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Yesterday in my post 1481 I gave you all the FLIP, Well today I have the FLOP. Am I allowed to say I told you so?


Thursday, Sept. 25, 2003 10:40 a.m. EDT
The Clintons' New Whopper: We're Not Backing Clark

Bill and Hillary Clinton are desperately trying to convince reporters, not to mention the nine Democrats currently seeking the White House, that they're not responsible for pushing Gen. Wesley Clark into the presidential race.

"Former President Bill Clinton has called at least three Democratic presidential candidates in recent days to assure them that he is not favoring former Gen. Wesley K. Clark in the party's presidential contest and would help any Democrat who wants to run against President Bush," reports the New York Times.

"We have been supportive to all of the candidates running in any way that they have requested — information that they have wanted from either Bill or me, advice that they solicit," Sen. Clinton insisted in Washington yesterday. "We are not supporting or endorsing any candidate."

And even Clark seems to have finally gotten his Clinton talking points straight, insisting on NBC's "Today" show yesterday that he had not been handpicked by the former first couple to upset the Democratic Party's presidential apple cart

"No, I think I'm the people's candidate," he contended instead. "I was drafted into this. There were 30,000 to 50,000 people throughout the United States who came together in a draft movement and they said, "You must run." Nice try, Wes.

That's not what Clark was telling reporters just a week ago.

In an interview with the Miami Herald, for instance, he announced that "he had been flooded with requests to run - including from New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton."

The same day Clark told the New York Times that both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton had encouraged him to make the run. That was shortly after he jumped the gun with an announcement that Sen. Clinton had volunteered to co-chair his campaign.

Hillary quickly put the kibosh on that idea, but not before she and Bill recruited no fewer than nine of their top political advisers to help organize Clark's campaign.

Then there are the comments of the former first couple themselves, such as Mr. Clinton's claim to a group of fund-raisers and strategists earlier this month that the Democrats really had only "two stars" to offer the voters next year.

Passing over the nine candidates then in the race as if they were yesterday's stale leftovers, Clinton named his wife and Clark.

Here's more from Mr. Clinton on the candidate he says he isn't backing:

"[Gen. Clark] is brilliant, he is brave and he is good," the ex-president told a California audience last week, before detailing what he said was Clark's heroic effort to save the lives of several American diplomats whose vehicle went off the road and exploded during peace talks in Bosnia.

"He's got a sack full of guts," the ex-president added.

Surely, any day now, Mr. Clinton will be praising the brilliance, bravery, goodness and gutsiness of candidates Dean, Kerry, Lieberman, Sharpton, Kucinich, Graham, Gephardt and Edwards, not to mention Ms. Moseley-Braun.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2003/9/25/105226.shtml