Running against Bill Clinton's third term

Washington Post:

The clash between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton Monday night was a debate long waiting to happen, and at the heart of it was the man who was not on stage: former president Bill Clinton.

Since Obama's victory in Iowa, the Clintons have responded with a methodically aggressive campaign. With his own campaign now on the defensive, Obama came to Monday's debate determined to confront his principal rival for the Democratic presidential nomination with a cry of foul.

The result was the most heated and acrimonious exchange of the long race. The opening minutes included charges and countercharges, personal attacks and some of the harshest language either of the two leading Democratic candidates has used, particularly face to face.

"I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes," Obama sarcastically noted during one exchange.

So intense was their dispute that former senator John Edwards (N.C.) repeatedly demanded the opportunity to be heard.

Democratic strategists differed on whether Clinton or Obama emerged as the winner of the two-hour session. Some said Obama came off at points as defensive and working too hard to explain his record and his positions. Others said Clinton was so aggressive that it could cost her support. Edwards's backers hope that he will benefit if voters are turned off by his rivals' tone and temperament.

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Edwards' only hope is if they both drop dead. Obama is on to the Clinton tag team and he can probably score points if he makes the case that Hillary is just a surrogate for bill's third term. Rich Lowry points out:

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His performance on Hillary's behalf has been desperate, accusatory, self-pitying and misleading. It has been a full-on blast of Bill Clinton's do-what- ever's-necessary ethic of the sort we haven't seen since he wagged his finger at the country almost 10 years ago and denied having sex with Monica Lewinsky (in itself, an adolescent escapade that could have been straight out of "National Lampoon's White House").

During his presidency, Clinton was supposedly assailed by the forces of Republican extremism and of an out-of-control special prosecutor. Now, he's being attacked by the forces of hope and change. Barack Obama has, by almost any standard, run a scrupulously high-minded campaign.

But that hasn't mattered. As far as Bill Clinton is concerned, Obama might as well be a member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Obama is guilty of what they call in the laws of war a "status offense." He is running against Hillary, and therefore interposing himself between the Clintons and the object of their ambitions. This makes him as much fair game as Newt Gingrich, Paula Jones or Ken Starr.

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Clinton always demonized his opponents and mostly got away with it because Democrats and their media facilitators generally agreed with him whether it was fair or not. Now Obama is getting the treatment and it is playing to mixed results. Bill Clinton is a far meaner politician than Democrats' worse nightmare of Karl Rove. He is vicious and self serving to extreme and now it is on display as never before. It is not very pretty, but Republicans will be his next target if Obama is his next victim.