With an uncertain future, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have taken to digging up each others’ pasts as they prepare for at least another six weeks of primaries and caucuses.
A day after Obama made a subtle allusion to the former first lady’s past problems with “issues of ethics or disclosure or transparency,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson compared the Obama camp’s actions to tactics used by Whitewater investigator Kenneth Starr, who eventually won an impeachment vote against President Clinton over his cover-up of a relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
Wolfson, rejecting the calls from Obama’s campaign for an immediate release of Clinton’s 2006 tax returns, said the candidate would not release her tax documents until “on or about” April 15. The tax returns issue has grown in intensity since Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million in January without accounting for thesource of the money.
“Though her campaign has tried to kick the issue down the road, Democratic voters deserve to know, right now, why it is she is hiding the information in her tax returns from last year,” campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a memo sent to reporters earlier this week.
While Obama has no shortage of scandals to resurrect from Clinton’s past — remember Whitewater, travelgate and cattle futures, to name just a few — doing so would risk tarnishing the image he has created as a candidate who prefers to inspire his supporters rather than impugn his opponent and could perhaps alienate the base of voters who gravitated toward his positive approach.
“He undoes the argument that he is different and new and a change agent when in fact he is running the same kind of campaign as everybody else,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a former campaign strategist for Bill Clinton.
Clinton, who has long suffered from high “negative” ratings from the public, has made no commitment to avoid below-the-belt punches and has arguably inflicted damage by repeatedly bringing up Obama’s connection to indicted real estate developer Tony Rezko, who is now on trial for fraud and influence peddling.
“Clinton’s campaign has figured out that she has a 55 percent unfavorability rating and it is not going to get a whole lot worse,” said University of Texas political science professor Daron Shaw. “And Clinton is in an underdog position, so rather than trying to rebuild her image, the easier option is to raise his unfavorable rating so at least it is more competitive as they move into these other states.”
