“Renegade: The Making of a President.” Wolffe’s Book on Obama Misses No Opportunity to Diss Hillary

(bumped up from yesterday)

Huffington Post featured an exclusive excerpt from Wolffe’s book on Obama’s ascent to the Presidency. You can run over and see it for yourselves if you feel so inclined, I will not link to it. Much as I would wish otherwise, I must express bottomless contempt for the continuously disrespectful way the Clintons are discussed and regarded by the Obama camp. Apparently Wolffe appeared on the “Today” show this morning to discuss his book and the internal debates within the Obama campaign regarding offering Hillary Clinton the job of Secretary of State:

Of all his transition choices, none was easier to make, or more complex to execute, than Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Obama had long wanted his former rival on his team, no matter what his friends and aides said about her aggressive campaign… His staff opposed the idea for the most part, arguing that Clinton would never be truly loyal. But Obama was willing to leave the primaries behind, including his own strong feelings at the time. “I don’t hold grudges,” he told his aides. “I don’t worry about the past. I’m concerned about what happens now. If she can help me and Bill Clinton isn’t too much of a liability, we should seriously look at this.”

Hillary’s aggressive campaign? Heaven forefend a woman actually have the temerity to step up to the plate and compete for the nomination the way any man would. Bill Clinton a liability? Tell that to the thousands, perhaps millions who now benefit from the Clinton Global Initiative. Tell that to those of us old enough to remember the nineties when Bill and Hillary presided over eight years of peace and prosperity, a balanced budget, an enormous surplus, and unemployment cut in half.

According to Wolffe, Obama stated:

“I’m really interested in pursuing this, but I know she has some hard feelings coming out of this campaign.” Emanuel and John Podesta, the former Clinton official who ran the transition, assured Obama that she was over those hard feelings now. Obama smiled and said, “Believe me. She’s not over it yet.”

He smiled? I bet he did. Again with “over it.” Just because Obama’s surrogates daily intimated the Clintons were racists, I can’t imagine why any of us would have a problem getting over it. But this is the piece de resistance:

[Obama’s] decision to offer her the job of secretary of state came surprisingly early. Well before the end of the primaries, when his staff and friends still felt hostile to her, Obama decided that Clinton possessed the qualities to carry his diplomacy to the rest of the world.

So during the primaries when he had ‘already made this decision,’ he campaigned daily with the meme that Hillary had no foreign policy street cred and her visits to over 80 countries as First Lady were nothing more than “tea parties, even though he knew that was a bald faced lie. “Carry his diplomacy to the rest of the world” …like his grateful, supine hand maiden. Wolffe’s writing here sounds like a bunch of school boys fantasizing about a hareem. Don’t look now, but Wolffe just betrayed his own paradigm.

And no, I am not over it so don’t even go there. Nor should anybody be over it who actually cares about democracy or decency. Further, Obama states:

“We actually thought during the primary, when we were pretty sure we were going to win, that she could end up being a very effective secretary of state… I felt that she was disciplined, that she was precise, that she was smart as a whip, and that she would present a really strong image to the world…I had that mapped out.”

Obama had that mapped out. Wow. He really is brilliant. And her voters had it mapped out a long time ago that she could dance circles around Obama. Guess we should have all had degrees from Harvard, too. According to Wolffe, Clinton had “issues” including settling her campaign debt and Obama informed his senior aides:

“I’m not begging her to take this job. If she wants it, I could help. But I’m not willing to go out in these difficult economic times to do a flashy fundraiser in California.”

“In these difficult economic times?” So that’s why he has a ½ million dollar pizza party on Wednesday nights? Or jet sets around to different parts of the country to sign a bill on the taxpayers’ dime. Or why he spent $6 million of his supporters hard earned dough on faux Grecian temples at his nomination festival? Or why his Inauguration festivities cost twice as much as that of President Bush? Guess times must not be quite that tough.

But here is really the lowest insult of all. I wonder who this quote is coming from – a senior aide? Who is unnamed? What Senate Democrat actually said this – if any?

As it happened, plenty of people in the Senate were begging Obama to offer Clinton the job. Obama’s aides believed that many Senate Democrats thought Clinton had extended her presidential campaign far beyond the point where she had lost the election. Her negative advertising wasted Democratic money, threatened to undermine the party’s nominee, and suggested that she was disloyal to the party. They were unwilling to offer the junior New York senator a position ahead of her lowly rank, and she stood little chance of becoming majority leader. “There was a lot of encouragement from inside the Senate to get her into this job,” said one senior Obama aide. “They wanted her out of there.”

