Sen. Hillary Clinton hit hard at Barack Obama on Monday, asserting that his recent controversial Pennsylvania comments made him out of touch with religious folk and gun owners. She's even taken to touting her past experience duck hunting, and raising the sensitive subject of Obama's similarities to another Democratic pol who she says was viewed as elitist -- Sen. John Kerry.
In light of this, a reader tipped the Huffington Post off to an amusing passage from Sally Bedell Smith's book on the Clintons, "For Love Of Politics" -- amusing if only because it seemingly combines all of the issues noted above (the Clintons, guns, elitism, and John Kerry) into a single anecdote.
It is 1994, and Bill Clinton has just passed his landmark assault weapons ban - a huge victory for gun control advocates but legislation that caused consternation among some congressional Democrats, who worried it would come back to haunt them in the midterm election. With the bill signed, the first couple retreats to Martha's Vineyard for a ten-day, rent-free stay at a posh estate, which includes a sailing excursion with James Taylor and -- you guessed it -- Sen. Kerry, while Bill plays rounds of golf and fudges his score.
Here's the passage:
But in defiance of the National Rifle Association, Bill insisted on including a ban on assault weapons that some Democrats worried could hurt them in the midterm contests. [Chief of Staff Leon] Panetta and congressional leaders negotiated all night on Friday the nineteenth and throughout the following day until they struck the final deal. The House passed the thirty-billion-dollar bill on Sunday, August 21, and the Senate followed four days later. Bill had won, but as usual the victory was more fraught than it needed to be.
The wrangling over the bill had delayed the Clinton family's second Martha's Vineyard vacation. When they finally arrived at the island on the twenty-sixth, they enjoyed more generous accommodations than the Spartan McNamara house, where they stayed the previous summer. This time they were guests of Democratic contributor Richard Friedman, a Boston real-estate developer, and once again they paid no rent for their ten-day stay. Friedman's twenty-acre Oyster Pond estate featured a spacious nineteenth-century shingled house, hammocks, horses, a pet pig, and a guest cottage, where Bill could retreat to work and read.
Bill and Hillary easily resumed their favorite vacation routines. They bought stacks of books at the Bickerton & Ripley bookstore in Edgartown and took sailing excursions with singer James Taylor and Senator John Kerry. After several rounds of golf, Bill told reporters he had shot an eighty, which immediately raised eyebrows. That August, the press began to focus on Bill's liberal interpretation of golf rules, especially his frequent use of mulligans - not only off the tee but on the fairway and around the green.
This passage has little relevance to the debate about what Obama said. But leveling the charge that Obama is in the same "elitist" mode as John Kerry, when Clinton herself has traveled in those very circles, is an irony worth noting.