to largely shed: shrill leftist partisan.

The message accused Clinton, among other things, of failing to attend an Armed Services Committee hearing that looked into body armor for troops.

Clinton’s spokesman responded that the hearing was called on short notice and that the senator already had a full day of events scheduled with constituents in New York and sent an aide in her place; her spokesman added that only one Republican attended the hearing.

And if that was not enough, the White House’s chief spokesman criticized Clinton, as did Laura Bush. “I think it’s a ridiculous comment,” Laura Bush told reporters on Wednesday, two days after Clinton made the remarks. “It’s a ridiculous comment—that’s what I think.”

The attacks by the White House and their Republican allies put the Clinton camp in a state of high alert, with the senator’s advisers enlisting prominent black Democrats to come to her defense. In the meantime, Clinton’s advisers did a little research and came up with a similar plantation quote from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich that they, in turn, sent to reporters.

Some of Clinton’s closest allies do not think that the Republican assault is entirely bad for her. The attacks may help energize her financial supporters at a time when she faces no serious opposition in her reelection bid.

But perhaps more important, the Republican attacks are leading Democrats to rally around her, at a time when the senator is facing criticism from pockets on the left on several issues, chiefly her support for the war in Iraq.

“If a person is defined by their friends and their enemies,” said one Democrat who is close to Clinton, “she has all the right enemies.”