Why in God’s name would Wolffe write this? If he is so enamored of Barack Obama that is fine, but surely at this difficult point in our history, if President Obama actually cares about the country and our standing in the world, he would never want to undermine his Secretary of State. Would he? Giggle, giggle. And let me go on the record as saying if the knuckle draggers at the Obama campaign are anything like his frat boy speechwriter Jon Favreau, who put a picture on his Facebook page of he and a pal groping a life sized cardboard poster of Hillary Clinton and forcing a beer down her throat, that should clarify the level of some of the folks who helps to get our current President elected. Is it any wonder that we read quotes like these: “They wanted her out of there…”

And if it is in fact true that the Senate Democrats “wanted her out of there,” it is because they couldn’t bear their shame in looking her in the face at work every day. She was forced out after a nominating contest that was razor close, and was not even allowed to legitimately have her name in nomination, though she had won the popular vote. She outclasses every single one of those cowardly back stabbers. And if anyone wants to complain about who depleted voters coffers so there was no money left for Senate Democrats, you have to look no further than the Obama campaign, who outspent her three to one. After Mr. Obama promised he would help Harry Reid with down ticket races, he reneged. So how real is this complaint anyway? Furthermore, the Clintons have raised more money for the Democratic Party over the years than anyone.

After the Presidency, Secretary of State is the biggest and most important plum post– everyone from John Kerry to Governor Richardsion was begging for it. I’ll bet VP Biden would have rather had SoS than the position he now holds, so to pretend they had just successfully farmed Hillary Clinton out to the minor leagues for the sole purpose of “getting her out of there” is laughable at best.

Further, Glenn Thrush of Politico chimes in to note that:

Wolffe may be overstating the case. According to my reporting at the time, some Senate Democrats admired Clinton’s grit, and many others thought she’d earned the right to ride out the campaign to the end.

It looks as though Wolffe’s blockbuster reporting is just more revisionist history coming from Obama’s sour aides who were pissed that an amazing sixty year old lady in a pantsuit actually made their candidate sweat for something he wanted. It is no less than horrifying to appoint a Secretary of State who clearly knows what she is doing and is a huge asset, only to constantly disparage her as being no more than an egregiously disloyal, irritating inconvenience. I wonder if Wolffe realizes how bad and how petty he makes Obama’s aides look for their negative characterizations of SoS Clinton when clearly, she has repeatedly demonstrated her willingness and ability to rise above all of this. Then again, Wolffe is a “contributor” to Newsweek/MSNBC. Uh, need I say more. Oh, but he does:

As for controlling the uncontrollable Bill Clinton, Obama’s aides drew up a series of checks on his fundraising for both Clinton Global Initiative and his work on HIV/AIDS across the world. But they really counted on Hillary to be the ultimate safeguard – against both her husband and her own ambition. “It’s in her interests to keep him in line,” warned one senior Obama aide. Others in Obama’s inner circle said the president-elect believed Clinton needed to demonstrate that she was a team player and to shape her own career and legacy. “There are plenty who don’t trust her and think she still harbors something,” said another senior adviser. “It’s still potentially problematic down the road. Barack’s thinking on this is that it’s not in her interests to mess with us. She can’t win that fight internally and she’s smart enough that she won’t want that fight publicly.”

Her own ambition? Again, ambition in a woman is something dirty to be rejected, but a man with less than two years in the Senate under his belt running for President – that vaunting ambition would not be considered negative. Clearly, Hillary put ambition aside and graciously opted to help Obama get elected to push forward a Democratic agenda. Disloyal? How dare these arrogant asses say anything of the kind? If Secretary of State Clinton has any failing at all, it is that she is loyal to a fault – and has certainly received no end of slaps even from some of her own supporters for that very attribute.

Several weeks into the administration, even Clinton’s internal critics believed the relationship was a success. “They have both worked really hard at it,” said one senior White House official. “There’s a natural affinity and respect that ironically grew out of being opponents. You get to know someone really well after all that.”

What respect? Obviously, if Obama and his camp had any respect for her, we would not be reading any of this tripe. President Obama’s aides and advisors once again exhibit their complete lack of class by stating this drivel. They will never forgive Hillary Clinton for outclassing their chosen messiah on preparedness, knowledge and stamina. Clearly, he will not forgive either, as he must always remind everyone how superior he is. I would gently like to remind Mr. Obama that he is the President. So we don’t need any reminding. Perhaps he needs to remind himself as he still feels somewhat insecure in this regard. Hillary Clinton encouraged us all to look behind the curtain to see the Wizard and for that she must forever be punished, as though anything she is given by Obama is a favor for which she should get down on her knees and thank her lucky stars.

To the contrary, it is President Obama who is extremely fortunate to have her on his team. And frankly, I think he well knows that. She made 180 campaign appearances for him to drag him across the finish line and to signal to her supporters that it was okay to vote for him. She must be in his prayers at night because certainly he needs an adult minding the store on foreign affairs, something he is woefully unprepared to handle.

At first, I was so angry writing this it took twice as long to get my fingers to work properly. However, the more I think about it, I take their obsession with diminishing Secretary of State Clinton as a huge compliment. Surely if you feel a constant need to deflate and degrade another person and make it appear as though you have your boot on her throat, she must be quite intimidating indeed. Further, I think it an odd coincidence that this book comes out now, when Hillary Clinton’s popularity in the polls has eclipsed that of President Obama. Clearly, popularity polls are not something this lady is worried about. She is busy quietly doing her job to the best of her ability as she always does.

All this goes a long way to illustrating that sexism is alive and well in this country. The woman must be kept in her place at all costs. As much as Hillary Clinton’s supporters are constantly told we need to “get over it,” by the tenor of the comments Wolffe quotes in his new book, clearly, it is Obama’s people who are not yet “over it.”